Collection essentials #364: Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (PS1)

I talked about the two Lunar games on Sega CD previously, the first of which was “The Silver Star”. With video game technology improving, Game Arts decided just a few years after the original game to give it a full-on remake for the next console generation. This remake was originally made for the Sega Saturn, but that version stayed in Japan. Luckily a PlayStation port came soon after, and publisher Working Designs was able to get that one localized and released in America, so that release is today’s subject. You can refer to my post about the original release for some basic info about the game.

While the basic storyline and gameplay elements are pretty much the same, this is quite the ambitious remake. Practically everything feels at least a little bit different. There’s a lot more content here, and I think the characters really benefit from having a lot more dialogue. The main character Alex is way different, as before he was nearly a silent protagonist while in this game he speaks as much as the other characters, which I much prefer. Random battles are gone and instead you can see where enemies are on the map before engaging with them, which is a huge improvement as far as I’m concerned. 

Some people don’t like some of the changes made in this remake and prefer the original Sega CD version. Perhaps my opinion is affected by the fact that I played the PS1 remake first, but I think it’s far superior. The many improvements as well as the additional content and dialogue just put it way too far ahead. 

Publisher Working Designs was somewhat infamous for making more changes than normal to games that they localized, including when it came to gameplay. Their changes were sometimes strictly positive such as adding analog controller support so you’re not forced to use the d-pad. But with Lunar, they intentionally made the game harder by buffing enemies and giving the player less experience points gained from battles. I can definitely see how this would bother some people, but I actually kinda liked the challenge of this version. I was almost never able to win by mindlessly using basic attacks, and I had to strategize and consider what moves to use and how to manage my resources. The game was tough, but I don’t remember it being too unreasonable. Of course it was many years ago that I played through it, so maybe my opinion will differ slightly if and when I play through it again. And of course, some people also don’t like some of the pop culture references and jokes that Working Designs likes to put in their games, which is understandable, but I can’t deny that I find them a bit charming.

As you can see from the photo, Working Designs decided to go all-out and include a whole lot of cool extras with this game. This included a music CD, a “making-of” CD, a map, and a fancy instruction manual. There was also a standalone release of the game without extras and only in regular PlayStation packaging, but that version was actually less common than this one. That version also featured fan art on the game discs.

I enjoyed Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete quite a bit, though I wouldn’t rank it as one of the absolute best RPGs on the console with so much strong competition. It’s the next Lunar release on PS1, however, that I’m especially fond of, and so you’ll have to check out my next post to see why!