Well, if there's anything negative to say with respect to Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete, it's that its graphics aren't exactly fantastic. As this is a remake of a Sega CD game, you won't find any hi-poly models or mind-blowing spell effects. There are lots of 2D art and 2D sprites, though, and while the character sprites are a little shrimpy, the game still looks fine. Some of the areas are downright gorgeous, in a tile-based sort of way. Yes, it's no Vagrant Story, but the graphics more than make do for the game.

And the full motion video is excellent. With a wonderful mixture of CG and hand-drawn animation, it really comes alive. The anime-style animation is superb, the CG is quite sweet, and it blends together better than you'd think it would -- vaguely reminiscent of the mixed styles of the movie The Iron Giant. Very nice. There's tons of it, too.

The sound, on the other hand, is top-notch. While the spell and other sound effects are simply mediocre, neither too tinny nor too amazing, the voice acting is solid and the music is excellent. The included music CD is a very nice bonus, as the game has some of the best tunes I've heard in a videogame. And the voice actors generally fit the characters. Although it's certainly amusing to see a female who can cast insanely death-dealing spells and then hear her super-soft voice, in the end it all works out well. Ruby's cute, Hiro's just annoying enough to be a hero, and the other characters sound good too.

And, when you get right down to it, the important thing about a remake like Eternal Blue Complete is the gameplay. The source material wasn't particularly strong in the graphics department to begin with, but it had oodles of gameplay, and Eternal Blue Complete follows in that tradition.

Set a millennia after the happenings in Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, Eternal Blue follows the story of Hiro the, er, hero (ever read Snow Crash?) and his madcap adventures. When it comes to characters, this game is much closer to, say, Final Fantasy IX than it is to Final Fantasy VII/VII. Instead of dark and gloomy folk who wander around angsting, you've got a bunch of people who laugh a lot, joke around a lot, but get serious when they need to. It's a decidedly warmer atmosphere to have an RPG in, and the recent release of such "warm-hearted" tales is a definite bonus in my book.

The plot is long and winding, and while there are plenty of plot twists that you can predict in advance (hint: characters with portraits are important), there are lots of little things that you won't have figured out. It's got a good story, mind you, but it's not on the level of the brain-twisting madness that Chrono Cross or Vagrant Story are. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- straightforward plots where you have a good idea as to the big bad guy within a few hours of play are considerably more enjoyable than the cliched "puppeteer" model.

The gameplay itself is strictly old-school RPG fare. It's got some excellent touches, though, and does a few things that "modern" RPG’s would do well to learn from. For example, there are no real "random" battles. All of the enemy groups appear on-screen, a la the Chrono games, and if you encounter a group, you have to fight them. This is a much better way to do it than the Final Fantasy way, as you can generally run away from a battle if you're smart/lucky enough. And the battles themselves have more strategy than your typical RPG. Your characters have a limited range of movement, and you've got to decide whether you want to hit the nearby enemies, run towards the farther away ones, or use magic attacks that can hit said far away ones without having to move. Each has their own benefits and drawbacks -- tougher enemies are usually in the back, causing you to have to figure out how to take the least damage -- but it certainly takes some of the tedium out of repeated battles. And since areas stay clear for at least a little while after you clean them out, you don't have to worry about running back to a save point and having to fight all over again.

Yes, it really brings nothing new to the genre. Who cares? It's fun! And need I say anything about the translation quality of the game, other than excellent as usual? What else would you expect from Working Designs?

Surprise! You may actually die rather regularly in Eternal Blue. Your characters start off weak, but they can gain levels easily enough. And, unlike many games now where levels simply raise your health and maybe tweak a stat here or there, in Eternal Blue there's a noticeable difference every time you level up. You take less damage, deal more out, and in general, things work better for you. It's not to the level of Terranigma, thankfully, where being one level off meant doing 2-3 damage instead of 30-40, but it's good to see a game that actually makes good use of the old RPG concept.

Control is a snap, both with the digital and analog sticks. The menus are also near-trivial to use, once you know which buttons open which ones. Working Designs did a few really cool things, like allowing you to have not one, but two save games in a single memory slot. This means that you can have 30 (!) saves on one memory card, which you should never need, but is a wonderful luxury nonetheless. Load times are minimal, although there is a little gapping between the map and the battles.

PS2: As soon as I receive a retail copy that will work on my PS2, I'll update this section with information on the effects of the PS2's enhancements. I heard that what little load times the game has are practically eradicated -- but don't quote me on that.

So what if it's a remake of an old game? So what if there are prettier, more elaborate titles out there? With a rock-solid translation by Working Designs, hours of gameplay, tons of sweet video throughout, and a whole crew of genuinely likable characters, Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete is a winner. If you absolutely have to have state-of-the-art graphics in your games, you should pass, but the rest of us silly people who don't mind playing sprite-based games will be enjoying a wonderful RPG experience without you. So nyeh.