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For Game Arts, having their most successful projects—a pair of RPGs that formed the Lunar series—over the first decade of their history be a pair of RPGs for the Sega CD must have felt a bit bittersweet. On the one hand, they were, relatively, fantastically successful; Lunar: The Silver Star was considered by many to be the first "must-own" Sega CD title and is largely responsible for pushing sales of the console add-on in Japan, where it became the best-selling Sega CD game of all time.

Its attachment rate was nearly 1-to-1. But being the most successful Sega CD game is like...well, like being the most successful Sega CD game. It's where Sega's reputation started to deteriorate with players and is considered by many to be the first step in their eventual downfall in the home console market. So with a successful game like Silver Star, it's understandable that Game Arts would want to get the game on a more lucrative—and more powerful—console. And what better home is there for a 32-bit whimsical RPG than the original PlayStation?

Indeed, if you talk to fans of Lunar: Silver Star Story, you'll probably start to hear the same words start to pop up: cozy, charming, and nostalgic. It has a sense of cheerful optimism that makes the game feel very warm. If you were to picture your childhood self playing a game on a 13-inch CRT TV on a rainy weekend, this is probably the type of game you'd imagine. It generally plays RPG tropes extremely straight, but it just carries itself with such humility and sincerity, and it's easy for it to connect with the inner child inside all of us.

The beauty is in the details here; there's a tremendous amount of context-sensitive supplementary dialogue here that serves to make the world feel more lived in while giving your adventure a sense of weight. Its story sections feel like you're playing your favorite Saturday morning cartoon. Its straightforwardness is almost nostalgic; Silver Star Story is, in many ways, the definition of a comfort game.

That is, until you get taken out of the moment with some truly baffling localization decisions. Provided you're playing the English version of Lunar 1, you'll have to make your peace with dozens of immersion-breaking 90s-era pop culture references, frankly horribly unfunny jokes, and the odd comment or two that will make your skin crawl. The whole appeal of the game is its aesthetic and immersion into a sentimental and genuine world with heartfelt characters, so why Working Designs saw fit to sprinkle in a heavy dusting of dated references and questionable "comedy" is a mystery. To be completely fair, from a readability point, the game's English version handles very well, at a time when even AAA big-budget games were receiving dodgy translations.

Lunar: Silver Star Story is a pretty linear game, and that applies in all walks of gameplay. It serves the game's plot and pacing quite well, since you always know where you're going and you don't have to spend much time not making progress. You always feel like you are in the middle of an adventure, rather than looking for one. And a small world just makes it feel all that more snug. The combat, likewise, is very simple, and the best way to describe it would be to say that the game has combat. It's not horrible; it's more like a complete nothingburger.

Each character's moveset is very limited, and so your options for defeating enemies are always either spamming your AoE abilities on mobs or buffing Alex and using your Sword Dance ad infinitum on bosses. The game teaches what to do within a few hours and then never expects you to deviate from that strategy. Later parts of the game will make combat feel like you're doing it out of obligation; leveling up even becomes pretty pointless, as bosses scale with your level...and you certainly won't need to fight enemies for the money.

While the game thrives in many aspects off the back of its simplicity, its combat is much too unengaging to ever feel like you're earning any kind of meaningful victory, and prolonged dungeons really kill the pacing of what is otherwise a relatively tight game. It should be said that the PS1 version does, at least, remove the random encounters of the original and—even better—trades it for a heap of lovely digital animation.

If you happened to play it in your youth, Lunar: Silver Star Story will probably occupy a spot in your heart and mind for as long as you enjoy video games. Heck, Lunar: Silver Star Story could probably generate a spark of joy in even the most crotchety of senior citizens. It radiates childlike awe and wonder at levels nearly irresistible, even if the game isn't always as fun as you might wish it could be. Lunar 1 is, ultimately, a beautiful-looking, fanciful, touching game that just happened to be a better editor and less repetitive combat system away from greatness. It's very much style over substance, but style is putting up one heck of a fight.

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