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Lunar Wing is a very methodical "Romantic Simulation RPG" published in 2000 by Takara and developed by Shoeisha, and later released in a budget version by Success and added to the Japanese PSN. The story deals with two races divided by five thousand years of evolutionary advances and the popular belief of an impending catastophe if the status quo remains. The people of Serra Cerrado (Serra for short), the land of light, lived very prosperous lives and thanks to the Eruserio civilization, made major advances in science and magic. Alternatively, a race living on an adjacent star aligned with the darkness attrribute, the people of Belgardo, were advanced in their own ways, being the ones to originally spearhead developments in science and magic. Both stars' ecosystems were similar to that of "Earth" and both planets' inhabitants closely resembled indigenous humans, and ironically, both were aware of and admired each others' civilizations.

Yet, these civilizations' dabbling in science and magic have inadvertently caused a ripple in space time, as a distortion in the space sattellite known as "Belga" creates monsters and further catastrophes are predicted that may destroy both civilizations. Now in modern times, a new generation of Serra and Belgardo people exist who are out to battle each other and may repeat the mistakes of the past by meddling in science and magic. At the center of all this conflict is a group of young heroes mostly associated with the land of light and leading them are two men, Heathcliff, the official leader of the "Knights of Saint" working for the holy "Duchy of Tristan" and Reishion, his young and most trusted apprentice who is trusted as the captain of the knights. Ordered to put a stop to the movements of Belgardo and to protect the holy maiden "Silfa", the thrid princess of the Duchy of Tristan, you quickly become wrapped up in more than you bargain for when the princess is kidnapped by a skilled Belgardo warrior named Alicia, which starts your quest as you try to find her.

Lunar Wing is primarily story-driven with battles being a secondary focus. The game is comprised of simple menus to navigate from place to place and all story scenes take place either at a chosen location or on your ship. Depending on the distance between one place to the next, it will take you more days to travel there. During these moments of downtime, you can usually trigger an event with Reishion somewhere on your flying ship or rest in your room to skip all the days. The game simplifies which events are what by color-coding: Green events are recurring events (barring one or two, which are special and only occur once), Red is a character relation event (events that build relations with no questions on your part) and Orange is a questionnaire event (where characters relations go up or down depending on the response you pick).

However, Lunar Wing's one stand-out feature is that the complexity of these interactions go slightly beyond hypothetical questions and picking the right choice. While proper interactions consist of personal moments between characters and multiple choice question/answer segments like many games before it, relation-building can be drastically affected by not only your answer, but your "mood". Games have rarely incorporated interrogation mood into how conversations play out (an example of a game that does being Super Famicom's "Energy Breaker" SRPG), but Lunar Wing allows you to score big or nearly ruin a character relationship with a single question or moment. Thankfully, these interactions are only slightly randomized, but understanding the context of the conversations is very important and makes the game less import-friendly. Pink is passive and usually has the least positive or negative change. Orange is inbetween, and Red is direct and has the greatest change.

While the game seems like an amazing game initially, further analysis (after clearing the first of the game's few main episodes) shows what some sites have classified as "shallow character interactions" and "limited game design, especially when it comes to combat situations". One Japanese site even rated the title a two (out of ten), commenting on the character's samey (exaggeratted and disproportionate) design and expressions, the unrealistic way in which you ask the girls many of the same questions and witness very similar events between them (not like better simulation titles where girls are asked a variety of unique questions and don't all witness the same pool, cooking, or deck scene), simplistic recurring dialogue, and fail-worthy enemy A.I. and character imbalance. I agree with that assessment on different levels, but have no room to elaborate here, so I will withold any other info I have for a full-blown article on my main site. One thing I will add however is frequent loading. The quality of this video was reduced considerably on YT to reduce size. This is a video showing several things. Enjoy.