There's one thing you can say about Working Designs ? whether the company's games are bad or good - it takes its sweet time, for whatever reason. Lunar Silver Star Story Complete was to come out in the US more than a year ago (arguable more like two years), and it's easily the most delayed game in PlayStation history. June 1999 marks the month the company's most anticipated release hit the store shelves.


The game has been out and available in Japan since the first year of the PlayStation's life ? in fact, the game is quite a bit older than that, too, since Lunar Silver Star Story Complete is a remake of a Sega CD game released in the early '90s. Working Designs put forth its magic and localized the game ? again. And you know what? Despite its dated look and feel, this is a really fantastic RPG.
Gameplay
Lunar Silver Star Story opens up with Alex, the game's lead hero, dreaming about becoming a Dragonmaster, like his hero. His buddy, Ramus, convinces him to go on a quest to obtain a Dragon Diamond from the White Dragon Cave. Luna, Alex's "love interest" tags along to make sure he doesn't get into trouble. And so begins the quest of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. As soon as you obtain the Dragon Diamond, the plot opens up like a floodgate ? and I'm not here to ruin the tale for you.

And like every RPG out there, there's the encounter with monsters that you have to put up with. When you bump into an enemy sprite, you're taken to the battle sequence where you fight with whatever was in that monster group. What's great about Lunar Silver Star Story is that you don't have to do all the decision making if you don't want to ? one of the handiest options is "A.I." Choose this up front and the computer will fight the battle for you. Or, you can choose A.I. for the individual characters when it's their turn. And if the computer's not performing a function you want it to, you can jump in and take control. This is a great feature for those just interested in the story and puzzles, and who could care less about the tedious, but necessary battles.

Some of the puzzles are quite clever ? for example, you actually have to utilize a monster's attack path to destroy a road blockade to access hidden items and caves, coaxing him to attack you, running away just before he touches your party.

One of my biggest gripes in the game is how the menu interface is laid out. I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally restarted the game from the beginning by hitting the Circle button when I really wanted to load a game from a memory card. What's worse is there's no way to skip the opening introduction, so I have to sit through the entire thing before I can correct my mistake. (The developers disabled the software-reboot option of the PlayStation, so that didn't work, either.)

And even though Working Designs has been working and tweaking on the game for a couple of years, I've stumbled upon a few fatal bugs. At the end of a battle, the game would just hang as if it were looking for a controller input. I could hear the "bings" and "chimes" as I pressed the buttons, but the game would refuse to leave the battle scene back onto the dungeon map. The only way out: reset button. What's worse is that I hadn't saved the game in an hour, so I lost all the progress I made from my last save point to that game bug.

Oh, and why the heck does Ramus have blue hair in the quests, and brown hair in FMV sequences and closeups? Hmm?

Graphics
If you're looking for a game that really pushes the PlayStation ? Lunar ain't it. What we have here is a game based on a 16-bit title. The biggest effects you're going to see in the game are multi-layered background scrolling. The quality of the images are bright and colorful thanks to the increased color palette of the PlayStation, but the dungeons, towns, and other locations are tile-based ? meaning that they're pieced together with a library of two-dimensional graphical tiles. You'll see the same floor, bed, chest, table, fireplace, all over the world. Polygons? Not a single one here, my friends. The benefit is that you won't have to cope with extended load-times. The pause between levels is minimal, almost cartridge-like.

One of the biggest plusses graphically in Lunar Silver Star Story Complete is the many FMV clips throughout the game ? and one of the reasons why the game spans two discs. The FMV clips aren't exactly full-screen, but they are smooth, clean, and fun to watch. It's a shame they only show up when you flag certain events.

Sound
One thing's for sure ? Working Designs has one hell of a sound department. If you've got a good sound setup connected to your PlayStation, it'll be put to good use. The recorded audio tracks, sound effects, and music in the FMV are crisp, clean and brilliant.

What's odd is how the game lays out the in-game audio tracks. Like the FMV, the spoken dialogue is few and far between, and you never know when they'll exactly turn up. But the recorded dialogue is well-acted, the orchestrations and the songs are played out and sung beautifully. The audio really sets the mood and atmosphere in Lunar: Silver Star Story.


Closing Comments
This is one hell of a package, people. When Working Designs releases a product, it goes the extra mile to make sure you're getting the bang for your buck. In the package, you'll find not only the game's two discs, but also a music soundtrack, a "making of" CD to play on the PlayStation, an artbook, and, most uniquely, the hard-cover, full color instruction manual. But even though this is one hell of a complete package, all this comes at a price: the game retails for $20 more than the average PlayStation game.

Is the game good? Absolutely. The story's great, the acting's nice...the video in some places isn't necessary, and the game has a very "musical" feel throughout (yes, Luna breaks out into song a couple times in the game), but Lunar Silver Star Story is a fun game that will last you at least a week of hardcore playing. Of the three RPGs that were released this month (Lunar, Shadow Madness, Star Ocean 2), the game has some serious competition, but in my opinion it's the best of the three.



9.0 Presentation
6.0 Graphics
9.0 Sound
7.0 Gameplay
7.5 OVERALL

Ummm andyman, you need to acctually have a review to post this here. So edit ur post or make another with a full review, or this gets closed.

Ok, MUCH better review. I'm sure david will payout some Viz for this one when he gets back.

Wow, huge review, and deep content.

I have no other choice but to give you....500 Viz!