Game:

Lunatic Dawn III (1998)

Duration: 26:11

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Lunatic Dawn III belongs to what was at some point Artdink's premier series of role-playing games. Starting out on NEC PC98 personal computer in 1993 it would branch out to other platforms and receive several sequels and spin-offs. Lunatic Dawn's call to fame lies in its atypical(for a Japanese RPG) approach to level design and gameplay structure. The towns and dungeons do not have a preset layout and are instead randomly generated upon loading the game. As soon as you're done creating your avatar and distributing the stat points, you find yourself in an open-world environment with very little in the way of limitations in respect to how you should proceed about the game and an almost complete lack of hand-holding aside from the friendly NPC who offers you help at the beginning of your adventure to teach you the ropes. Tackle the quests in any order you desire. Play solo or hire traveling NPCs to form a group. Lunatic Dawn may lack the complexity of such CRPG juggernauts as Baldur's Gate and Fallout, but it's still a peculiar little series that's worth experiencing at least once.

P.S. Lunatic Dawn III also exists on PC in a slightly different form. If you are interested, Lunatic Dawn Legend Pack, which LDIII is part of, is available for sale on Steam, albeit still only in Japanese.

P.P.S. The illustrations for the game are provided by Yoshitaka Amano of Final Fantasy fame as can be observed during the opening movie.

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