If you were in charge of the remake of Lunar DS...

[Kizyr]

I could sum up everything by saying that they should've kept in all the ideas they eventually axed. And ditched the non-selection of enemies.

That alone would make the game playable for me, and would have gotten me to recommend it to others. Now if we're porting it to a console, well, an overhaul on the scale of Lunar: Magic School would be in order. KF

[Alunissage]

I didn't mind the point-and-click towns too much, since at least you could look around in houses. Every house had some object that would get a comment from Jian or someone, at least in the first three towns. Some would change depending on who was in the party, too. Anyway, when I think of going through Reza in SSSC, having to go through room after room to get to some NPCs, I appreciate the brevity of DS. Of course, Reza also annoyed me because the music restarted at nearly every doorway.

I've never played Grandia, so I don't know about its battle system, but I don't like the idea of a timer bar. What's wrong with keeping Lunar strictly turn-based? It's one thing that makes it accessible to people who are slow.

[GhaleonOne]

Oh, also... put readable books back in the game. That really did wonders for the history of the world.

And I'm with Alunissage regarding the timebar thing. I think Lunar should remain a wait system, rather than an active one, though I'm fine with it taking on a 3D range system found in Grandia. As long as range is used similiar to the way it is in the originals and remakes, only in 3D, I'd be fine with it. Just not the active timebar type system.

[ilovemyguitar]

I think a meshing of the classic Lunar battle engine with the one used in Grandia would be excellent.

At the start of every round, you give your commands for each character. Then during that round, they all run around the battle field *simultaneously* performing their actions. Then, when everybody's done with their actions, a new round starts and you put in a new batch of commands.

[Rune Lai]

I've never played Grandia, so I don't know about its battle system, but I don't like the idea of a timer bar. What's wrong with keeping Lunar strictly turn-based? It's one thing that makes it accessible to people who are slow.

If I remember right, the timer bar isn't literally a timer for how long you have to input an action. (It's not FF7.) It's basically a long gauge at the bottom of the screen with markers showing how soon everyone's turn is coming up. The closer someone is to having a turn, the further to the right of their bar their marker moves. When a turn actually comes up, the entire battle pauses (characters are constantly running around all over the place in real time as long as it is not currently anyone's turn, which is the nifty thing about the Grandia battle system) and you can take as long as you want to select your action for the one particular character whose turn it is.

Then by doing certain actions you can make a character turn come up quicker, or knock an enemy's turn further down the timer bar so it will take longer for it to get its next turn, etc. It's a very fun battle system. I consider myself reflex-challenged so I didn't like the FF7/8 timer bars, but Grandia's is only pseudo-real time and quite fun.

[Lunar Eclipse]

Yeah, Grandia's battle system isn't inaccessible to slow players. Once someone's turn window pops up, you have as long as you want to select an action. The best part is that you can opt to either defend against attacks for reduced damage or actually flee to a certain part of the screen, hoping that your enemy's movement value will run out before your own does, thereby evading all damage. Magic and special moves are unavoidable, but you can cancel them while they're charging with critical weapon strikes or certain special moves that carry the "Cancel" side effect. When you do a basic attack you can either combo or critical, with a combo doing a bit more damage but a critical knocking your enemy further back on the action bar. I guess it's sort of difficult to explain, but it really is fun and it's accessible to just about anyone who knows anything about RPGs.

[Alunissage]

Hm, didn't see Rune's post when she put it up. That does sound very interestiing. I do mean to play Grandia someday (even have the import Saturn game and an import guide, for no particular reason) and I've wondered for a while what was so special about its battle system that everyone kept praising.

[dragonmaster_jonathan]

i would make another character in lunar DS (if i controlled the remake). One with the personality of Nash from Lunar SSSC. Nash was cool and so was his hidden background as an aprrentice for the magic emperor.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

Hm, didn't see Rune's post when she put it up. That does sound very interestiing. I do mean to play Grandia someday (even have the import Saturn game and an import guide, for no particular reason) and I've wondered for a while what was so special about its battle system that everyone kept praising.

Yeah, to me, Grandia's battle system strikes a perfect balance between the FF7-ish timer bars and the classic "everyone inputs actions at the beginning of a round" style of Lunar. As Rune said, you do have as long as you need to make up your mind on an action once your character's timer bar fills.

There are some other interesting unique things about it that I like. For one thing, and I'm not sure if this was 100% clear from Rune's post, you see the enemies' timer bars as well, so you can choose to target enemies with turns coming up. Also, it gives you greater flexibility in battle strategy. With a pure turn-based system, you need to guess at the beginning of a round whether or not your party needs healing. With a more pseudo-real-time based system like Grandia's, you can decide whether or not to heal on the fly.

[joker_mausland]

If I were in charge of the remake of lunar DS I would change it to where the characters could walk everywhere like in the old lunar games.

[localflick]

I really hate to revive an old thread, but I just got Lunar DS and feel the need to vent. I hope you'll understand.
In playing Lunar DS, I had the same let-down feeling everyone else did. But what really got to me wasn't what they had changed from the other Lunars, but the fact that there were so many things missing from the other two they could almost make it not a Lunar game, but a game that coincidently takes place in a world like Lunar's.
The Frontier, beastmen, the four dragons and Althena/Althena statues are almost all they kept. It would have helped the game a lot if they included some other things...

Here's my list:
- A flying cat/dragon mascot for the party and had it do something beneficial in battle
- Vane and Meribia
- Either anime' cinemas (if Castlevania DS can have that killer anime' intro at 16MB, they could at least make a Sega CD-style set of smaller cut scenes surrounded by a big black border in the same amount of space) or hi-resolution image cinemas (that possibly scroll) like in Lunar legend
- Starlights, Healing herbs, Healing "Dover" nuts etc... no more gum!
- The excellent scenario writing in the other games
- A party of five! With the normal battle system where position matters. They could've made the bottom screen have menus, and the bottom have the animation.
- 2D, superdeformed characters like in the others
- Cool Omake stuff in tribute to Working Designs
- Window borders that look like the ones in EB, or SSS
- Running shouldn't hurt you IN A TOWN!!! It's a good alternative to dashing in dungeons though.
- The menus shouldn't animate on the bottom screen while you play on the top. That's just distracting.
- Character development
- Bromides! It's a high-resolution system, and equipping them in SS was super-cool.
- Using the touch screen in battle to target enemies (if the battle animation was on top they could put symbols representing the enemies on bottom).
- NOT using the mic in battle as an excuse to use the mic
- No thieving equipped items!

... I'm sure there's more, but what's already been said by everyone else was awesome (why aren't there child NPCS?!), and I really don't want to go on. I feel really bad for people who bought it when it just came out. It's not a bad game, but it's also a Lunar game almost by name only. To me it almost feels like a bastardized Grandia game because of the 3/4 view and character sizes, and isn't worth $30-$40 to me.
And sadly, it might get more new people to get interested in Lunar, but this game doesn't represent our series. If this is the best Game Arts can do, we're screwed. I guess as long as you ignore the title, and it's "just another RPG" it's a pretty decent game.

[Mei Ling]

Okay, let's see...

- Target an enemy...Gah.
- Replace Healing GUM and Healing DROP. Healing Gum's like a pack of sweets and Healing Drops look like lolipops...
- Don't blow the mic to run away.
- Not reducing HP when you run...in town.
- Put Vane... ^^
- Bromides!
- More ways to get money, con sarnit!
- Enemies can't break your WEAPONS. I spent more than 2 hours getting Dark Boots doing jobs, and it broke.

[Kizyr]

- Target an enemy...Gah.
- Replace Healing GUM and Healing DROP. Healing Gum's like a pack of sweets and Healing Drops look like lolipops...
- Don't blow the mic to run away.
- Not reducing HP when you run...in town.
- Put Vane... ^^
- Bromides!
- More ways to get money, con sarnit!
- Enemies can't break your WEAPONS. I spent more than 2 hours getting Dark Boots doing jobs, and it broke.

Oh yeah... with the exception of Vane, those are the exact things that really held the game back. Mostly, Game Arts put in way too many 'extras' in the game that were needless: "simplified" battles, blowing into the mic, enemies which can destroy items, etc.

I mean, some stuff was fine with difficulty. I honestly don't mind the running, but I think it would've been much more convenient had they eliminated the HP loss when no enemies are around (in which case running is simply more convenient).

Regarding Vane, well, that's just one of many storyline flaws. I don't see now how Vane would've been worked in (hence why its presence was dropped while the storyboard was being written up). But also there's the lack of motivation for many characters, and other stuff that made it seem like they took the bare-bones of the plot, and turned that into the game without doing anything to flesh out the story. KF

[Mei Ling]

- Target an enemy...Gah.
- Replace Healing GUM and Healing DROP. Healing Gum's like a pack of sweets and Healing Drops look like lolipops...
- Don't blow the mic to run away.
- Not reducing HP when you run...in town.
- Put Vane... ^^
- Bromides!
- More ways to get money, con sarnit!
- Enemies can't break your WEAPONS. I spent more than 2 hours getting Dark Boots doing jobs, and it broke.

Regarding Vane, well, that's just one of many storyline flaws. I don't see now how Vane would've been worked in (hence why its presence was dropped while the storyboard was being written up).

I believe it exists somewhere. I came across an NPC mentioning about a Magic school. I was wondering if it's Vane...

[Alunissage]

Vane (on the ground) might have worked as the Sea Lab or something along those lines. Though I suppose it would have had to be abandoned for the monsters to be there.

I got the European version of the game yesterday, by the way. In the two minutes I played of it I saw no differences other than the splash screen at the beginning (which is also the rather odd box art with the Harry Potter-esque font). Oh, and that all references to Ubi have been replaced by Rising Star Games, although the translation is the same. Since Rising Star Games is an offshoot of Japan's Marvelous Interactive, I almost wonder if the translation was done Japan-side...

[Mei Ling]

Vane (on the ground) might have worked as the Sea Lab or something along those lines. Though I suppose it would have had to be abandoned for the monsters to be there.

I don't think it's the Sea Lab, personnaly. Vane...isn't part of the sea. o_o
I think Vane is still in the sky or something, or it's just a small school hidden something. I'll try to play the game one more time, and look for more hints about the Magic School or something.

..unless anyone knows about it. ^_^

[GhaleonOne]

Vane (on the ground) might have worked as the Sea Lab or something along those lines. Though I suppose it would have had to be abandoned for the monsters to be there.

The Sea Lab was supposed to be part of Vane, originally. Who knows what happened. It was some kind of magic experiment or something, as far as I could tell.

Oh, and that all references to Ubi have been replaced by Rising Star Games, although the translation is the same. Since Rising Star Games is an offshoot of Japan's Marvelous Interactive, I almost wonder if the translation was done Japan-side...

Do you mean the translation UbiSoft did? That was definately UbiSoft, as they sent me and Kiz translation snippets a few times, and even included us in a few name changes and the like. If the translation is the same as the US version, it was done by UbiSoft.

[Kizyr]

Vane (on the ground) might have worked as the Sea Lab or something along those lines. Though I suppose it would have had to be abandoned for the monsters to be there.

I don't think it's the Sea Lab, personnaly. Vane...isn't part of the sea. o_o
I think Vane is still in the sky or something, or it's just a small school hidden something. I'll try to play the game one more time, and look for more hints about the Magic School or something.

..unless anyone knows about it. ^_^

I hate to be a downer, but there really are no more references (well, no major ones anyhow). Though, there's implied magic study at the main Shrine to Althena. It's not that Vane was taken out of a later version, but it was never included past very early design stages. KF

[Mei Ling]

Vane (on the ground) might have worked as the Sea Lab or something along those lines. Though I suppose it would have had to be abandoned for the monsters to be there.

I don't think it's the Sea Lab, personnaly. Vane...isn't part of the sea. o_o
I think Vane is still in the sky or something, or it's just a small school hidden something. I'll try to play the game one more time, and look for more hints about the Magic School or something.

..unless anyone knows about it. ^_^

I hate to be a downer, but there really are no more references (well, no major ones anyhow). Though, there's implied magic study at the main Shrine to Althena. It's not that Vane was taken out of a later version, but it was never included past very early design stages. KF

Nah, I was just wondering if they're reffering to the Cathedral of Althena. Vane studies magic, the Catheral studies Magic...Hmm...maybe Jian never noticed the Floating City. O.o

Inn at Room #202:
Ira: This is bad! The worst! The upcoming exam...It looks super hard! Maybe I should quit the School of Magic...

I was wondering if she was reffering to the Cathedral, or Vane...

[Dunkleheit]

Vane is not yet floating in DS. And to support the theory that the Cathedral of Althena is pre-flotation Vane, the Cathedral has a library that contains information about all of Lunar. At least that's what the librarian says.

edit: Do the Tower of False and the Tower of Truth sound familiar? DS is the only Lunar game I've played, so I don't know if they're in any of the other games.