In Lunar Remastered Collection, it’s the little touches that matter. For instance, the RPG collection reminds me that I love being able to save my progress any time, anywhere.
I remember playing Digimon World 3 on the original PlayStation when I was a little kid and not knowing what saving my gameplay progress meant, or even that I needed a memory card to do so. Every time I booted up my game again, I’d start from the very beginning, thinking that this was supposed to happen. Then I got a Game Boy Color and played my first Pokémon game, the Gold version. It was a fellow six year old child who taught me that I needed to save my progress by going into the menu.
That’s when it clicked for me, and from that point forward, I had an expectation that I could save my progress anywhere at any point. I mean, that’s how Pokémon did it! Eventually, as I grew older and played more games, I learned that some RPGs utilized save points at certain areas to save progress. While it wasn’t my ideal mechanic, I dealt with it.
Nowadays, I’m more concerned about whether save points also heal my party, as games like Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes don’t. It’s incredibly annoying to fight through a whole dungeon of monsters, only to be low on healing supplies right before the dungeon’s boss and your party is battered. It makes me feel ill-equipped to take on the challenge ahead.
After playing through original remasters like Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars, I expected that the upcoming Lunar Remastered Collection would have save points, as I never played the original games. But to my surprise, I was able to save my progress anywhere from the menu. Thanks to that small feature, I was able to dictate my own pace through the collection. As a newcomer, these games feel surprisingly laid back compared to other classic RPGs I’ve played as of late, and its new features are well worth revisiting for veteran fans.
In the moment
The Lunar Remastered Collection contains the first two games in the series, Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete. The former follows a young man named Alex who goes on an adventure to become a Dragonmaster and protect the Goddess Althena, while stopping a magic emperor from taking over the world along the way. The latter takes place 1000 years later and follows another young man named Hiro who sets out to find Althena and defend themselves against enemies who call him and his group the “Destroyer of Lunar.” These are two long RPGs that were perfect to pick up and play in short bursts.
Compared to Suikoden, Lunar’s dungeons are a bit longer, but not so much that they feel tiresome. The ability to save from a menu also makes dungeon crawling more manageable. I could be in the middle of a dungeon but have to leave to run an errand, and then pick up right where I left off. I never felt rushed while playing the Lunar games as I never scrambled to get to the next save point as there weren’t any.
The two RPGs don’t have random encounters, another modern touch that I came to appreciate. Enemies roam across the field and if I don’t want to engage with them, I don’t have to. I took advantage of the save system and if I got into a battle while my party was in poor shape, I would just load up my previous save. That way, I could have another chance of simply avoiding the onscreen enemy. Call it save scumming, but I call it efficiency!
When I entered Lunar’s turn-based battles, I was grateful that the Lunar games shared another similar feature from Suikoden: auto-battle. The AI is surprisingly smart in Lunar, and so my party would almost always pick the most appropriate option to handle enemies. When they’re bunched up together, my mage in Silver Star Story, Nash, would summon lightning to strike them down.
Whenever there’s a stronger monster interspersed in between weaker ones, Eternal Blue protagonist Hiro would use one of his stronger special attacks that consumed MP on it while using regular attacks on the weaker ones. This customizable AI feature was added to the Lunar Remastered Collection, which ended up making a much bigger impact than I anticipated.
There’s also one incredibly smart tweak in Lunar’s auto battle feature that makes me click with it more than Suikoden and even Hundred Heroes’ version of it. Lunar lets me individually choose which character automatically attacks. In Suikoden, auto-battle applies to every single character in my party. Having to click through six different attack menus for each character is annoying and troublesome.
While Lunar also provides that option, if I wanted my Silver Star Story healer, Luna, to heal another party member, I can choose that option while having the rest of my party auto-attack. Not only can I dictate the pace of my dungeon crawling with the save system, but I can also do so during its turn-based battles.
I didn’t even have to do that most of the time. Luna’s AI is so smart that she knows when to use a single-target healing spell on one character or a party-wide one to heal the entire group. Given a situation, she knows whether or not to use the less intensive single-target healing spell to conserve her MP pool. This was critical during boss battles. Lunar is the only classic RPG I’ve played as of late where I feel comfortable enough letting the AI fight entire boss battles without my manual input.
The Lunar games were always rather inaccessible due to being stuck on older hardware from the 90s, but I’ve heard so many people raving about them. I can now see what all the rage was about. With smart quality-of-life mechanics bolstered by some tinkering to bring them up to modern standards, the Lunar Remastered Collection has become one of my favorite ways to experience classic RPGs that I missed the first time around.
Lunar Remastered Collection launches on April 18 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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