Lunar Remastered Collection – Xbox Review

Lunar Remastered Collection by developer and publisher GungHo—Microsoft Xbox Series X review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Lunar Remastered Collection is one of the better recent remasters I’ve encountered, for a variety of reasons. While some nits could be picked here and there, the overall experience is an incredibly positive one, showing that the series is still beloved not only by fans, but the team handling the remaster as well.

My first encounter with this JRPG series dates way back to when it released in the summer of 1992 on the Sega CD and it was called Lunar: The Silver Star. I absolutely loved this title when it came out, and frankly the Sega CD had some pretty great JRPG and SRPG titles back then (Vay, Dark Wizard and Shining Force CD immediately spring to mind), but Lunar was for me the most memorable of the bunch.

The tale that is told is admittedly full of tropes, starting with a boy named Alex from a small town who aspires to one day be a Dragonmaster in the footsteps of his town’s hero Dyne. There were some fairly predictable plot points to be had here for certain, but the characters and presentation elevated what could have been a been-there-done-that story into something more memorable than it had any right to be.

While you can pretty much guess that the relationship between Alex and Luna will mirror some of the backstory involving Dyne and Athena, I cared about the ‘who’ of it more than the ‘what’ most of the time. It helps that there was a sort of Saturday morning cartoons vibe to the whole presentation that hit a nostalgic note for me back then, and surprisingly still does today. The presentation was certainly more impressive when Lunar first came out over thirty years ago, with voice acting and quality music elevating everything. 

Total side-note to the above, but I absolutely loved the introduction in the Sega CD version of the game, which was different than the PlayStation re-release. I even wrote about it in our thirty-third Memorable Music in gaming. I looked it up on YouTube again recently and found it immediately ‘comfortable’ for lack of a better term. This version of the game uses the perfectly enjoyable PlayStation intro instead.

Music is a heavy emphasis in the story and the game’s execution. Admittedly, some aspects of the sound design have aged better than others. While there are new voice actors across the board here (who do an excellent job of delivering a more consistent dialog than the originals who came across a bit campier at times) and the songs are still very enjoyable, I did have to turn down the ‘voices’ option in the menu. Why? Because some characters (especially Luna when she heals) repeat the same bit over and over again when they use a skill in combat. And Luna in particular heals quite frequently. Both my youngest and my wife were jabbing me about it the first night, but that also highlights how there are numerous options available in the menu to help customize the gaming experience to your liking.

Lunar Remastered Collection is still a pixelated experience, but the visuals are certainly improved from the original. Now, it’s interesting that unlike many remasters, there’s no button to swap old and current visuals on the fly for those who want to reminisce now and again, but the game does provide a bit of a half-measure. You can fire up the same save file in either the new or classic visual format – it’s just that you need to launch the game in that state to experience it.

While the core of Lunar remains true to the original, there are some quality-of-life improvements such as being able to speed up the combat by as much as three times, and a shared inventory system as opposed to separate inventories bound to specific characters (this always felt rather bulky to me). This is especially welcome in the combat, which I just left at triple speed the entire time. I am someone who does not mind grinding in RPGs (in fact, I rather enjoy it in most games), but I had forgotten just how slow the combat in Lunar was. There’s an element of movement on the board as well as the typical casting of spells or swinging of swords, and the animations are somewhat slow when left at their original tempo, so the speed upgrade is appreciated. 

However, for those who are looking for more changes or features, you might be at least somewhat disappointed. The aforementioned improvements are certainly welcome, but there’s no extra content to be had, nor other common quality-of-life improvements found in other similar remasters such as expedited experience or gold earning, fast travel or sped up walking animations. In fact for as much as I enjoy the game’s often clever maps, there is a quibble to be had with how easy it is to get hung up on the environment while walking around. Even just being a hair off to the left might keep your character from walking across the bridge until you poke your characters back to the right a smidge. It’s a fairly insignificant thing, but it happened enough to me that I found myself just wondering why that couldn’t have been smoothed out along with the visuals.

Now, an admission: As much as I loved the first game in the series, I had never played the second. This release gave me the opportunity to right that wrong, and I enjoyed it a great deal. You could argue that it’s largely ‘more of the same’ and it’s true – once again this title is a joy to play. Once more this is especially true because of the characters and oftentimes humorous writing. Sure there are a few new mechanics in the sequel, but by and large it feels like a proper sequel to the original.

Working Designs released several gems years ago, and Lunar is arguably and rightfully considered one of their best. I’d love to see the aforementioned Vay (or one of my all-time favorites - Dragon Force) get similar treatment. After all, the Lunar Remastered Collection certainly benefited from it, and is an easy to recommend title for fans of the JRPG genre, despite its age. It's remarkable how a great game (or two in this case) can stand the test of time.

Score: 8.5 / 10