Hi all! Back again, missing old times.

[danth]

Hi fellow Lunar fans.

I joined back in 2005 when Dragon Song came out but only posted a few times.

I now find myself missing old times. It was so exciting back in the SNES, Sega CD, and Playstation days. Getting new and exciting JRPGs every year. I find myself just wanting to play some good ol' 2D JRPGs right now. The new stuff just doesn't feel the same.

I'm playing through Grandia for the first time right now on PS5.

[Shiva Indis]

It's great to have you back! Can you believe that Lunar DS came out in 2005??

There is anniversary math there that I am reluctant to do for fear of feeling old, haha.

90s JRPGs were something special. As much as people analyze and try to reproduce their good qualities, there was something novel about them that is incredibly difficult to recapture.

[danth]

Yes, compare the time between Lunar on Sega CD and Lunar DS, and the time between Lunar DS and now. Yikes!

[Sonic#]

Welcome back! I'm curious how you're enjoying Grandia. I went back to it a few years ago and played through it to completion. Really impressed, especially by the story, which was better than I remembered it. Don't want to say more and spoil anything.

[jay_are]

"The new stuff just doesn't feel the same."
Right? If at least the new stuff was great, I'd accept different. Look at how different the SNES was from the NES. But was that a good thing? HELL YEAH! But the eternal desire to continue making something new every time has guaranteed sucking the life out of things. Once they made enough art full of life, the next new thing left to do was to make art with no life in it. People only want things for the novelty. It is sad, but the only reason anything good existed and was praised, was not because it was good, but because it was a new trendy thing.

Lunar SSSC itself owes a big part of its success to FF7 in USA, which itself was just a very novelty trendy thing. But "JRPGs are cool now" so Lunar was able to sell more.
Personally, I have a very particular taste for well written stories, colorful world and characters, but MOST IMPORTANTLY, beautiful and exciting as hell music. Without that kinda music, even if a game had everything else, it would be very empty, at least to me in particular. The trend now is just "barely some piano notes" It's a bad time to be alive. Sometimes games try to sound exciting, but they end up sounding like someone who just said "Ok I'll be exciting now" instead of having an inner desire. I do love some passionate indie games out there but usually their scope is much smaller, because of course, it's mostly small teams or solo devs. We seemingly can't get back to PS1 level RPGs. And I dare say that starting with the PS2, things went downhill. It's just been better graphics, worse everything else each time.

The PS3 era was when everyone said "Ok this sucks, JRPGs aren't cool anymore" and instead of companies trying to correct that, they just said "Oh ok no more JRPGs then."

[Kizyr]

Welcome back! Always good to see folks return and post a bit, no matter how long a gap (or how sporadic they post as is my case...)

[ShugoHanasaki]

Welcome back! I wish Dragon Song had been better. If others have enjoyed it that is seriously great! But i couldn't get into it. It didn't feel like LUNAR to me.

[MaroonChan]

Welcome back!

Ah, Grandia…one of my very favorites.