“I too crept away, my mind aswim in ringing phrases, magnificent, golden, and all of them, incredibly, lies.”
Grendel
There’s a part in John Gardner’s Grendel where the titular monster is lurking in the shadows outside of Hrothgar’s hall. A blind man comes, bearing a harp, and begins to sing of the glory of war, of the pure joy of fighting, and of the powerful kingdoms of the past. His voice echoes off the walls, creating a voracious hunger to reclaim that wonderful past and bring it to life in the present. The poetry lights the men’s minds on fire, as they roar and cry in ecstasy at the brilliance of the artist and the vision he has spun.
The Grendel, listening in, so desperate to understand humanity, feels like he is going crazy. He has been observing the humans in their petty violence, their destructive and wasteful ways. He has smelled the charred corpses as they are picked apart by vultures, seen the menial ‘courage’ of men getting drunk and daring one another to burn a rival faction’s hall. Impossibly, though, this Harpist had somehow transformed these raw acts of senseless barbarism into something beautifully transcendent and graceful with mere words.
When I started playing Lunar: Silver Star Story, I too thought that I was going insane. There is no end of praise for this game, with countless reviewers spinning their own yarn of how brilliant this JRPG is, even all these years later. But the raw reality of playing this game is far more banal; an uncreative, dull and repetitive grind with basically nothing of value to offer. Playing it was the most painful gaming experience of my entire life, and I’ve played some truly atrocious games.
Here then, is the truth behind the lies of Lunar: Silver Star Story, laid bare for all to see. And do not think that the irony of using my own words to attack the game is unnoticed - but perhaps, somewhere in the midst of stark reality and the shameless deception of JRPG fanatics, there is a truth of sorts to be found.
Within seconds of Lunar starting, the game starts to embarrass itself and anyone who has the misfortune to be within its immediate vicinity. Alex, a country bumpkin, starts monologuing about his ‘dreams of going on an adventure’ like his hero, a ‘Dragonmaster’. Then, a literal flying, talking cat, with perhaps the worst voice acting to grace the Playstation, comes up to you and says that she should have known you would be here, at this gravestone - probably because his obsession with the Dragon Master is Alex’s sole defining trait.
He’s not alone in having only one notable characteristic, joined by his ‘confused’ friend Luna, who has an obvious crush on him, and his greedy comic sidekick Ramus, who wants money. This is the total level of depth we get out of these characters, from start to finish. Luna continues to be confused and lost throughout the entire game, Ramus wants money (and gets it) and Alex goes on his predictable quest to become the ‘Dragon Master’, which is his destiny, and all because he happens to have green eyes. I am not making that last bit up.
Your party is rounded out by Nash, who is obnoxious and rude, Kyle, who likes sex, Jessica, who is proud and hot tempered, and Mia, who is quiet. They all delight in sharing inimical and idiotic banter, proudly parading their singular idiosyncracy. Nash will be rude to someone, Kyle will speak to a woman inappropriately, Jessica will get mad at him, and Mia will produce more ellipses than you would think were possible. It's grating and worn out from the very first moment they open their mouths, and it never develops into anything grander.
In between these wayward spouts of verbal diarrhea, we must endure a nonsensical plot of following these kids trying to find dragons instead of dealing with the threat at hand. The main thread begins proper with the unveiling of the ‘Vile Tribe’, a mysterious group that the goddess Athena had banished to the outlands for hundreds of years. Well, they’re finally back, and have been posing as various officials in positions of power for quite some time. Now, with Athena gone from the mortal plane for 15 years, they’re finally ready to reclaim the bounteous lands denied to them for so long.
Normally, background information serves to greatly enhance the depth of a game’s story. Having a history underpinning the politics and relationships of the present makes the world feel three dimensional, and serves to flesh out characters and their motivations. In Lunar, however, it achieves the exact opposite, because there is a clear disconnect between the actions of Althena and the way she is revered.
What we know is that 500 years ago Althena banished a group of people, now referred to as the ‘Vile Tribe’ for a terrible crime they committed. They were sent to live on the frontier, a place devoid of greenery of any kind. While we don’t know the specifics of what living in this place is like, the eldest Vile Tribe sister Phacia reveals that her people have been dying a slow death all that time, and that she expects them to all be dead by her generation if they don’t try to reclaim some of Althena’s power for themselves.
The banishment, and punishment, and death sentencing of an entire race of people (and potentially multiple races) is an incredible act of evil. Not only did Althena punish the perpetrators of a crime against her, she punished everyone who could possibly be associated with them. Not only did she punish this subset of people, who may not have even known the perpetrators, but also their children, and their children’s children, and so on for 10 generations.
What crime was committed that was so heinous that a Goddess decided to genocide an entire people?
We don’t know. Not once throughout the entire game does anyone say what the Tribe actually did that made Althena so perturbed that she descended into true evil.
In fact, it’s entirely possible that the Vile Tribe didn’t do anything substantially wrong at all. Maybe a child laughed at her haircut, and in a hissy fit she decided that genocide was the only way forwards. Maybe someone didn’t laugh at one of her jokes. Maybe someone criticised her terraforming policy. The omission of the details of the ‘crime’ is extremely convenient for those who rally behind Althena’s cause.
But even if we do accept that a serious crime was committed, like some members of the Tribe were planning to kill everyone and rule, genocide is always going to be a disproportionate response. You might think that Althena intended it as a temporary banishment until they’d mended their ways, but that explanation falls apart when it is explained that Althena only left the mortal world 15 years ago. For 485 years Althena was perfectly happy to watch this Tribe die a slow and horrible death, some of them forced to live their entire lives trapped inside cocoons. Then she pissed off to become a mortal, probably gloating that her genocide was nearly complete.
This does set the stage for a potentially fascinating conflict between the human heroes we control and the freedom fighters of the Tribe. The humans would recognise the intrinsic evil of Althena, even as they benefited from her magic. They would seek to protect their lands - they were not personally responsible for the banishment, after all, even if they did live under her despotic rule for centuries. The members of the Vile Tribe, with Althena’s mortal self gone, would finally get a chance to exact just revenge on Althena’s representatives, and rise to reclaim land for themselves. They might even be vicious and cruel in their machinations to do so, but revolutions are always bloody, and it's not like anyone extended them a helping hand to escape their situation in the hundreds of years of prior suffering. A violent uprising would seem to be the only way they could realistically escape their predicament.
Unfortunately, we get none of this. Althena is accepted as intrinsically good, with not a single person turning a critical eye on this defining moment in their history. No-one ever questions Althena or her motivations. Not a single soul has the moral decency to wonder if Althena is the fucking lunatic that she appears to be. The moral atrocity is accepted as an extension of Althena’s goodness. Apparently Althena can do whatever she wants and everyone will fall over themselves to justify it.
It’s not clear whether this cultish devotion is a result of hypnotic brainwashing, or a conspiracy amongst the land’s historians, scholars and leaders to turn a blind eye towards genocide, but at least we can understand the reasons the human’s might have to love Althena. She’s done plenty to benefit her tribe, after all - providing them with bounteous lands, magic, and healing statues! The programming that has been instilled in our heroes to ‘other’ the members of the Vile Tribe is understandable, if abhorrent. There is even a moment of faux sympathy towards the tribe members, although it shows a complete lack of true empathy, something to be expected of our dimwitted party.
The truly infuriating moment comes shortly afterwards, when the party once again encounters the Phacia, portrayed as the wisest and most good member of the Vile Tribe. In a sequence that left me incredulous, Phacia apologises to the party for rising up and trying to save her tribe. She says that the Tribe should beg forgiveness and that in Althena’s ‘love and wisdom’ she might welcome them back into her light.
In the twisted and dark world of Lunar, the victims of genocide must beg for forgiveness from the one who committed genocide on them. This is the backstory and world which underpins the entire narrative.
The main storyline fares little better, relishing in the nonsensical. The Tribe rises, led by a human traitor who takes on the role of evil magical emperor. They kidnap Alex’s friend and party member Luna, for unknown yet obviously nefarious ends. It is clear that Luna is being weaponized in some manner, but the exact details on what is being planned are scarce. The logical thing to do is to mobilise the armies of the humans to confront this threat, led by generals, queens and various other figures that hold power, in one form or another. Your party would have a role to play, surely, probably under the direction of one of these figures. It would even be reasonable for you to carry out special missions on behalf of one of these figures, given your personal relationship with Luna.
This, of course, all makes too much sense. Alex and his friends instead go chasing dragons so that Alex can become a dragonmaster.
To clarify, the party isn’t taking any action that will have any sort of direct impact on the war. There is no specific artifact or spell that they are trying to acquire to defeat their foe. We don’t even know what a dragon master is, or what a dragon master does - there is no political structure surrounding them like in Eragon. It mainly seems to be a generic powerup, and the game supports that, giving you some armour a few powerful spells.
The problem is that this side quest has nothing to do with stopping the Vile Tribe or rescuing Luna. The main reason it doesn’t work lies in the fact that we’re following a bunch of inexperienced, irresponsible children around instead of the ones who should actually be dealing with the problem of a military incursion. The gameplay structure of following these morons around needed to be supported by the story, instead of being conveniently ignored and shoehorned as related whenever they felt like it. There are ways to make a party based story make sense, but you can’t just make them the sole focus willy-nilly. Allow me to provide some examples:
In Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship, and then Frodo and Sam, go on a guerilla mission to destroy the ring in a specific location far behind enemy lines. They were chosen, despite their inexperience, as a compromise between the allied factions. The armies of Sauron dwarf those of the humans, elves and dwarves so a secret, stealth mission with a small party is their only reasonable path to destroy the ring. In addition, they mobilise their armies, regardless of this risky plan, led by the generals, kings and wizards, in case Frodo fails.
In Xcom 2, you lead a small yet organised human resistance against the alien occupation of Earth. You are ridiciulously outnumbered and outmatched, making open conflict suicide. So you launch small strike teams on missions to quickly hit various facilities and installations, for intelligence or just to do some damage, before evacuating shortly afterwards. You are forced into having a small party and your objectives match the capabilities of the party.
The issue is not that the story is primarily told through this party structure, it's that the party structure doesn’t match the grand scale or circumstances of the story. It appears, far beyond the scope of credulity, that all of humanity is sitting around and twiddling their thumbs as Alex wanders around the world on his irrelevant stroll. The story eventually allows Alex and co. to rock up to the enemy stronghold as the only potential threat to the magic emperor, while everyone else is presumably hiding under washing baskets, one eye fearfully peering out.
But for all its illogicalities, idiocy and cultish adoration of satanic evil, I can accept that there are those out there who enjoy this kind of rubbish. Some people don’t care about well written characters, plots that make sense, or empathy for others. My co-host James even had the audacity to call the character’s interactions ‘charming’. For those in the 6-9 year old bracket, or for those with an intellect to match, this story might just appeal to you. Hell, there are people out there who unironically enjoy Wheel of Time (which is a masterpiece compared to this tripe), so there’s probably an audience out there for this pitiful excuse of a spiel.
What I cannot accept, and what deserves universal condemnation, is the brick and mortar gameplay of Lunar. The battling and recovering from battles will take up the bulk of your time playing this game, and it’s an insultingly shameless experience. It takes the principle of wasting your time and hones it to conceptual perfection, as you repeat the same steps thousands of times in a row, your brain wondering if it will ever be required, or even permitted, to switch on.
For those who haven’t had the displeasure of sampling Lunar; in short, it is a turn based party JRPG. Your squad lines up opposite your foes, you input orders to your characters to attack, heal, cast a magic spell or defend, and then everyone’s actions play out from fastest to slowest. You repeat these actions until either your team or theirs is dead. You go to the menu, replenish your party’s hp and mana, trudge forwards a few metres, and enter battle again. You repeat this process until you reach the end of whatever dungeon you’re currently in and fight a boss.
It all sounds relatively innocuous. But the penny dropped for me when I entered the second or third dungeon, and a sinking feeling began to settle in my stomach. There lies a clearly optimal strategy to beat each fight, and it barely changed for the entire playtime.
You self buff your fighters.
You use your AOE attacks.
And you heal your party when they’re low on HP.
That’s it. That is the total sum of tactical prowess you need to win 95% of all fights in Lunar: Silver Star Story. Enemies hit incredibly hard, often knocking off 2/3s of your health in single attacks - but they’re also quite vulnerable. It makes utility spells essentially useless, and forces you into just killing them as quickly as possible. Since you can take one ‘action’ per turn, you simply pick the one that maximises damage. The enemies don’t have special abilities that require different strategies - the correct approach is always to dps rush them down.
If this wasn’t bad enough, you have the menu management that’s required after every single battle. You can’t stop the enemies getting some chip damage in, so you need to heal after every combat encounter. After every single fight you have to open the menu, open the items menu, select the hero with the healing item, select the healing item and then select who you want to heal. Or you can open the spell menu, select your healer, select the healing spell, and heal the hero that you wish to heal. Low on mana? Open the menu, select the item menu, select the hero with the mana restore item, use the mana restore item on your healer. Exit the item menu, open the magic menu, select your healer, select the healing spell, heal the hero who is low on hp.
Finally, we’re done! Time to walk forwards 15 paces and get into another fight! Use the self buff on my fighters. Use the AOE attacks. Use some heals. Fight complete! Time to open UP THE MENU AGAIN TO HEAL EVERYONE AND RESTORE THEIR MANA. Then, it’s fight time again! Then mana and hp restoration time! The fun never ends!
If that was painful for you to read, imagine going through these motions literally thousands upon thousands of times. Because this is what you must suffer through in order to play this game. There is no agency and no brain power required. I sat there, controller held with one hand, my eyes set in a thousand yard stare as I moved from identical battle to identical battle with no end in sight.
I have long held a personal vendetta against grinding. Making you play poor content in order to get to its good stuff is one of the worst things a game can do. As I played Lunar though, I was struck with a revelation as I contemplated the sycophantic delusions of the typical JRPG fan. Grinding is typically defined as having to perform some arbitrary task to unlock the next part of the game. You might need to kill 50 boars to get 10 boar hides, for example. Lunar, by this restrictive definition, does not actually have grinding - you gently proceed through each dungeon and your party will roughly be at the appropriate level to do so.
But here’s the thing: If the entire game is bad content, then what’s the difference? If the entire game is lifeless, what exactly has meaningfully changed? The reward for winning any battle in Lunar is more identical battles. The reward for beating any dungeon is another identical dungeon. The whole game is a grind, with the only true prize being finishing it so you can put your controller to rest, and weep tears of joy that the nightmare has finally come to an end.
Slay the Spire has fascinating turn based combat from the very first monster you fight, because the enemies all have special abilities that require you to sequence your cards differently. Divinity Original Sin requires you to juggle the action point values of various attacks with their impact on specific enemy configurations. Megaman Battle Network requires rhythm and timing to balance your offense with not getting hit by enemy attacks. Into The Breach has a fiendishly complex dance of opportunity cost, where you must maximise your 3 mechs against overwhelming odds.
Lunar: Silver Star Story has none of this. It’s gameplay is a hollow shell, and by the time I had finished playing so was I.
So here I sit, still the monster, still filled with confusion and anger at the things I cannot comprehend. It would be easy, I think, to just say that this game just isn’t meant for me. And truth be told, if not for my podcast, I never would have started Lunar, let alone completed it. But the paradox of how Lunar received such critical acclaim in the face of what the game actually is continues to grate.
Despite my harsh words, I don’t think every JRPG is awful, or that I’m destined to hate them forever. I researched and wrote an article explaining the intricacies of Vagrant Story. I love turn based games, to the point where I’m a diehard Magic: The Gathering paper player. And yet, playing Lunar went a long way to confirming every single one of my biases against the genre, to the point where 3 months later I’m still reeling in disgust at the experience.
If there is a JRPG out there that’s worth playing, I want to hear of it. If it has a compelling story, I want to experience it. But how can I trust that any of these games are worth my time when I must wade through the knotted web of lies that are so deviously spun around them?
I have tried to take a different path. And if this review can dissuade even one person from wasting away their hours playing Lunar, then my time writing this will be worth it.
Lunar: Silver Star Story is the worst game I’ve ever played. Don’t play it.
If you’d like to hear more incoherent, foamed mouth ranting at how despicable Lunar: Silver Star Story really is, you can listen to our podcast episode on it here!
