New Lunar title lands on DS

By Kristan Reed Published 4 July, 2005

Ubisoft to publish first in 10 years.

The first title in the Lunar RPG series in ten years has been signed by Ubisoft, and is set to come exclusively to the Nintendo DS.

While we await confirmation of the game's appearance in Europe, Ubisoft's San Francisco office revealed that Lunar: Dragon Song will be released in North America in September and will take place 1000 years before the first game in the series, Lunar: The Silver Star.

"The world of Lunar is at peace under the protection of the goddess Althena, creator of Lunar," Ubisoft's press release states. "At the fringes of this peaceful existence, vicious demons have started to slowly invade, and there are few with power enough to know how to deal with this demon invasion.

"Players experience the world of Lunar as the human boy, Jian, and his group of friends. Jian's story begins simply but quickly evolves as he and his friends unravel the evil plot being laid against Althena and discover that they alone can save Lunar from the forces of evil," the statement concluded.

The features are said to include a new Light & Dark enemy system, where players must battle the forces of evil by transforming Dark enemy creatures into Beings of Light.

New characters to look forward to include Jian, Gabryel, Lucia, Flora and Rufus, while a new Battle Card system allow players to alter the abilities and powers of members in your party.

In addition Lunar fans can look forward to all-new weapons and items "never seen before in any Lunar title," not to mention Wireless LAN connectivity, allowing players to share rare and unique items within the Lunar world and DS microphone support that allows player to holler orders into the mic. Neat.

The game is being developed by Japan Art Media (JAM), in conjunction with GameArts.

Check back for confirmation on Ubisoft's European plans for the title soon.

Picture of Kristan.

About Kristan Reed

Kristan is a former editor of Eurogamer, dad, Stone Roses bore and Norwich City supporter who sometimes mutters optimistically about Team Silent getting back together.

Read more articles from Kristan by visiting the Kristan Reed archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 7 years ago

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  • ProfessorLesser #1 7 years ago

    First!

    /Sold. DS + RPG = /me is £130 poorer

  • abigsmurf #2 7 years ago

    Mixed feelings about this but Overall I'm excited.

    Pluses

    It's a new Lunar game wooooo
    The characters designs are what I've come to expect from the series
    It's a game that lasts more than 5 hours on the DS
    It's an RPG

    Minuses

    Menu based towns
    Isometric-esque dungeons and a change in the battle system that means location no longer matters
    A character called Lucia (predictable plot twists ahoy!)
    For it to be localised this fast and because of the memory limitations, no voice acting and possibly no anime cut scenes.

    Now if only they'd convert Lunar : Magic school over to the DS (and remove the random battles)

  • onyxbox #3 7 years ago

    when I saw the title of the article I thought: GREAT ! Luner Lander !

    :-/

    Ah well :-)

  • smelly #4 7 years ago

    "Lunar Lander !"

    same here! :-)

  • abigsmurf #5 7 years ago

    Lunar is a series of RPGs released on the Mega CD, saturn then PS. First game in the series is Lunar : Silver Star Story (which was stripped down and released over here on the GBA as Lunar : Legend) then the sequel Lunar 2 : Eternal Blue.

    It's popular series because they have great characters, Working Designs did a quality localisation for the PS versions (as well as giving loads of goodies), they've good music, decent Voice acting and good anime cutscenes.

    I'd highly recommend importing the first two games or combing ebay for them, they're graphically simplistic but are well worth picking up.

  • Salaman #6 7 years ago

    Hehe .. not just e that thought of lunar lander then.

    Still I'm mildly interested.

  • Blerk #7 7 years ago

    Cards!

    N-oooo-ooooooo!

    /dies

  • Abscido #8 7 years ago

    Menu based towns

    CRAP! Ughh, and I had some small hope for this one too. Still, might be a classy game nonetheless, just not a proper addition to the series.

    Lunar 2 is a masterpiece. Absolutely outstanding. Didn't like the first one half as much, funnily enough, and I played them in order.

  • toy_brain #9 7 years ago

    Menu-based towns sounds a bit too....... streamlined to me.
    But still, event though I never finished Lunar Legend on the GBA, I'm interested in picking this up.
    Props to Ubisoft for continuing to bring over these RPG's. Now, about Wild Arms 4......

  • symmetry #10 7 years ago

    Oh.

    Cos Lunar Lander would work really well on the DS.

  • Abscido #11 7 years ago

    Now, about Wild Arms 4......

    Oh, yes please. Though Alter Code F has been delayed yet again in the States. Very annoying.

  • Galvanizer #12 7 years ago

    More RPG's for the DS the better!