Deep in a barren wasteland of a planet, a wondrous structure resides from years past. Inside, a blue-haired female, the guardian of the planet, and the one who will once again bring beauty back to this uninhabitable place, sleeps in suspended animation inside a large crystal until her services are required. Suddenly, she awakens. The crystal descends from its perch and deposits its inhabitant on the beautiful structure below. She walks down the elaborate hallway flanked by guardian statues to the door at the end, then to the wasteland planet outside. She looks out and the lifeless terrain and feels something is amiss:

"It's not time. Something is wrong"

Lunar: Eternal Blue (EB) is the sequel to the very good but largely unnoticed Lunar: The Silver Star, released in the US in 1993. Due to their releases on the ill-fated and ridiculously expensive Sega CD, the Lunar games, until the announcement of the PSX re-makes of the Satrun re-makes (yes, a remake of a remake), these RPGs were never given the proper audience they truly deserve. As some of the best executed traditional 16-bit RPGs, the Lunar games rank right up with Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, and Phantasy Star as the greatest traditional RPG series' of all time.

Die-hard loyalists insist the Lunar series is better that the others, but with only two games (three in Japan, but we're talking US releases now), it's difficult to do a proper comparison and unfair to judge against series' with greater history as those mentioned before. But what achievements the first two games are.

Travel in the Overworld has been simplified from The Silver Star. In the prequel, the Overworld and dungeons were drawn to the same scale so movement was exactly the same. In EB, the Overworld is at a much smaller scale. You move much, much slower than in the dungeons but see much more of the Overworld. It allows for a much greater view of your surroundings and you don't get lost nearly as often because of it. You still get attacked, but not nearly as often, which also eliminates some of the annoyance of simple travel. Overall, it's a very good change.

The towns and dungeons are very similar to The Silver Star with obvious graphical enhancements. The tows are larger, more vibrant, and more complex (i.e. more stuff in the towns) and are even more fun to look around. The dungeons have quite a similar look and basic layout as in The Silver Star, but again are much more detailed. They are much larger (if you can believe it) than in TSS. I've hardly seen dungeons this big in an RPG before. A lot of the gameplay occurs in these dungeons, and you will spend a great deal of time navigating them.

The battles in EB are your traditional RPG fare with some twists. Unlike the Final Fantasy series, there is no "real-time" gauge, so it's strictly my turn, your turn battles. In the battle menu, you are given a slew of options, but only a few of these are really useful. In your first menu, you are given 4 options: AI, Tact, Cmnd (Command), and Run, (which is fairly straightforward and won't require any explanation).

AI is simply an option where you can have the computer decide what your characters' actions are (in this menu, it refers to the entire party) until one of three events occur: you win the battle, you lose the battle, or you press the B button to turn off the AI mode and return you to the menu after the round. Tact is a new option to the series which allows you to select a strategy, or string of common commands, for your characters which lasts for one round. Basically, it's like the macro option from the Phantasy Star IV. You can store up to 3 tacts.

Cmnd is the option which allows you to choose a specific action for each character and takes you to the battle sub-menu. Here, you have one of six options: AI, Atk (attack), Magc (magic), Item, Dfnd (defend), and Run. All are pretty self-explanatory, but a couple of things need to be mentioned. The Dfnd command allows you to either defend yourself or another character in your group. The character will defend his/her chosen ally by taking the brunt of the attacks from the enemies. Also, if a character defends his/herself, they will move from their current position, a strategy that can be quite useful. If Run is chosen on any of the characters, only that character runs away.

Range is a very important factor in the battles in EB. Each character has a certain "class" and is good at one thing or another. These generally consist of your "fighter", "black mage" (attack magic), and "white mage" (defend/heal magic), but there are some characters, such as Hiro, who are good at more than one "class". Range comes into play on two fronts: physical attacks and range magic. In order for a character to do a physical attack, they must first walk up to the enemy before they hit them. Each character has a range statistic and can only move so far. There are items such as the Lynx Tail and Shiro Tail, which increase your range, but strategy still comes into play as to whether or not these items are worth the purchase. Also, certain magic attacks have a range factor on them which needs to be taken into account (only enemies within a certain range around you or around a chosen enemy will be affected).

The spells are also handled a little differently than most RPGs. The spells in EB grow rather than become obsolete. This is done through Magic Points, which are earned, along with Experience Points and Silver (Gold) after battles. These are accumulated and can be spent upgrading the level of your magic spells for each character as you see fit. The spells are separated into groups and there is a maximum of 4 spells per group. When you level up a spell, you level up that spell's group. Also, as the level of the group increases, you learn more spells. For example, as opposed to having Cure 1, Cure 2, and Cure 3, you are given Heal Litany (for one person) and Calm Litany (for all allies), but only Heal is given to you off the bat. As you level up that group, you learn Calm Litany, then Bright Litany (steals HP for your party). But, as your group reaches a certain level, Heal Litany turns into Purity Litany, which is just a more powerful version, and the same is done with each of the other spells in a group. This works out for the better 'cause by the time you reach a certain level, a spell like Cure 1 just becomes useless and is nothing but an annoyance while attempting to navigate the spell menu.

I have a few complaints about the gameplay, however. For instance, as a result of the extremely large dungeon sizes, you get attacked quite often and must frequently double back due to dead ends. This can become quite frustrating at times, as you realize you just spent 5 minutes going nowhere and need to get back but you keep getting attacked. It's almost a punishment for exploring. Also, since many enemies have fairly high defense against physical attacks, magic must be used often. On top of this, Starlights and Silver Lights (restore MP) are quite rare. Most spells do not take up very much magic, but after a long, tough dungeon (regular enemies are not that easy), the last thing you want is to run out of magic at the boss. If you're not conservative, you will.

Another minor irk was navigating the Dragonship Destiny. It was a bit irritating sometimes when you just run into a wall when it looks like you can clearly pass through. Not a big deal, but it should have been easier. Overall, L:EB has very solid gameplay but these annoyances keep it from a higher score. They don't occur often, just enough to annoy you occasionally.

The storyline is where the game truly shines. If you've played The Silver Star, be prepared for much more of what made that story so good. Many more cut-scenes with actual animation (yeah!), tons of voice-overs (must be at least an hour of it), and lots and lots of the infamous Lunar "heart" make this arguably the best presented storyline ever (well, next to Panzer Dragoon Saga), living up to the Working Designs standard. Each main or supporting character, good or bad, has a very distinct and vibrant personality and are all extremely well done. Even Lucia, who most might feel is just an emotionless, monotone heel is done well (that's her character and it's done perfectly). The voice-overs are very well done and, until Metal Gear Solid, was easily the best English dub of any game; again, living up to the WD standard. Even a lot of the NPCs in the town have their own personality and characteristics, even from only one or two lines of text! Why other companies can't just put the extra effort forth like WD always seems to do is beyond me. It probably has something do to with a cost-benefit analysis, but I firmly believe that RPGs would appeal to an even wider audience is such care was taken.

The plot line itself is your standard boy-saves-world-against-all-odds one, but it's so well done and there are enough twists along the way that it's not a big deal at all. There are no sub-quests but each town has enough in it to entice you to look around. The only partial blemish I can really think of is the over-use of pop-culture references, but it's quite entertaining and hardly annoying. It helps give the characters and townspeople personality, though it could have been toned down a shade. Again, it's hardly a blemish on such an extremely well-done story.

In my opinion, EB has one of the best soundtracks of any game. The main theme is very, very memorable and sets the tone of the game very well. Like The Silver Star, love is one of the main themes, and the music is perfect for it. I also particularly liked the Dragonship Destiny song and the main boss battle song. Never once did I get annoyed at the music and, quite often, I found myself pausing for a bit just to listen to it. The main function of music is to set the tone and atmosphere of the event and EB's soundtrack does it extremely well. In addition, being on a CD, all the audio is of very high quality. I hunted down the OSV in mp3 format and, like any good game STs, most of the songs are good enough to listen to without the game. It's not quite up there with CT, FF3, or PDS, but very close.

One area where EB fails to shine is sound effects. There really is nothing to them, just standard 16-bit fare. Even the infamous distortion is there. Not much to say, they do the job and that's it. Not great, not bad, just there.

EB is quite a challenging game. As has been mentioned, the dungeons are not the easiest things in the world. Some may be warranted, some not, but they're still fairly difficult. The boss battles are not very simple either and require a solid effort. There isn't much challenge in searching for secrets or navigating throughout the world or trying to find out what to do and where to go, but this game is mainly about story. It may be as linear as you get, but it's extremely well done and fairly difficult nonetheless. First time through with no help took 26 hours, a fairly good length for an RPG. I'm not one who's overly fond of spending 40+ hours on an RPG, so I was happy.

Overall, Lunar: Eternal Blue is one of greatest RPGs I've ever played and is worthy of all the praise its cult like following has given it. Although not quite as pristine in all categories as Final Fantasy 3, Chrono Trigger, and Panzer Dragoon Saga, it can hold its own fairly well. If you ever have the opportunity, play this game: you will not be disappointed.

With more than two games (let's pray Magic School gets picked up for the PSX) and greater availability, the Lunar series might one day be talked about in the same breath as Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, and Phantasy Star. I for one am very excited about the remakes of the series that are coming to the PSX. I just got my Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and can't wait for the release of Lunar: Eternal Blue Remix. Let's pray that for once Working Designs can keep their word and give us the promised Winter '99 release. No, I'm not delusional, just hopeful :-)