Product Description

Experience the next installment of the Lunar SAGA on the Nintendo DS. Discover the events prior to Lunar Silver Star Story in an epic prequel storyline, involving all new characters in the Lunar universe. With new main characters, a new Battle Card system and new weapons and items, players must battle the forces of evil by transforming Dark enemy creatures into beings of Light.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4693 in Video Games
• Brand: UBI Soft
• Model: 8888160380
• Released on: 2006-09-08
• ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+
• Platform: Nintendo DS
• Dimensions: .50" h x 5.50" w x 5.00" l, .25 pounds

Features

• Battle System
• Lunar - Dragon Song's battle system is quite different from that of previous Lunar games spaning both DS screens.
• Coliseum
• The Coliseum is a brand new feature to the Lunar series for card battles. Cards have HP just like players in the game. If cards loses all of its HP, the other player gets your card. However, if you defeat your opponent's card, and knock its HP down to 0, y
• Menu System

From the Manufacturer
Long, long ago, the world of Lunar was dead; neither flora nor fauna--nor even air--could exist. But the Goddess Althena, together with the Dragonmaster and Four Dragons, came and gave life to the land, magically transforming this dead place into a verdant world overflowing with life. She blessed the world of Lunar, and the Dragonmaster swore to her his undying loyalty. He and the Four Dragons were entrusted with the Goddess's protection, and through her power, a magical world was born.

Lunar: Dragon Song is a tale of origins, set 1,000 years prior to the events of the original Lunar: The Silver Star and the adventures of Dragonmaster Alex. In the twilight time of Dragon Song, the world was still divided. At its center lived the race of beastmen in large, extravagant dwellings, while on its outskirts lived the race of humans. The two races were largely separate, and the world remained in balance so long as they remained separate. But this balance was soon threatened by a vile tribe in the distant frontier, who was rumored to wield formidable powers of dark magic. In a world that owed its existence to magic, these were perilous times.

Battle the forces of evil and transform Dark creatures into Light with the new Light and Dark system. Augment the abilities of your party via battle cards, and then exchange cards over wireless LAN with your friends. Lunar: Dragon Song lets you move around the map by simply tapping a point on the touch screen. Battles in the game use both screens to show grounded and airborne enemies. The game also feature controls dictated to the built-in microphone.

The first installment to the Lunar series in over a decade, Lunar: Dragon Song is a completely original adventure set against the backdrop of the Lunar universe. Join Jian, Lucia, Gabryel, and a host of new characters in this epic new prequel for Nintendo DS.

Customer Reviews

Biggest disappointment all year...
I've been a HUGE fan of the Lunar series since the Sega CD days, and I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to this game.
But, whether you are a Lunar fan or not, this game is awful.

Now, I don't normally review games I haven't finish, but I am about at the halfway mark, and I doubt I'll ever finish this game. I am just fed up with forcing myself to play it.
The story, compared to other Lunar games and RPGs in general, is thin and boring. Halfway through the game, and nothing interesting has happened at all. I've traveled to some towns, fought some monsters, and... well... that's about the entire story so far. Once, my party entered town, and my main character decided to undertake an arena battle that was extremely dangerous and foolish, because he "HAD" to. He never explained why, and he never talked about it before... but he just "had to do it." That's about how the story works: no character motivations, no real backstory, and no real purpose for anything that has happened so far. If they explain later in the story, it will be too late, because the game story is far too random and pointless for you to WANT to find out.

The combat, though, is where they totally destroyed this game.
Firstly, the game is SLOW. Painfully, I can't take it anymore, slow. The runnining speed of the characters on the map is about as fast as characters NORMALLY move in other games. The walking speed is unbearable. Too bad, for some reason, your HP continually depleats when you run around!! And you don't get much HP to begin with, let me tell you.
Battle speed and animation is awful, as well. You can hold down R1 constantly to speed battle up to a less slow motion feel.
Random battles are eliminated, which is a good thing, because you can see the monsters roaming on the screen. But, these battles are slow and extremely boring. And you will need to do a LOT of them.
You are unable to target specific enemies any longer. I have no idea why they went with this. If there are four enemies on screen, my characters will spread their damage around to all of them, instead of focusing on one. You will get wiped out by a magic user that can kill you in 1-2 hits while all your characters focus on killing insignificant 1-2 points of damage dealing enemies. Very sloppy.
Also, as the final nail in the coffin, they introduced TWO forms of combat, that you switch between on the main map. In one, you will receive experience, and in the other you will receive items and enemy cards. WHY they would split this up, making you fight more than twice the amount of boring battles is never clear, and made me pretty much hate this game.
You see, the only way to make money in this game (and armor/weapons and healing items are VERY expensive) is by taking missions from the courier you work for. Basically, bring this person X number of Y items. Some items are really easy to get, and will get you almost no money, and some people want items that are absolutely crazy to get. 15 of an item that is dropped by one enemy maybe 1 time out of 20.
So, you will be spending hours killing enemies over and over again trying to get your mission items, and GAINING NO EXPERIENCE.
This is completely unexcusable.
The game is by no means easy, either. All the little issues (random attacks, very very low MP, weak starting characters) can make this game very challenging. Which would be no problem, except everything is this game is so unfun and unbalanced that the difficulty is just one more huge thing stacked between you, and having any fun at all.
Oh, and for some reason you have to blow into the mic to run from battles. Which, when you're looking for ONE item from ONE enemy, you want to do a lot. Not only made me a little dizzy, it rarely was successful, and then you lose a turn.

I was very very letdown by this game, and I'm sad they used the Lunar world and name for a game that is this bad...
The only good things are that the game does look good. The enemies and characters usually look nice, and there's a decent amount of variety.

There is no real need to use the touch screen, either, and the two screens are usually combined to make one big picture - this is broken in the middle and leaves thing's heads on a totally different screen... but that really doesn't make the game any worse. It probably couldn't.

It's not Lunar, but I enjoyed it anyways
I read the reviews and did quite a bit of research before buying this game, so I did know exactly what I was getting into. The box says that the game is by the "original creators of Silver Star Story" (a game I adore). This is, in fact, false; Game Arts, which bought the rights to the license from Vic Ireland and Working Designs, farmed the development out to Marvelous Entertainment, a multimedia company best known among gamers for the most recent portable Harvest Moon games. They are not credited for their work, by the way.

Furthermore, Square-Enix declined to publish the game, even though the company had already published Game Arts' Grandia Xtreme (or rather, Enix had) and would go on to publish Grandia III. The French company Ubisoft, which frequently publishes games like this in the European market but only rarely Stateside, picked it up and published it with little fanfare, releasing about 50,000 copies (my estimate, based on sales to date) to the North American public in cheap shrink-wrap at an MSRP of $39.99. Put all that together, and it's safe to say that this game's credentials are more than a little suspect, and that probably predisposed a lot of people against it. Nonetheless, while this is not by any means an adequate entry in the great Lunar series, it is an interesting and very non-traditional RPG which may appeal to a small and specially tuned audience.

Not since Unlimited Saga has an RPG taken such an aggressively avant-garde approach to gameplay, and every element of the long-established formula has been twisted. Right from the beginning, you can buy a weapon that renders the main character, Jian, ridiculously overpowered and able to slay nearly anything in the initial dungeons in one turn. Nonetheless, the early dungeons will still be hard going for a number of reasons: you cannot run, either in the field or in dungeons, without bleeding about 1 HP per 2 seconds, and you cannot run at all below 1/3 HP; you cannot choose which enemy to attack (though thankfully, you can choose which ally to heal); the statues of Althena heal HP/MP, but not status effects; and weirdest of all, you must choose between battling to gain experience and to earn key items for the courier's quests, which are the only real source of money with which to buy new equipment.

That all sounds really bizarre on paper, and the what-the-heck-is-this factor is strong in practice, too. That such an experimental game should bear the weight of being Lunar 3, the newest entry after 10 years to one of the best traditional RPG series ever, is more than a little perplexing. Taken with an open mind, though, there are some definite merits to the dissonant choices Marvelous made, and the net effect is a curious kind of equilibrium.

Here's what I mean: if you concentrate mostly on experience and leveling (Virtue mode), then you get some bonuses from that decision. Each monster-populated area has a special blue treasure chest, and you can only unlock it by clearing the area of all monsters in Virtue Mode. These chests often contain an expensive weapon or piece of armor that has only just been unlocked in the shops. Also, since your characters are leveling up and getting extra HP, after just a couple of hours you can start running all the time without worrying about HP depletion at all. For the fastest way through the game, I recommend playing it like that, clearing each new area in succession and only switching to Combat Mode when you have to backtrack. If you choose to play mostly the other way, though (Combat Mode), then you have a totally different kind of game. You'll be stuck at whatever level you stop leveling up at, but you will also be able to upgrade your equipment much more often, and you will gain cards from battles, which have wonderfully helpful effects in battles. Bosses also have lower HP when you are at a low level, so the game is not completely impossible, though it is considerably more challenging this way because you will have a lower HP stock, meaning you can't run as much, and a lower MP stock, meaning you can't heal as often and you will need to stay well stocked with items. (Of course, if you dedicate significant time to both modes, the game will become quite easy, but few people will be patient enough to sink that much time in.)

The decision not to allow targeting of enemies is harder to justify, but it does force you to be able to withstand the most powerful attacks for long enough to pick off the small fries (and you will usually go after the small fries first, because that's how the AI is programmed). I would have found it less annoying if it used Eternal Blue's approach to combo attacks: in that game, you slashed once, then if the enemy died from the blow and you still had another slash, it could be used on the next sucker in line. In Dragon Song, Jian, who attacks 3 times per turn is stuck with kicking one critter's butt all 3 times, even if it only has 1 HP. I suppose if he could roundhouse 3 creatures in a row it would make most battles even easier than they already are, but as often as you have to fight, a pathway to shorter battles would have been highly welcomed.

The storyline is a bit unusual, too. Think of Chrono Cross: the humans were the dominant species, and the demi-humans were enslaved and castigated. The main villain, Lynx, was a demi-human who resented this treatment and sought to exact revenge. That's more or less the usual order of things, where such themes are concerned. Dragon Song reverses the roles; you are human, but it is the beast-men who have the power, and they hate your guts because you are a puny weakling human who can't run without draining HP. No more spoilers beyond that; suffice it to say that while it takes the game a while for the story to get interesting, there is a good narrative here, and Lunar: Dragon Song overcomes its initial faux pas to feel much more expansive and satisfying as it goes on.

Of course, you have to be able to stand it first. Rent or borrow this game if you can; otherwise, just be prepared to suffer a little to earn the payoffs.

A Slap in the Face to All the Loyal Lunar Fans
I'm a big fan of Lunar. I loved Lunar Silver Star Story Complete, and I loved Eternal Blue. Hey, I even picked up Lunar Legend on the GBA, but this game--the first original Lunar game to come out in ten years--severely disappoints me by missing what makes Lunar so enticing in the first place. This to me does not feel like a Lunar game, but rather an RPG trying to be Lunar.

Anyone who has played Lunar knows that Althena created the world of Lunar. In Dragon Song there are two races: The humans and Beastmen. Humans are trained more in the arts of healing, while most beastmen are warriors. There's a powerstruggle between the two, one group thinks they're better than the others. But when the Vile Tribe threatens the world, the two races are able to put their differences aside and work together to stop them.

Gameplay in Lunar is simple, but it has changed. For one, all dialogue actions take place on the touch screen. The problem being that nothing happens on the top screen. You wouldn't think this to be a big problem, but when you're used to playing RPGs on the console, you're not used to having to look at a bottom scream for messages and a top screen for gameplay. There were better ways to utilize the touch screen in this game. Likewise, the menu is not very well crafted, and it's difficult to use upon first playing the game.

And as if the gameplay on the field weren't enough. In battle is terrible! When one decides to battle, one must keep in mind what "battle mode" they are in. Combat Mode and Virtue Mode. The difference is simple.

In combat mode you will defeat enemies for prizes. Glorious items that you'll sometimes need on your quest. Some you'll need to progress. The downside to Combat Mode is your characters get no experience. That's a shame!

Virtue mode is just about the opposite of Combat mode. You get experience, but you get no items. However, the other part about Virtue mode is after each battle a clock starts ticking down. When it reaches zero all the enemies in that particular area will respawn.

I honestly couldn't figure out why the developers made two combat modes. In all other RPGs they seem to intertwine getting experience points and items together really well. In other words, the "unique twist" in battling is a waste.

And that's not even the worst part of the battle system! Battling is boring. You can either use special moves, attack or use an item. It doesn't matter what battle mode you're in, each battle plays out the same way. You can't choose who you want to attack however. Your characters attack at random and the enemies on the top screen can't be reached by your characters! This takes the fun out of battling and leaves you with doing nothing but holding down the "A" button. Battles with say... seven enemies take a long time, and they do a fairly large amount of damage.

Even outside of battle has its quirks. In order to execute battle you must touch an enemy. OK, I can deal with that. What I can't deal with however is the running part. If you hold down the button to run and you run for too long, your HP begins to drop!

You also only get three characters in battle at a time, which in and of itself is a crime to Lunar, in which they usually produce a challenge and let you use all five characters in battle. And you can't switch characters either. The three the game gives you are the three you get. Like the early days, useless characters just leave the party and come back whenever.

Cards are also used in this game. Some enemies turn into cards. You can "play" that card in battle to do things such as enhance your strength, poison other enemies and more. And you can run from battle, by blowing into the microphone but chances of you actually escaping are rare.

However, there are two positives to this game, but unfortunately because of the big hit it takes with gameplay, it's positives aren't enough to save it. The graphics are stunning! Incredibly bright and colorful and full of warmth. The character sprites and animations are also a beauty to behold. It works on so many different levels. The music is also good, giving the game a good feel at least.

Despite the graphics and sound, you can't shake the fact that the game is just boring and lacks creativity. Battling is limited to you doing nothing more than holding down the "A" button, and I'm not too keen on my HP dropping simply because I decided I wanted to run through an area instead of walking.

Even Lunar fans will have a hard time getting into this game. The story doesn't pick up for hours, and even when it does it's nothing compared to the two games before it.

There's no real way to say this other than this game is not for anyone. Even the die-hard Lunar fan will have trouble getting into it. Even the hard-core RPGer will have a hard time getting into it. There are better games to spend your money on. But spending your money on this is like throwing it into a paper shredder.