Lunar Remastered Collection Review - Screenshot 1 of 6
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Love and miracles. These are two words that get thrown around a lot when talking about video games, particularly our childhood favourites. But with the Lunar Remastered Collection, these are two words that feel more than appropriate.

A combination of rights disagreements between co-developers Studio Alex and Game Arts and the passing of Game Arts co-founder Takeshi Miyaji in 2011 meant that many thought the Lunar series was lost to time, aside from a PSP and mobile port of the first. But GungHo, of which Game Arts is a subsidiary, has made possible the miraculous.

If you played either of the first two Lunar games growing up, there’s a good chance that you really love them. And it’s clear the team at GungHo also really loves them. Love is at the centre of these games, both thematically and in how they’ve been preserved. They’re about loving adventure, loving discovery, loving the world, loving its people and, most importantly, falling in love. And the romantic, over-the-top, cheesiness is here in all of its glory. Lunar is back, with some warts old and new.

Lunar Remastered Collection Review - Screenshot 2 of 6
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Originally released as The Silver Star and Eternal Blue on Sega CD, this collection brings the enhanced PS1 versions to Switch beautifully, complete with touched-up visuals, brand new voice acting, a new script, and a handful of quality-of-life changes. And all of those tweaks aim to keep that Saturday Morning Cartoon™ feel that the games are so distinctly cherished for intact.

This ends up being a bit of a mixed bag. The original voice acting is what it is – OTT ‘90s anime dub-style that is hard not to smile at. The replacements here attempt to match the tone and lip flaps with varying degrees of success.

Silver Star Story is the better of the two, with all voices a net upgrade over the originals while still retaining a degree of camp and fun. In Eternal Blue, however, the voice direction feels a bit off, as it attempts to stick far too close to the original diction, and multiple voices just do not suit their respective characters. As a result, some of the cast come off as wooden or far too old.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Fortunately, the localisation helps keep that coming-of-age teenage snark and cheek present. Working Design’s original localisations are infamous for myriad reasons – presidential jokes, commercial references, and some unfortunate, outdated language are just some examples. By and large, the scripts are the same, with those less-timely jokes removed, but Silver Star Story gets a few more tweaks compared to Eternal Blue to help with the flow of dialogue. You'll still have to put up with lots of ahem jokes that appeal to horny teenagers, though. We’re just glad Ronfar still shouts “Happy hour!” whenever he uses a healing spell in battle.

Another tweak here is the visual upgrades, which are fantastic across both games. You can play in either Classic (which features the original pixel art at the original aspect ratio) or Remastered (which ups the resolution, detail, and colour while ensuring it still looks great in a wider aspect ratio). Comparing them side-by-side, the Remastered visuals look great and enhance the original look perfectly. And the enhanced animated cutscenes also look fantastic. Weirdly, you can only select the visual mode from the title screen and not from the in-game menu, but your save file can be used across both versions.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

One of the biggest additions is in Silver Star Story’s inventory management. You can now toggle between the original, character-based inventories – which highly limit the amount of items you can carry, particularly as items don’t stack and collectibles take up inventory space – or a new shared inventory managed by your flying “cat” pal Nall. Items still don’t stack, but it allows you to carry so many more. Eternal Blue already has a shared inventory with stackable items, so nothing needed changing there.

That upgrade to Silver Star Story, however, completely obliterates any difficulty the game had. As long as you have the cash – and you will, because the treasure chest values have been reset to match their Japanese counterparts (e.g., a chest that had 500 silver in the US PS1 version will have 1000 in the remaster, as it would have done in JP back in 1998) – and the inventory space, you can stuff your bag full of HP and MP healing items with little consequence.

Eternal Blue remains one of the tougher turn-based RPGs as it’s virtually identical here to its PS1 Western release, meaning unless you know the exact strategies or grind a bit, you’re going to die a fair amount.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

That brings us to our favourite addition: fast-forward. In combat, you can speed up battles up to three times the speed of the original games. In both Silver Star Story and Eternal Blue, combat was slow as molasses thanks to the wide battle arena, and Range being an important factor. If an enemy was too far away, they could approach, but couldn’t attack. Fast-forward makes combat zippy and fast and helps speed up some of those longer, blander late-game dungeons.

And some of those dungeons are a struggle, particularly if you play both games back to back. While Eternal Blue is the more polished of the two generally, this remaster exposes some of its weaknesses more glaringly. Movement speed in Eternal Blue’s dungeon remains slow, with only a quick dash on hand that lets you attempt to dash past enemies. There are no random encounters in either game, but there may as well be in Eternal Blue, because attempting to dash past fast-moving monsters in narrow corridors is pretty annoying.

Another issue with Eternal Blue is that you can’t compare equipment stats in shops, yet you can (and could) in Silver Star Story. That’s not a huge problem as, most of the time, the next town’s gear will be better, but it would be nice to see the differences, particularly with accessories.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Fortunately, both of these games can wash away many problems just with the amount of charm they bring to the table. Even now, few games can match the sense of excitement, adventure, and genuine love that Lunar: Silver Star Story and Eternal Blue bring with them. We never got bored of Kyle and Jessica’s bickering, or pretending to not know who Mystere is, or watching Alex fall in love with Luna, and Hiro fall in love with Lucia.

These are of-their-time adventures that are special to those who grew up with them, and while they’re not particularly revolutionary, if you like RPGs, they’ll almost definitely bring a smile to your face. Finally, we can all forget about Dragon Song.

Conclusion

The Lunar Remastered Collection respects the enhanced PS1 versions while also making a few tweaks to modernise parts of each game. While not all changes are entirely successful, and there are other aspects that haven’t aged particularly well, we can’t deny that Silver Star Story and Eternal Blue are bursting with charm and wit that many RPGs today lack. They might not revolutionise the genre, but if you’re looking for a good time and have a little patience, you can do far, far worse.

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