Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (PlayStation)

It's Lunar: The Silver Star, except... well, actually, it's pretty much a completely different game. Alex learns to talk! Luna gets on the boat! Now with 200% more voyeurism and 100% more hot air balloons that are actually useful, and on a platform bought by 100,000% more people!

The PlayStation version is actually a port of an enhancement of a remake of the original game, and things only get more complicated from there.

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: There's very likely some leftover debugging material. The US version has a location string for a "Monster Test", and I think there's more but asdfuaskdgh I didn't write anything useful in my notes.

Debug Text#

Use the following code to output debug text to TTY console:

800216EC 00A0
800216EE 2408
800216F0 003F
800216F2 2409
800216F4 0008
800216F6 0100
800216F8 0000
800216FA 0000

Regional Differences#

Q. What's your greatest concern when one of your games is translated for the U.S. market?

A. The dialog[sic]. The only English I know is the English I learned at school, so I cannot tell if the minor nuances come through or not. ... Even in Japanese, we are very sensitive about the wording we use; we rewrite many, many times. ... One word in a scenario can move people's hearts. ... Therefore, we need a translator who is a genius.

Virtually ALL the humor in the game was added. Japanese humor tends to be very direct (and in my opinion) infantile. While we add some of that kind of humor, too, most of what we add is in the double entendre department. We also make the character development much more complex. The Square and Enix games are much closer to a direct translation that[sic]what we do.

Silver Star Story continues Working Designs' trend of increasingly elaborate and involved script rewrites with each game in the Lunar series, but actually backs off of some of the most severe changes from Lunar: Eternal Blue (such as the infamous crippled save system). Nevertheless, few measures were spared in Working Designs' quest for a grindier, more juvenile gaming experience.

Enemy Stats#

Unlike Working Designs' previous stabs at "enhancing" the Lunar games, the stat changes in this game follow a very regular pattern. With few exceptions, regular enemies have 45% higher Attack, give out 14% less EXP and 10% less Silver, and have 10% less HP. The net effect is to make it a lot harder to stay alive and to increase, in an extremely artificial way, the time required to beat the game.

For whatever reason, a select few early-game enemies actually give out a point or two more EXP in the US version.

Boss Stats#

Unlike regular enemies, bosses scale their stats to match Alex's level. This requires a bit of explanation of game mechanics:

• For bosses, the following stats are scaled: HP, Attack, Defense, Agility, Wisdom, and Magic Defense.
• Each boss has its own set of "scale values" for each of the scaled stats, indicating how many additional points of that stat it should receive per level.
• Additionally, each boss has a "minimum level". Regardless of Alex's level, the boss will always be scaled to at least this minimum value. In the Japanese version, this seems to be the level the "average" player is expected to be at when they get to the boss.
• Finally, bosses have a set of "base stats" like any other enemy.

To scale a stat, the game multiplies the boss' scale value for that stat by Alex's level (or the minimum level for that boss, if Alex's level is lower than it), then adds in the base stat to get the final value. Bosses won't scale higher than Level 50.

In the US version, all bosses have the same base stats, but have increased scaling factors. Every boss except Kyle (who is unbeatable) has its minimum level increased by 1-6 levels, and some bosses also have higher scale values for one or more stats. Here are the changes to the raw scaling factors:

Notice that even some enemies that are impossible to defeat, such as the initial version of the Magic Emperor, had their stats increased.

Here's how the boss stats actually look after scaling them to the minimum level for each version (i.e. this is the weakest each boss can possibly be). Note that this doesn't include the base stats, which provide a constant bonus (the same amount in both versions) to what's listed here.

Bear in mind that enemies give out significantly less EXP in the US version, meaning that without grinding, the player will be underleveled compared to the Japanese version and the increased minimum levels will be that much more devastating.

Ending#

The US version of Silver Star Story alters the game's climax in a very similar fashion to the original Sega CD game. After beating the final boss in the Japanese version, the player has to walk Alex up a staircase to Luna. She fires some harmless plot lasers at him, and that's it. Keep walking, beat game.

If the player tries to do this in the US version, then two-thirds of the way up the staircase, Luna will fire some lasers that "kill" Alex, leading to an instant game over. Hope you saved!

To beat the US version, the player must open the inventory and use Alex's Ocarina, which up to this point has functioned only as a sound test. This allows Alex to safely walk the rest of the way to Luna.

This change introduced a new problem: In the Japanese version, Alex's Ocarina can be given to Nall. But Nall isn't in the party during this sequence, meaning the game would become unwinnable if that happened. To deal with this, the US version adds a special hardcoded hack that prevents Alex from giving away the Ocarina, meaning he has to waste one of his six inventory slots on a sound test for the entire game. (This seems to have been a fairly late change, as the Working Designs strategy guide stresses the importance of making sure the Ocarina is in Alex's inventory at this point in the game.)

Other#

• The amount of Silver contained in all treasure chests is halved in the US version. Combined with the reduced Silver output from enemies, this makes it a struggle to keep characters decently equipped.
• In addition to the above, a Silver bonus hidden in one of the books in Vane's library was reduced from 100 to 10 Silver.
• In a Vay-like move to screw the player over for healing too much, Jessica's Escape Litany spell to warp out of dungeons costs 1 MP in the Japanese version but 20 MP in the US version.

Japan	US

• There's a short puzzle at the beginning of Myght's Tower where four doors have to be entered in a particular sequence in order to proceed. In the Japanese version, the correct sequence is simply given by a note on the wall. The US version very deliberately removes the solution from the game, leaving the player to randomly try permutations until they stumble across the right one. (There are 24 possible permutations... if you happen to guess that the code is four symbols long and no symbols are repeated. Otherwise, you're looking at 256+ potential variations – and note that the game gives no indication when an incorrect symbol has been entered and code input has been reset.)
• In the Japanese version, the solution to the last color puzzle in the Goddess Tower is given by the order of the colors in the dialogue that shows up at the start of that floor. The US version alters the dialogue so that the order of the colors no longer corresponds to the solution to the puzzle.
• The US version moves most of the Bromide items to different locations – see LunarNET for details. The game's manual notes that "we've changed the locations of certain items to make more sense, or add continuity"... and then proceeds to make some unsubtle remarks about how "unauthorized LUNAR: Silver Star Story COMPLETE strategy guides available in bookstores and on the Internet" have incorrect information based on the Japanese version, and "[y]ou should hear the calls we get from frustrated gamers who were unfortunate enough to buy an unofficial guide for one of our other games." Apparently, GameFAQs was starting to cut into Working Designs' strategy guide revenue by 1999.
• In the Japanese version, the "Rememberizer" item to view FMVs is always available as a free gift from Ramus. In the US version, it's available for free up to a certain point in the plot, but after that it has to be bought from his store during the epilogue for 65,000 Silver. (Buying it leaves the inventory of Ramus' store empty. The game engine wasn't designed to do this, leading to glitches where trying to buy the non-existent stock will result in random items popping into the inventory.)

Non-Difficulty Changes#

• The game's English title has a disproportionately complicated story behind it. Originally, the remade version of Lunar: The Silver Star was released in Japan on the Sega Saturn under the title Lunar: Silver Star Story. A year later, a slightly updated version was released on the same console, variously titled Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete or Lunar: Silver Star Story MPEG-ban. The enhanced version was then ported to the PlayStation; this release was simply titled Lunar: Silver Star Story in Japan. When Working Designs brought the PlayStation edition to the US, they felt compelled to retitle it to Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, despite the fact that the "non-complete" version of the game had never actually been released in the US.
• The Japanese version has separate logo screens at the beginning of the game for each developer/publisher. The US version reduces this to a single screen of text credits.
• As always, the script has been totally rewritten and is mostly a product of the localizers' imaginations.
• The US version adds support for Memory Cards in both slots, and allows four saves per card instead of three.
• The US version supports analog controllers, and adds an optional rumble feature.
• The US release tacks a very long outtakes reel onto the end of the credits.
• The original pressing of the US version included an extra disc containing a documentary about the game's creation and (in much more detail) its US conversion.