11th January 2007, 2:16 AM
Then why am I two hours in and mostly having fun?
... yeah, being able to get both gold and items at once would be nice, but they were trying something different (and there are some other differences between the two modes -- in XP mode once you defeat an enemy group a timer starts. If you find another enemy group in that zone before the timer runs out, it resets; if you don't, that enemy respawns. Kill all the enemy groups in the area and that area's blue chest is unlocked and you get the item in it. In items mode, on the other hand, enemies simply respawn after a while...)... and as for the XP thing, it makes things a bit more tedious, but as your HP goes up it starts to matter less (as the rate of degradation does not increase over time), and walking's not THAT bad, just slower...
... and it's got Lunar-style artwork and decent graphics and music. The nice combat graphics almost make up for the lack of actual options and features in the battle system... they don't, but they almost do. :) Moving around, targetting opponents, more magic (though that might come later in the game, right now I have the good character and the one that heals three times and then becomes near-useless.. though mages usually start slow, so that's not really a problem, just an observation.) or just a more unique magic system like Eternal Blue-SCD had (heck, a little over two hours in, I'd just be happy to actually get attack magic sometime soon...), etc... sure, they'd be nice, but this works, and the game still has Lunar's Autofight option, and if you hold L or R it speeds up the combat animations, making battles faster. (the Tech option, to make preset turns to select, is gone, but with the simplification of the battle system and touchscreen support that doesn't matter much...) Though every Lunar game has Autofight (as well as Save Anywhere), so that is to be expected. Still, those two features make the games so much more playable... there's no way I'd have finished Lunar Legend if I'd had to deal with savepoints FF-style...
Game Arts always seems to like to experiment with the Lunar games... just look at SCD Lunar: Eternal Blue's save and magic-boosting system, where after each battle you get both gold and SP (or BP or something? Forget the term...), and you use that to save (and each time you save the SP cost to save the next time increases a bit) and to upgrade most of your characters' magic lines (each one has one line that auto-upgrades as you level up, but the others need to be manually upgraded with those points.)... it's an interesting system. And they completely removed it from the later PSX/Saturn(Japan-only for Saturn) version. Lunar 1's three different versions also each have some unique gameplay mechanics... to such a degree, actually, that it could possibly be considered three completely different games despite all having the same basic story...
... yeah, being able to get both gold and items at once would be nice, but they were trying something different (and there are some other differences between the two modes -- in XP mode once you defeat an enemy group a timer starts. If you find another enemy group in that zone before the timer runs out, it resets; if you don't, that enemy respawns. Kill all the enemy groups in the area and that area's blue chest is unlocked and you get the item in it. In items mode, on the other hand, enemies simply respawn after a while...)... and as for the XP thing, it makes things a bit more tedious, but as your HP goes up it starts to matter less (as the rate of degradation does not increase over time), and walking's not THAT bad, just slower...
... and it's got Lunar-style artwork and decent graphics and music. The nice combat graphics almost make up for the lack of actual options and features in the battle system... they don't, but they almost do. :) Moving around, targetting opponents, more magic (though that might come later in the game, right now I have the good character and the one that heals three times and then becomes near-useless.. though mages usually start slow, so that's not really a problem, just an observation.) or just a more unique magic system like Eternal Blue-SCD had (heck, a little over two hours in, I'd just be happy to actually get attack magic sometime soon...), etc... sure, they'd be nice, but this works, and the game still has Lunar's Autofight option, and if you hold L or R it speeds up the combat animations, making battles faster. (the Tech option, to make preset turns to select, is gone, but with the simplification of the battle system and touchscreen support that doesn't matter much...) Though every Lunar game has Autofight (as well as Save Anywhere), so that is to be expected. Still, those two features make the games so much more playable... there's no way I'd have finished Lunar Legend if I'd had to deal with savepoints FF-style...
Game Arts always seems to like to experiment with the Lunar games... just look at SCD Lunar: Eternal Blue's save and magic-boosting system, where after each battle you get both gold and SP (or BP or something? Forget the term...), and you use that to save (and each time you save the SP cost to save the next time increases a bit) and to upgrade most of your characters' magic lines (each one has one line that auto-upgrades as you level up, but the others need to be manually upgraded with those points.)... it's an interesting system. And they completely removed it from the later PSX/Saturn(Japan-only for Saturn) version. Lunar 1's three different versions also each have some unique gameplay mechanics... to such a degree, actually, that it could possibly be considered three completely different games despite all having the same basic story...
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