After playing Metaphor: ReFantazio and going through its constant heavy and often depressing messages and themes, it sure is nice to play something thatās a little bit of a lighter experience all around. No overtly racist characters, no race to become king, and only minimal socializing with characters who have horrifically tragic backstories. It was also refreshing not to have a game take up a billion years of my life (I promise, the 40 hours I have on LunarLux are mostly from me keeping the game running while I was working). I could see someone saying it may even be a little too upbeat. If you put a gun to my head and made me choose between a game that was nothing but smiles and rainbows or a game that was nothing but depression and misery, I would always choose the former. Itās because of that what might rub people a little wrong in LunarLux didnāt bother me much at all. As a whole, itās a game with plenty of bright colors (just look at the protagonist, Bellaās, pink hair) and silly writing. In terms of visuals, LunarLux has an appealing pixel art style with cutesy portraits of the important characters. The portraits look nice and do a great job of expressing Bellaās emotions. There are portraits of other characters, but I wish theyād all been drawn to be as expressive as Bellaās. Itās a touch disappointing that one of the most appealing visual aspects of the game seems kind of limited. Then again, for a smaller project, I understand why they couldnāt be drawn for more characters, or have more variety for the characters that do get the portraits. For better or worse, LunarLux is a game the developer wanted to do their own thing with. I respect it, and outside of a few grammatical issues, I was fine with the writing for the most part. When something is clearly full of heart like this game is, itās hard for me to get upset about references to other media the developer put in or the occasional mistake in dialogue. The fun the developer had making the game translates well to what I saw as a player, and that counts for a lot when I'm playing a game. If you are someone who doesnāt like references or has a limited tolerance for them, LunarLux ās constant use of them might be something you find annoying. Just off the top of my head, there were references to Among Us , Animal Crossing , Persona 5 , and The Simpsons . None of these references got in the way of the story or meaningful spoken dialogue, but if theyāre the kind of things that annoy you, the game is full of them. But itās also full of the heart and charm you can often only get from a game that was solo developed or developed by a small team. Bella is an enjoyable, if uncomplicated, protagonist who has good chemistry with Tetra, her cute little robot sidekick. She also has some nice chemistry with Nickel, the only other playable party member in the game. While heās also uncomplicated, I enjoyed seeing him act like an edgy tough guy on the outside while being a massive dork on the inside. The other persistent characters in the game all have their own charm and itās nice to see them interact with Bella, even if those characters can be a little one-note sometimes. More than an issue with the quality of writing, I blame that on the gameās length. The scope of the game isnāt massive, so you arenāt going to be getting a 120-hour grand odyssey filled with loads of character development. Even getting all the achievements in the game didnāt take that long, so I understand there was limited room for overall character development if you werenāt Bella or Nickel. A lot of the side quests are enjoyable for the same reasons the other characters are. Sure, you arenāt going to be swimming in depth of character, but I donāt think you really need to have that when youāre doing a silly little side quest like finding someoneās lost ducks or doing the postgame Beach Episode. Even if theyāre bite-sized pieces of the game, they add up to still be enjoyable and parts of the game I wanted to finish completely. It helps that the gameplay is enjoyable. Though, like some of the other aspects of LunarLux , it can be a little bit simple. Rather, the execution of the combat is simple, and the game gives you too many tools to solve a problem that isnāt all that complicated to figure out. The enemy has HP, reduce that HP to 0 to win, and you win when you do. Itās not exactly rocket science. With 20 Active Skills and 30 Support Skills, the latter being broken into 2 categories of 20 normal Support Skills and 10 Red Support Skills, you get a lot of extra tools that probably just arenāt needed to make a number go down. The most complex the combat gets involves the Lux Combos. Those let you take 3 Active Skills to combine them into a special attack thatās better than using the 3 abilities separately. There are 30 combos to pull off in-game, and you can discover the combos on your own, or get recipes that tell you the correct combinations throughout the world. Some of the Lux Combos have cool effects that make some of the more gimmicky Active Skills worth using, but at least for the normal difficulty level, I found it the most efficient to use the ones that simply did the most damage. I like the defensive options for combat. Theyāre a mix of dodging oncoming projectiles like in Undertale , a very clear inspiration for this game in many respects. Other attacks also have you dodging them on a small grid of tiles like in Mega Man Battle Network . There are a few attacks that can only be blocked by using a shield. That can be a little annoying if you happen to get one of those attacks when you run out of shields and donāt have the chance to gain more. The enemy attacks are all nicely varied and are fun to dodge, often requiring just the right timing to avoid taking damage. Touching on the Undertale inspiration, the story likes the power of friendship, belief, and hope. I donāt think this is a bad thing as itās refreshing to see a story and characters who are fairly uncomplicated and easy to root for. It can make the dialogue a little bit corny and cheesy, but itās the good kind of corny and cheesy that endears the whole thing to me. Again, itās the kind of thing you can often only get when the story and characters are written by one person or a smaller team, and more importantly, donāt have the scrutiny of a large developer/publisher that requires a certain amount of polish to make the story and writing more broadly palatable. When I say LunarLux is a simple game, that isnāt a negative. Itās a project that stuck with the creatorās vision they had for it, and thatās something I respect. The developerās love of their game while managing to keep the scope reasonable made it very fun to play through. Too many small indie games try to go beyond their scope and capabilities by trying to make sure their baby is as perfect as can be. Outside of some fatty bits surrounding a combat system that didnāt need as many options as it has, LunarLux was a little treat of a game with tight design and nice focus, and one Iād recommend if you want a snacky RPG with cute art, enjoyable characters, and fun gameplay.
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