First, I'll again start with commenting on the translation. While I don't remember too much of WD's SSC script (I only played through it once as compared to countless replays of TSS), it certainly had a lot of their feel (not surprising since most of it was based on WD's script). I didn't notice any real out of place bits in the translation, so I was very happy with it. I suppose it helps that the lead translator, John Sears, is a fan of the older Lunar games and therefore probably wanted to preserve things as much as possible. Unfortunately, after seeing this translation of Wind's Nocturn (AKA the "Boat Song"), I still say WD's was better. Jenny Stigile's as lovely a singer as ever, but the words just didn't ring and match with the imagery as well as WD's translation, in my opinion. This differs from my view of the opening song, in which case I liked Xseed's translation slightly better as it did fit better with the images. Still, the translation overall was top notch and felt like good ol' Lunar, which is what I wanted. The new voices overall were quite good, though I do miss John Truitt as Ghaleon. His replacement was still very good so no huge complaints here. Luna's voice had a bit more sass to it in this one, which I felt fit the character more -- although she also sounded more like "generic anime dub girl." I'm not sure who the actress was that played her, but I suspect I've probably heard her in many other anime titles before, hence the "generic" sound.
The graphics were gorgeous. Someone else commented that the battle graphics were not so great because the characters glided instead of running when moving across the battlefield. To be honest, they typically moved fast enough that I could barely notice when I was trying to see it -- let alone in the heat of battle. Even so, the new and improved battle animations were top notch -- Alex, and especially Laike, looked like true badasses every time they swung their swords. I also liked finally getting away from the 16-bit era super-deformed style to something much more modern that more closely matches their character portraits.
Music was also great. Whereas before I thought SSS's soundtrack was the weakest of the bunch, the re-orchestration of the soundtrack is forcing me to revise my opinion. It's amazing what real instruments can do to improve the sound of something when compared to the PSX's lousy midi chip. It's still not up there with the Saturn EB (or even Sega CD's) as the best Lunar soundtrack, and I'm still not quite sure if it meets the high mark set by the original TSS, but this new version has given me a lot more respect for it than I had before.
One thing that has gotten a lot of comments is the difficulty of the game. Well, yeah, the game was easier than WD's translations by a mile (though I don't think it was that much easier than the Saturn versions). No longer did you have to worry about a random battle against ordinary monsters (or peons, as I like to call them) wiping out your party -- every peon battle was survivable, even if they did occasionally wear down your party.
Speaking of wearing down the party, that was something that did not happen much. Historically, I've been a "magic miser" of sorts when it came to RPGs -- generally I'd only use spells while level/money grinding near an Althena's Statue (or equivalent) or fighting bosses and conserve MP as much as possible when fighting peons by limiting myself to physical attacks unless I absolutely had to heal or take out a dangerous monster capable of whacking my entire party. About the time I got to the Fluffy Bug quest I realized that I didn't really have to do this in SSH. Between the universal inventory, the max of up to 99 items, and frequency of monsters dropping items (including Starlights -- I never paid a single piece of silver for a Starlight, Healing Herb, or Healing Fruit during the entire game -- monsters and later Ramus provided all I used for free), and getting your HP/MP filled up every level up, I basically just threw caution to the wind and starting blitzing baddies left and right with spells. This got even more ridiculous once I got Dragon Anguish -- which is an instant-kill for all enemies but also gives you full MP and Silver (unlike in prior games, where you'd get nothing for wiping out foes with this spell). Basically, the peon battles just became an exercise in running my "Dragon Anguish" tactic once Alex became a Dragonmaster. There was one thing that did make it a little bit scary -- the initiative system they used for monsters. Whereas as far as I can recall (and confirmed by firing up EB/Sega CD on an emulator today), the older Lunar games randomized the initiative of all the monsters separately -- so that part of your party would act, then some of the monsters, then more of your party, then more of the monsters, and so on. In this one, it seemed like all the monsters acted on the same initiative "roll" -- so once one started moving, no one in your party could act until all of them were done moving. This did make things a little scary at times if the monsters acted before my designated healer for the round did his/her thing -- especially when they all decide to gang up on a single character. Still, this was more of a nuisance than a real difficulty.
The bosses were also pretty much pushovers, with perhaps the exceptions of the Black Dragon and Ghaleon's final battle. While I'm not saying they were harder than they were in SSSC, they were definitely the hardest in the game and had killed some of my characters (through not the whole party) during their battles. Ghaleon in particular seemed to play dirty -- he seemed to be able to ignore Dragon Guard (AKA White Dragon Protect) almost at will with his instant death to the party spell. More specifically, Dragon Guard would only protect one of two of my party members, but never the entire party from the spell. I don't know what I was doing wrong... and at one point I was afraid I'd lose the battle when only Nash survived the attack. Still, Nash was able to resurrect Jessica and from there I was able to recover and win.
The last bit I want to touch upon was how the game made me "feel." To be honest, it made me feel the same way I felt when I first played TSS the first Christmas it was out all those years ago. Not even SSSC made me feel that way (it's a long story why SSSC didn't have the same impact for me... but it's not relevant to the discussion here). It truly did feel like Lunar, and I just had to keep going into the wee hours of the morning to get past just one more dungeon... get one more piece of dragon equipment... etc... just like those good ol' days.
In summary, this game certainly was a very worthy addendum to the Lunar family and I would recommend it to any Lunar fans or even those just starting to get into the game series. I just hope that if any future Lunars come out that Xseed and Victor Ireland/Gaijinworks can come to some sort of compromise agreement to work together on it (apparently Xseed did approach Vic about working together, but the deal fell through and neither side went into detail as to why it didn't work out) -- if only because I have a stronger attachment to the EB voices (assuming the next game is an EB remake) than I do to the SSSC ones.
That is all... signing off for now.
Laike does swing his sword like he's a powerhouse, and the animation for Sword Dance was particularly well done.
