Lunar: Dragon Song -- Initial Impression.

Next up for me is the game Lunar: Dragon Song for the Nintendo DS. The game is published by Ubisoft and developed by JAM under the supervision of Game Arts. It's the first original Lunar game in the US in a decade.  This is technically the third game in the series, even though it's seventh one released. The original game was Lunar: The Silver Star for the SEGA CD. It was followed up in the US by the sequel Lunar: Eternal Blue also on the SEGA CD. Japan saw the SEGA Game Gear gaiden Lunar Magic School. Then came the remakes. Lunar: Silver Star Story, and Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete, both of which came to the US on the PlayStation. The first game got another remake that hit the US in the form of Lunar Legends on the Game Boy Advance. So that brings us back to Lunar: Dragon Song, the first role playing game for the Nintendo DS. Where does L: DS fit in one might ask? Well, I'll tell you.  L: DS is a prequel to the remake of the original game Lunar: Silver Star Story. The game is taking place one-thousand years before Lunar: Silver Star Story. Why is it a prequel to the remake of the original and not the original itself? Because the people who made the remake have made L: DS, and not Game Arts themselves. Although as I stated before, they were closely supervised by Game Arts. The first things that come to mind from the near two hours I've initially spent with the game are as follows. The game looks like Lunar, and it should, as Toshiyuki Kubooka is still the character artist. The game sounds like it's trying to be Lunar. Which makes sense as Noriyuki Iwadare isn't doing the score. Whoever is doing the music is clearly trying to emulate Iwadare's sound. Graphically the game doesn't even seem like a little step up from the GBA. I've only seen one town, one dungeon, with the one battle background, and the few creature sprites of said dungeon. But the initial impression remains, this could have been a GBA game. Which brings up another issue, the mixed touch control. You have to control the game with a combination of touch screen and conventional command input. For me anyway, it causes the slightest bit of confusion. This should be able to be chalked up to being apart of the learning curve. We'll see. And the biggest impression I've come away with is how experimental this game is going to be as far as the game mechanics are concerned. I will however save the details for the entry on combat. The story and characters haven't really presented themselves as I've just really fiddled around within the first dungeon. This game marks the start of the 2005 holiday gaming season for me, and I'm full of zeal to play these upcoming games. Let's get to it...