Developed by Japan Art Media and published internationally by Ubisoft in 2002, Lunar Legend is a handheld remake/re-telling of Game Arts‘ classic RPG, Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, with new graphics, content and story changes.

In Lunar Legend you play as Alex and Luna, a young boy and girl who’re accompanied by a flying cat-like creature, called Nall, plus a variety of other characters who come and go as the game progresses. Your quest is to become a Dragonmaster, by finding four powerful dragons and completing their trials.

Lunar Legend is a party-based RPG with turned-based combat, in the same style as the early Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games. Combat occurs in certain areas, randomly, and characters have both HP (Hit Points), for health, and MP (Magic Points), for spells and special moves. A World Map allows you to move around locations as they become available.

An addition to this version of the game are ‘Limit Breaks‘, which are special moves that certain characters can perform which become available only when the orange/yellow bar underneath a character’s name is filled. These Limit Breaks can also be changed by equipping certain items. Another new feature are ‘Monster Cards‘, which defeated enemies drop, which you can collect, buy, sell, and trade throughout the game.

Lunar Legend has plenty of refined, player-friendly features, like auto battle; equipment comparisons (green meaning: an increase in effectiveness; red meaning: a decrease), and L and R buttons to cycle through characters in shops and menus (which saves a lot of messing around when shopping).

The game has some laugh-out-loud humour on occasion and is beautifully-presented. The graphics have all been re-drawn for this port and are definitely a work of pixel artistry.

Lunar Legend was criticised for its “lack of challenge” when it was first released, and while the game is relatively easy (compared to other, tougher JRPGs), I wouldn’t say that it’s “easy”, per se, although it’s not difficult either. It’s a good entry-level JRPG with nice features and will probably appeal more to those who haven’t already played previous incarnations of this game.

More: Lunar Legend on Wikipedia