Lunar Silver: Star Story Complete Review (PlayStation)
To tha MOON, Alex!!
~by tankMage (December 2025)
Score: 88/100 (Good)
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete is pretty much what one would expect from its incredibly Japanese name: An anime style JRPG from the golden age of turn based role playing games. No one would call Lunar innovative, but that doesn’t stop it from being a fun game. The only thing that keeps Lunar from being nearly perfect is the fact that it’s a bit too simplistic for veteran gamers and there’s not much in the way of replay value. Even so, experienced gamers will appreciate the challenging bosses and well designed dungeons the game throws their way. Lunar’s story is also well written. In fact, I have to admit I was a bit touched by the ending, so it’s the sort of game that will likely stick in your memory.
So you want to become the Dragon Master, eh?
The story centers around a young man named Alex who wants to become a great hero like Dragon Master Dyne. His love interest, a young woman named Luna who also plays a major role in the plot, lives in a village called Burg with Alex. Luckily, Burg is conveniently located near an important plot device and the story gets rolling pretty quickly when a guy named Ramus invites them on an adventure. I don’t like to go into detail about stories too much, spoilers and all that, so I’ll stop here as far as the summary goes.
Overall, the story is decent and presents some interesting ideas. I’ll even go as far to say that it’s thought provoking. At the same time, Lunar is very much an anime style RPG and filled with the usual tropes that come with the territory, so much so that it can feel a bit overwrought in places.
This game is actually a remake of a Sega CD RPG that was simply called Lunar: The Silver Star (or something along those lines) that tries to build on the original game, which is reportedly rather short. Having not played the Sega CD version of this game, I can’t comment on its overall play time nor can I critique its story, but I can say it’s pretty obvious the devs tried to pad it a bit by adding quests that feel a bit too contrived. For example, the party needs an airship to go somewhere and they go through a dungeon to get the airship. This is all well and good by RPG standards, but then the airship gets destroyed before they can even use it and the player has to jump over more hurtles to fix it. While these contrivances feel forced, they do not hurt the story too much and it’s arguable that the padding allowed for better character development.
Embellishments aside, Lunar has a fairly entertaining cast, that’s made even more intriguing by Game Arts’ creative translation, which I’ll cover later on. Alex, the main character, is a run of the mill do-gooder, but there’s enough substance to his personality to make him vaguely interesting, though this is likely a byproduct of him having only a smattering of lines. Intriguingly, Alex is always followed around by a flying cat thing called Nall, who talks quite a bit. Nall can be seen as a Jungian shadow or alter-ego of Alex, who often steps in with quips that would be unseemly for a hero. If you look at Alex and Nall as a single unit, you end up with a really interesting character, but this is a video game review, not a literary essay, so I’ll leave all the interpretation to the player.
He’s also accompanied by Luna, who is a seemingly standard love interest with an air of mystery about her that makes her more compelling than a generic waifu.
There are a few plot twists and surprises along the way, but most of the surprises are obviously telegraphed so the player will see them coming a mile away. Still, the world of Lunar captures the mystery and magic of RPGs very competently. I was even a bit touched by the ending, but I didn’t cry. Ok, I almost cried. Anyway, the story is very satisfying in a safe JRPG kind of way.
That’s quite a translation you got there, Game Arts.
Game Arts is a famous or notorious company (depending on how you feel about their translations) from the late 90s that localized a few RPGs. I’ve seen conversations and reviews of other games handled by this company where players are really (and I mean REALLY) angry about the jokes inserted into scripts and Game Arts’ overall approach to interpretation. Other players love Game Arts’ translations and appreciate the humor. I’m somewhere in the middle.
Translating Japanese into English is no easy task and there’s always references and humor that require a deep knowledge of Japanese culture to appreciate. So Game Arts and every other localizer (is that a word?) are always faced with the difficult prospect of trying to create a translation that’s palatable to a market that is not necessary familiar with Japanese culture. Game Arts took the risky approach and decided to Americanize Lunar’s script. Honestly, I found it very easy to relate to the characters and laughed at a lot of the jokes, even the crappy ones.
At the same time, a lot of the humor was lifted straight from 1990s American pop culture and is very dated in the 21st century. For example, an NPC says they are “verklempt” at one point, which is a reference to a famous Saturday Night Live skit from the era. An old man like me may get the reference and chuckle, but a twenty year old is going to scratch his or her head and look the word up, if they even bother to do that much. Everyone knows a joke that has to be explained just ain’t funny. It’s also fair to say that a lot of the humor, like the notorious (but funny) redneck jokes feel out of place in a JRPG.
While I understand how Game Arts’ treatment of Lunar’s script was bold to the point of being transgressive in the eyes of some players, I also appreciate that Game Arts made an earnest effort to entertain their audience and I feel the translation was done in good faith, so they deserve praise for their handling of Lunar.
PAL cutscenes on an NTSC game!
One odd thing about this era of gaming was that the rift between PAL and NTSC was becoming more obvious. Computer generated images were still simple enough that they looked fine on both formats, but this wasn’t the case with FMV. Consequently, Lunar’s gameplay is a nice example of 2D PS1 graphics, but the anime cutscenes are really grainy. It’s a shame too, because a fair amount of time and effort seem to have been put into them. That said, this is the only complaint I have about the graphics… well that and the fact that a certain armor set the player unlocks later in the game is really goofy looking.
Cutscenes aside, the environments, enemies, and heroes are all really well done. Some of the monsters are very original looking, which is a nice change of pace from a genre that has more than its fair share of clichés. So, yeah, overall the graphics are good.
Badass Bosses!
Lunar has a decent gameplay loop. Like any JRPG, players travel the world battling monsters. You’ll also meet friendly NPCs and explore dungeons. Many of the dungeons have simple puzzles, while others are straightforward crawls. There are no random battles in Lunar, all of the monsters are plainly visible on the dungeon map and nothing attacks the player on the overworld.
Every character has a list of abilities they learn as they level up. Special abilities are kind of a weak spot for Lunar, because there aren’t very many of them and they are very basic. At the same time, the game isn’t bloated with nearly useless skills, so I guess it’s a fair trade.
While the gameplay is run of the mill, there are quite a few challenging bosses to fight. Even early bosses require the player to use buffs to squeeze every ounce of damage out of their heroes before the boss obliterates them. I even had a few party wipes, which is rare for me. Good job Lunar!
A Soundtrack that plays like a tech demo.
Being made for the Sega CD, Lunar was obviously trying to show off the addon’s capabilities. There’s quite a bit of voice acting and an orchestral theme song that the devs push on the player whenever they get the chance…which is fine because the music is excellent. That said, I’m not sure if the music and voice acting were taken directly from the original. Maybe they were remastered or completely redone, I don’t know. At any rate, the game sounds great.
I have to give the voice acting praise in particular, because it was still common to encounter new games with terrible voice acting at the time. Lunar is easily on par with most anime and puts a lot of PS1 games to shame with its excellent voice overs.
Note: I fired up the original version of Lunar just to see what it is like. While the remake improves upon many aspects of the game, I prefer the vibe of the original, especially when it comes to the music. Still, the remake did a respectable job and certainly added to the soundtrack.
The controls. Just. Work.
If there’s one thing I look for in a game, it’s when you push a button and something happens. I’m happy to report that Lunar fills this requirement perfectly well, the buttons work fine and the menus are efficiently laid out. Combat is also a breeze thanks to competent design, but I will say it was too easy to select AI mode by accident. This was a problem because the party will burn through MP like it’s going outta style in AI mode and I couldn’t figure out how the customization system for it worked.
While most other aspects of the UI are fine, the inventory system is garbage. Everyone has his or her own personal inventory the player has to fiddle with. Armor, weapons, healing items, and accessories are all tossed into a character’s inventory space when the player acquires items. It’s annoying to manually sort through all of the stuff the game hands you. In fact, I spent way too much time dropping items gained from battles towards the end. There is a shared inventory pool controlled by a character named Nall, but you still have to fuss around with it, so it’s not helpful aside from giving the player extra room for hoarding.
Final Thoughts
Lunar didn’t exactly wow me, but I like it. It’s very much a “by the book” JRPG that does what JRPGs do. If you’re looking for a safe bet in terms of a purchasing an RPG or if you’re just really into classic games from this genre, Lunar is a fine choice.
In fact, it’s the first game in the series and its follow up, Lunar 2, is really good… too bad the Lunar game on the Nintendo DS is awful, but that’s a review you’ll have to read on the DS section of this site.
Thanks for reading my review of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete!