Over hyped

Let's go back to Lunar. And then stop. 

My first foray into Lunar was nearly four years ago with, obviously, Lunar 1 on the PSP. I found the game...fine enough. There was plenty to hate, but I remember enjoying it despite the sexualization of children. I wasn't using gaming scores at the time, but my retrospective guess was 30/50. I never did seek out Alex's side stories. But, I decided to dig deeper into the franchise before I glue myself to my totally legitimate Super Nintendo Entertainment System for the next rest of my life. It's a popular franchise with not many games, so it seemed like a worthwhile thing to do. I was wrong. 

What sucks about Lunar 2: Eternal Blue for the PlayStation One? 
The gameplay. Combat is painfully slow. Animations take time to load, enemies lumber their way across the battlefield, and bosses have too much HP. It's just so damn boring! The one bonus is that at least the dungeons are interesting. Puzzles are nice. But it isn't just the battles. There is no run function in dungeons. You can sprint for a limited time, but its primary purpose is to poorly dodge on screen enemies. Again, it makes the game so slow. And the fact that your characters, bar one, tend to go after the enemies doesn't help make the game compelling to interact with. Otherwise, the combat is exactly the same as game one. If you liked that, you'll enjoy this. 

The writing is atrocious! It's a Working Designs work, so it's filled with IRL references and blue humor. It also hasn't aged and is chalk full of insults that are horribly offensive these days. I've never cared either way for the controversial nature of Working Designs' localizations, but this was grossly over the top. 

The music is not for me. It's similar to Lunar 1, so that's nice. But it's all annoyingly upbeat. Every song is peppy and irritating, and barely anything carries emotional weight or memorability. 

I hated Nall in game one. I hate Ruby for the same reasons. 

So does Lunar Eternal Blue do anything good? Potentially! I will not be finishing this game because the gameplay is awful, but I am curious about the story and if the characters grow at any point. Lucia is one of the more interesting characters in the entire genre. She comes to the planet as a blank slate, learns emotions, and struggles to deal with those feelings. I'm a bit sad I won't be seeing where that goes. Jean's quest is a typical redemption arc, but I'm still down. And I'm sure it's happenstance that Lucia and Jean are my stuffed animal's first and middle names, and nothing else draws my interest in them. Ranfar has connections to the villains, which is neat. The other one is the descendant of the Ausa from game one, with the opposite personality, and is an acceptable choice. Sadly, she's grating, and I hate her. Hiro is whatever. It's all foreshadowed terribly, and I (seemingly) saw the twists from a mile away. But I'm a thirty-five-year-old man with extensive knowledge of the genre, so I'm not gonna hold my sagacious power against Lunar. 

The art is also an improvement. There are fewer palette swaps, so I'll shout out the art department. Dungeons, outside of caves, are all unique. 

And that's it...

I'm torn. On one hand, I hate this game. I dread playing it, sigh when a battle instigates, and don't think inserting disk two will be a good idea. On the other hand, I want to know where the story goes. Do our characters learn anything? Surely, there's at least one good song!? Alas, Working Designs' offensive and out of pocket localization ruined the experience. And the gameplay killed all the fun. The two teamed up to make even cheating to speed run the game something I have no desire to do. Maybe it's another baby game, but you shouldn't be putting "bitchin'" and sex jokes in a game like that. And the risqué nature of a lot of scenes gives this old man the creeps. After playing half the game, Lunar 2 Eternal Blue gets 20/50 points.