Lunar: Dragon Song by Highspirits (RPG Limit Break 2019 Part 34)

[@RPGLimitBreak]

Run Start: 0:40

[@MmeCShadow]

"A Lunar game that was created." That is the absolute nicest thing that can be said about Dragon Song.

[@rpgnut5897]

That is about is about as faint that praise can be.

[@Blahblah97555]

4:08:10 so this guy bought the game, took it back, found out they weren’t refunding returns, and returned it anyway? This seems like the true Lunar Dragon Song experience.

[@valr2]

HighSpirits is the first person I think of whenever I think of Lunar games. Keep up the great work everyone!

[@trevorstroud9334]

I grew up on Silver Star and Eternal Blue, never played this one. But seeing him run through these games really brings back lots of childhood memories.

[@TheTruePacmanMG]

My favorite rpg of all time was lunar sss complete. This game hurt.

[@matthewroman6807]

This was the only one I played and, though looking at it now gives me heavy sweet nostalgia, this video confirms my memory of this game being pretty bland.

[@mahmamia5100]

@@matthewroman6807 "pretty bland" is an extremely charitable way of describing this... this.

[@HominidMachinae]

A great opportunity was missed when they fought the first of "the enemy" and it dropped it's card. The game literally dropped a deuce mid-run. This is a good summary of the quality we're dealing with.

[@kainemaxwell]

Even the final boss knows this game sucks so he noped his way out.

[@DerekMcDouglas]

This is the Lunar game we don't talk about.

[@FakeHeroFang]

This run would be so much slower if you couldn't speed up battles, it's good knowing at least one person on the Dragon Song dev team has a merciful soul.

[@uljk5699]

Maybe they just forgot to remove a debugging feature.

[@Zelda_Essentials]

Lol

[@NyraScarlet]

This game has actual shovelware quality.

[@Popebug]

I'd argue that shovelware is usually bad because they're uninspired and lazy. This game is mainly bad because it tries new things nobody else have. And they're all awful.

[@Nathan-rb3qp]

@@Popebug It's not lazily bad like regular shovelware. It's more so frustratingly & bafflingly bad. Knowing that this was so awful that it ended the Lunar series after the first 3 amazing games in the 90's just hurts even more.

[@misterbojangles]

I bought this game wanting an rpg for a road trip.....I stopped after losing the ability to stand on your head

[@shad0wniy]

lol i quit this game after the first battle caz i wanted to be able to chose my target

[@ILikePi31415926535]

This game looked bad but not unsalvageable at first, but I lost it at the flee mechanic.

[@Navifaerie64]

I played this game shortly after launch because I loved Lunar Legend so much...and then forgot this game existed until seeing this video. Like in Legend, I lost some of my nice gear to party members you permanently lose.

[@Navifaerie64]

Update: I found my copy of Lunar: Dragon Song. Of all of the DS games I lost, why couldn't this be one of them?

[@Popebug]

Why would anyone want to play this twice, though?

[@Super-ts7rs]

@@Navifaerie64 I am just giving help it there choose what to do

[@biggamanedabeast5247]

I played thru this whole game. I would recommend it to everybody.........the moment I decide to destroy the world

[@Infernitar]

Also, the Dragons in Dragon Song are based on the four Celestial Beasts of Chinese legend, which correspond to the four cardinal directions if north is in the top-right of the screen. The Dragons are based on respectively the Vermillion Bird of the South (feathers, beak-like snout), the White Tiger of the West (stripes, mammalian face, furry mane), the Black Tortoise of the North (armoured shell, squatting gait) and the Blue Dragon of the East (the most Eastern-dragon-y design, association with water)

[@thefivespokewheels]

This is definitely one of the Lunar games of all time.

[@The24thWight]

Know what I love? Quiet videos with LOUD ads

[@danielpiechowicz2898]

My brother came back from the Air Force for vacation and had a PS1 and Lunar Silver Star Story Complete with him. I didnt let him take it back with him lol. A bunch of my friends and their siblings had ended up playing it in the past and everyone loved it. I eventually went to the mall and saw Lunar Eternal Blue Complete in its huge ass collector box. I bought it immediately. My family bought me the Lunar Silver Star Legend for GBA for xmas and I didnt even know the game existed. Still an amazing game. I had the strategy guides for SSS and ET. I have a poster for ET you get for free if you mailed in a card from the back of the strategy guide. When I saw Lunar Dragon Song, I knew I didnt like JRPG's anymore, but I wanted it for the title alone, all the memories, and the nostalgia for the two prior games. I quit this game the moment I reached the colosseum. This game was a chore. I always blamed UBISOFT and even though its not their faults (probably) I still hate them.

[@ZeldaDD]

Oh no, they literally re-did the plot of Lunar: Silver Star (in broad strokes) but way way way way way way worse.

[@uljk5699]

An example of why cliche is not necessary "cheap."

[@camelpimp]

why do people speedrun this game...?

[@adriannebee2056]

Losing bets.

[@brianaguilar8283]

It’s a challenge

[@novikovPrinciple]

Give a bad review for a game, only to lose a bet 13 years later and play it in a marathon

[@brandonmaloney9758]

l still have Lunar2 box set for the PS1, never got a chance to play any of the other ones

[@durant8006]

I remember when I played this game back in the day and finished it to the memory

[@theosr93]

What a torture. Can you run Blade Dancer psp? Slowest RPG i've ever played.

[@TheAsdfask]

My god im just an hour in and my side are already obliterated

[@iambor1393]

4:04:28 Okay, you can't argue that Lunar: Dragon Song is better than Pokemon of all things. That's pretty much as close to objectively untrue as you can get when it comes to video game opinions.

[@neoqwerty]

Well, maybe better than Pokemon Ranch... But even that's arguable because I had more entertainment watching papercraft Pokemon wandering aimlessly than I did playing this game to see if it's as bad as this run indicated. (It's worse, somehow.)

[@ori.g4mi]

I'd rather play this than Pokemon Sword and Shield. At least this game tried and failed. SwSh never tried, its a soulless product

[@Nathan-rb3qp]

@Weston Meyer Welcome to Hot Take Central. Population: You & most other people I encounter on Twitter.

[@Nathan-rb3qp]

@Weston Meyer At face value Dragon Song was better but in execution it was the other way around.

[@DerekMcDouglas]

It's the Lunar game we don't talk about, just like how we don't talk about Home Alone, 3, 4, and 5.

[@Nathan-rb3qp]

@Weston Meyer Says the guy that thinks most Pokemon games are worse than Dragon Song.

[@bmac4]

There was a 4th? THERE WAS A 5TH??

[@DerekMcDouglas]

@bmac4 Yes, we got both 4 and 5. 4 came out in 2002 and 5 came out in 2012.

[@PeruvianPotato]

​@@Nathan-rb3qpW take

[@camtheman7654]

1:43:24 I wish it didn't catch my eye, my mind must be infected. "...to find any greater purchase..." ඞ

[@brianaguilar8283]

This game was unnecessarily difficult

[@DocShok]

Instant classic VOD.

[@Qardo]

Even a few weeks late. I am sending this guy my energy from the future. As this game is so bad. I did not even know it existed. Now I wish it didn't. Should be buried right next to ET video game...and never dug up.

[@gaminggoddess85]

Dragon Song is so bad. It's a stain on Lunar's legacy and should not exist. What makes it worse is that the developers brought in a group of lifelong Lunar fans to help make Dragon Song, so I don't know who to blame more for the game being the trashfire that it is! ..Well it's actually definitely more Japan Art Media's fault. The fans are only guilty of writing a trite retelling of Lunar 1 and confusingly choosing to name two characters after existing ones (Jian was almost Jean for the second one). It wasn't by the fans' decision that *running on the overworld drains your HP, you can't get exp and items from the same battle, monsters don't drop money so you have to do 10 or 20 tedious delivery missions to maybe afford one equipment upgrade, several monsters can break your equipment so have fun grinding out even more deliveries asshole, only one character can do any decent damage and they nerf him almost instantly and for about half the game, your healer doesn't start with enough MP to use her goddamn healing spell, and you can't choose your targets in battle because "it slows down gameplay".* And then there's whoever's to blame for the translation being so shoddy that it spells Gabryel's name 3 different ways in the span of one conversation.

[@MmeCShadow]

It's the developer's fault. The fans had no real say in anything that happened; they were 'consulted' for the lore but they didn't write the script, they were given developer documents and made some notes and observations, but the mess of a story is entirely Japan Art Media's fault. (Also I believe it was *Ubisoft* so brought in the fans and acted as a liaison between the largely English-speaking fanbase and the Japanese developers, so it's not like they had a direct line of access or that Ubisoft, just being the American publisher, had any *real* power of suggestion over the dev team anyway.) Somebody who actually was part of the fan group chimed in on the SomethingAwful LP of the game and mentioned that a small handful of lines they suggested (lines that have actual jokes and personality, contrary to most of the game's writing) actually made it to the final product, but that was all the writing they did, and they weren't even told was was used. They were sent the basic concepts of the script and basically said "Hey this sounds like a cool idea" (history of the Vile Tribe, a villainous Dragonmaster, definitely could be interesting!) but when they started getting more finalized docs they sent back questions about the lore and massive contradictions being introduced in the script and they just couldn't *do* anything except make a few suggestions and scribble in a few lines of banter. The game they ultimately made was in no way what the fan community had been expecting or hoping for, and most of them asked for their names to be kept off the credits as a result (I think... three people are still on there, martyred for their valiant attempt to save the story? But it was actually a larger community effort). The Ubisoft coordinator, believe it or not, was actually very nice and accommodating and trying her best to help, but it just would not be had. Honestly the whole thing sounds like a soul-crushing experience.

[@biggamanedabeast5247]

It's a big giant poop stain on the golden underwear that is the Lunar series

[@Popebug]

So picking targets would slow down gameplay, but the glacial walking speed, punishing running and forcing the player to grind separately for items and xp doesn't. That's some quality game design right there.

[@neoqwerty]

@@MmeCShadow I didn't think I would ever find a good argument for outside forces to meddle with the devs, but somehow, this game is one of those good arguments against letting the devs run free over everything. I hope whoever had the bright idea to make running cost HP despite the glacial walking pace gets cursed to be forced to walk everywhere all the time and never get past an arthritic snake's crawl in the middle of a russian winter.

[@cringeycronk6710]

The dragon designs are actually pretty nice, detailed and a unique take on the 4 cardinal spirits of Japanese folk lore

[@kkbbss]

Gotta say when I got my hand on a DS back then and found out about this game I went and bought it as I LOVED the GBA remake and though this game might be just as cool as that (gotta say at that point I didn't know the GBA version was a remake and there existed other lunar games). But I ended up playing this game for a really short time (max 1-2 hours) and have never touched upon the game ever since. My biggest reason for dropping the game was the "loose health when dashing mechanic" (I though you just lost health when walking in area's outside cities). Some of the other stuff like the double farming of exp and items and expensive magic also played a role (usual the health loss thing that I remember).

[@Infernitar]

The sad thing is, I quite like the game's aesthetic, the Dragon bosses were kinda cool and the music is easily the best bit, but in between the dubious battle system decisions, sloppy writing and balance, and many MANY spelling and grammar mistakes (a lot of difficulty in the courier side-job is made by the wrong names being put on parcels), it's just bad. Also, the microphone's on the original DS console was so sensitive that if you played it on the bus random background noise could trigger the battle escape, whereas on the DS Lite the microphone was so insensitive that you'd have to blow into it for ages for it to pick up. Note: This is also the first JRPG I ever played. Not classic Lunar, not FF, not SMT or Phantasy Star or any others. Lunar hecking Dragon Song. I weep for my misspent youth

[@Nathan-rb3qp]

At least it's better than my first RPG which was Sonic Chronicles.

[@Sleepgarden]

imagine the designer of this game trying to get hired with this as his resume. "wait you made Dragon Song? I'm not sure you're Konami material"

[@kieragard]

somebody should have been fired when this game got approved.

[@Tell_It_Right]

@4:28:18 "Let's burn it!" Talking about the game 😂😂🤣🤣

[@stevemanart]

Lunar: Dragon Song is a very pretty bag of garbage left out in the sun for a week.

[@YouDonkeyfu]

ya, and the game doesnt even tell u that monster scaled up ridiculously too, this was the first game that i played that i realised being low level is actually better and much easier to play

[@Popebug]

I remember getting a cheap, pre-owned copy of this, since I had heard people liked the Lunar series and I had no idea that this game was a horrible garbage fire. At least I got to discover this game's unique mechanics one by one, that was an interesting experience in bizarre game design.

[@Popebug]

The worst game I've ever owned. It's one of those special games that's not terrible because of being shoddily made, but because of absolutely baffling, intentional choices. Losing hp from running? Having to choose between xp or items? This shit isn't accidental, it's carefully crafted. It's *supposed* to be this unplayable.

[@brianaguilar8283]

It was a laughable attempt to make the game feel longer than it actually is. If you took out the miscalculations of gaming design choices, then you could finish this game in 3 hours at the most.

[@Nathan-rb3qp]

@@brianaguilar8283 They rushed it just so it can be classified as the very first RPG ever released for the DS.

[@o00o0o0o0o0o]

Great hilarious run

[@Folsomdsf2]

fyi, running away was shout into your mic 'run away'.. problem.. it just wants loud sound it doesn't REALLY care what you say, so blowing works and they just put it in the game that way rofl. Also the online for this game doesn't work at all. It's not tha tno one owns it, it's that literally you can't even connect anymore(service is gone)

[@biggamanedabeast5247]

I used to rub my Mic to run

[@Shayanzass]

Isn't it pronounced Lu NAR not NER

[@matsujonen]

I feel like this was supposed to be a mobile game

[@StopChangingUsernamesYouTube]

How I know this game doesn't suck: you wouldn't have to blow into the mic if it did.

[@rpgnut5897]

I see what you did there. ;)

[@MarcusSparchs]

This game definitely sits alongside Hoshi as one of the worst JRPGs of all time.

[@trevorstroud9334]

To be honest, I like the card system in this game. Apparently they dropped the ball on lots of stuff but the card system is a good idea. After seeing the ending, I take back any nice thing I said about this game. That made me mad!

[@Light14Lilium]

Why are you apologizing? Its you who is going through hell xD

[@TDFMonster40K]

If this was a f2p moble game it'd make bank

[@mrbird000]

The game really isn't bad i like the music and the Battles

[@jharvey62778]

Why play a game if you are only going to complain about it

[@brianaguilar8283]

Tell that to gaming critics who do this for a living

[@Popebug]

Because it's fun to rage and laugh about bad games. First day on the internet?

[@gameshack1985]

wow the dude playing is....big..