First the good part!
The Lunar Genesis (or Dragon song to some) is a beautiful RPG with lots of elements from the previous Lunar games. I like the graphics and the music. The plot is a little bit of a mehh, it could've been better, but it'll do.
The battle system is like in previous ones, you give commands to the characters and then begins the attack phase; speed determines (mostly anyway, not 100% that the fastest char will attack first every time) the attack orders, allies and foes alike. Each character has a set of skills at their disposal appropriate to their role.
THEN the bad news!
The gameplay is just plain torture. Why? Because:
You only get money from selling stuff you own or running errands: you deliver item a to person b, 99% of the time you need to get all the requested items via enemy drops. If you accept a quest that you cannot yet fulfill, monsters stop dropping the particular item (or I'm extremely unlucky at this, hunted two days for one item), if you cannot fulfill the request you'll have to pay a fee. And some quests require you to travel to the other side of the world.
You cannot buy mp restoring items ANYWHERE, with lots of luck you might get an enemy drop.
You start the game with two level 1 characters and the other is totally useless until like halfway of the game when s/he gets finally some useful skills+ half mp cost weapon. After that, s/he LEAVES PERMANENTLY. With all equipped items on. Nice. Then after a while, you'll get replacing character, which btw is a copy of the one that left and s/he starts at level 1, you'll be around 30 maybe. Oh and cannot run for long (see below) until s/he gains some more hp than 20.
You need to choose whether you want to earn EXP OR ITEMS from a battle. Yes, you cannot have both. This can be changed anytime though.
Your best attacker's attacks get reduced to one hit in the time you most need the "extra" hits.
If you assign all your members to attack the same foe and it dies i.e. after the first character's attack, the other remaining attacks assigned that turn will go to waste; the AI does NOT transfer the remaining attacks to the enemies alive in the battle. Nice.
Running consumes your hp, approx 20hp allows you to run maybe for 15 seconds?
To travel from town a to town b you need to enter town a, walk through it to the other exit (leading to town b), exit the town, enter the forest, walk through the forest for a couple of screens, exit the forest, enter the town. A real hassle.
Plot makes you constantly run back and forth between places.
Your party disbands more than once.
You have more than one party member who will steal your equipment upon suddenly leaving without a warning.
Difficulty level is above average, unless you REALLY like to level up.
You cannot even kill the biggest baddie of them all.
The plot is too predictable.
The conclusion? If you really like self-torture, buy this game. I must be a masochist of some sort since I played this game through. Or a stubborn old goat? The game had a potency of a great game, but they just had to spoil things up.
My rating: 3/10
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