LogFAQs > #951007298

#17. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue (PS1, 2000)





Growing up, I had video game magazines with ads for Lunar games on the Sega CD. I always thought they looked cool, with anime characters before I even knew what anime was. I didn't get to experience the Lunar games on the Sega CD, so the Playstation updates were where I eventually played the series. I enjoyed Lunar: Silver Star Story, so I was excited to try Lunar 2: Eternal Blue when I found out that would also come out for the PS1.

Eternal Blue starts with Hiro and his pet dragon Ruby finding a mysterious girl, Lucia. Lucia was sent to Lunar to prevent it from being destroyed by Zophar. They travel to find the power to stop Zophar, meeting other characters along the way, each of which go through some level of development on a personal level as well. Eternal Blue is set 1,000 years after the first Lunar game, so it is mostly a separate story from the original. There are still connections to the first game, through the world and seeing how it's changed in that time (and remained the same), along with some characters who still reappear due to plot reasons, like the dragons, and also my favorite character from the first game.

There are few improvements made form the first game to the sequel. Battles move a little faster, cutting out some of the downtime in basic moves and speeding up the simpler encounters. There are more cutscenes and more dialogue, which was a big deal at the time, when quantity of each was still a thing in RPGs people wanted more of. There is an epilogue added to the end, unlike with the first game, so even after wrapping up the main story, you can run around the world with your endgame setup and wrap up some more personal story to the characters. And of course the actual packaging of the game came with more stuff than the first, including the soundtrack, a making of documentary, a pendant like Lucia wore, a hardcover manual, and mini-character stands. It was like a collector's edition experience before collectors editions were even a thing, and it was every copy. I listened to that CD quite a bit back in the day.

Working Designs was the company in charge of bringing Lunar to the USA. They were very unique, which some people weren't so big on, but other people loved. I personally thought they were amazing. The packaging mentioned above was a big thing of theirs, as they tried to make all their games feel special to buy. They also went wild in their translations, filling them with jokes and pop culture references, generally when the original text was just kind of filler fluff from NPCs. Some people want literal translations, and that sure didn't happen, and I'm sure some of the references are very dated now. But in a game like this, it made it so fun to just talk to every townsperson and examine every thing. You never knew what kind of interaction or comment was coming up next.

I also bought the strategy guide for Eternal Blue. Working Designs made their own strategy guides for their games, rather than sending it out to BradyGames, Prima, etc. Because they wrote it themselves, it had the same kind of special care feeling as the game, coming in a hardcover book with a reversible dust cover and a ribbon bookmark attached. They were also able to fill it with more official artwork than you would normally get. It also was full of humor, dumb jokes and references and puns everywhere, even more than the game's localization contained. It was fun to just sit down and read sometimes, I found it so funny and it added to the experience of the game itself.





A long time ago (like 15+ years ago) I used to use the above picture of Lemina as a userpic for online forums and stuff. This game just holds a lot of fun memories from that time in my life. Seeing this picture, or clips of someone playing the game, or whatever just brings me back to very specific times and places.

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