Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

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Alunissage
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Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Alunissage »

I spent some time cleaning up and adding to my lists of spells in the six Lunar 1 and 2 games recently. For some reason, I love comparing version differences, and these are some of the easiest to look at. Below is a list of notable things I, er, noticed. Most of them are about TSS and EB, for the obvious reasons that those two games have the largest number and variety of spells and that EB set the template for all of the remakes. Actually, I may as well start with an overview of the games’ comparative spell repertoires:

* TSS has around 80 uniquely-named spells, about a dozen of which are in the repertoire of multiple party members. This is a bit deceiving, though, as the magic system is so simple that there is no wisdom or similar stat that is factored into effect calculation. Magic doesn’t get any stronger as the characters level up, so they need to keep getting new spells as they progress through the game and encounter harder enemies. There are no actual elemental effects, either; it’s all for show.

* EB has over 120 uniquely-named spells, but 56 of them are powered-up versions of other spells and replace their earlier versions. EB introduced the grouping of spells into sets of four by type, which was used the Lunar 1 remakes, and the morphing of spells into more powerful versions, which was used in the Lunar 2 remake. EB’s system of accumulating and spending Magic Experience to selectively power up certain groups of spells as the player wishes has not been copied by later games, though.

* SSS has the smallest number of spells, 48 in total with no explicit duplicates. Five are duplicates with only the name and graphics changed, but overall this set is basically The Essential Lunar Magic Collection. It does mean that after level 35 the only new spells you’ll see are the remaining dragon spells, which makes levelling up less fun, and the spells themselves are kind of boring: five sets of (attack 1E, attack EZ, attack AE, stat boost), for example.

* LL’s main spells are the same as SSSC’s, with a few trivial changes in the targets of Nash’s condition spells, but adds some variety in the form of an Arts gauge special attack/spell for the six main party members (and an alternate Arts spell for all but Luna when the right items are equipped). Because of a strict eight-character limit, spell names in English are a little idiosyncratic.

* SSH has basically the same spells as LL, including the Arts spells, and also has a handful of new spell names introduced via the Four Heroes playable prologue. They’re all duplicates of the main party’s Arts spells, though. The second Arts moves for the characters who have them were changed from LL’s.

* EBC dropped a third of the morphing spells in EB and added a bunch of spells via the crest system, though many of these are duplicates of the elemental spells previously unique to Hiro, Lemina, and Leo. I haven’t tried counting these up.

Most unique spell, found in only one of these six games:
* Charm Defense (TSS, Jessica). Temporarily lowers the enemy encounter rate, making it the only spell to affect getting into battles.

Runners-up:
* Blue Dragon Vigor (EB, crest). Adds about six attacks to the character’s next turn, around half of which are critical hits.
* Pressure Cooker (EB, Lemina) and Soul Finger (EB, Lucia). Lowers level of enemies, including bosses.
* Chance/Lucky/Destiny Dice (EB, Ronfar). Each of the 11 possible rolls has a different effect, with only snake eyes being negative.

Hardest to get spells:
* Sidestep (TSS, Laike). Need to level Laike up from his starting level of 95 to 96 for him to gain this one (100,000 EXP needed). It’s not unique to Laike, but it was pretty surprising.
* Liner (LL, Alex’s 2nd Arts move). Need to have two things equipped and one of them is very easy to miss.

Runners-up:
* Solar Bomb (EBC, Lucia). Need to level Hiro up to 14 while party is still in the Blue Spire -- although this is mainly tedious rather than difficult since Lucia wipes everything out at that time.
* Destruction (TSS, Luna). Luna is only in the party until Saith, and gains this spell at level 10. But you're not likely to level her up that far, especially since the first boss fight of the game isn't until the Sewers.

Honorable mention: Lucia’s revive spells (EB, EBC). She has them, but you won’t see them often.

Most redundant spell:
* Coup de Grace (TSS, Laike). Ups ATK by 255. He’s only playable in two areas, and I’m pretty sure he can take out anything in those areas in one hit already. Also, he has four attacks and there are never more than eight enemies.

Runner-up:
* Sidestep (TSS, Laike), which ups DEF. As noted above, the enemies he encounters are no match for him anyway, and he has 580 HP. I wonder if his spells ("skills", rather) exist just to show that he's a good fighter.

Most overpowered spell:
* MistVeil / Mist Barrier (LL and SSH, Mia’s basic Arts move). Grants three rounds of total invincibility. I suppose the justification here is that no one uses Mia for attacking and so her gauge wouldn’t fill very fast, but still, it’s considerably stronger than White Dragon Protect.

Strangest names:
* Psychotron (TSS, Mia). With a name like that its function is obviously…um…
* Pressure Cooker (EB, Lemina). Its in-game description is “???”.
* Buck Up! (LL, Mia). Can’t you just imagine her saying that? Me neither.

Runners-up:
* Fusion Litany (TSS, Jessica). At least the names of her other condition-curing spells (Purity Litany, Mental Litany) hint at their function. This one cures paralysis, but I wouldn't know that without looking it up.
* Black Dragon Shield (EB). This was the first appearance of Black Dragon Grief in the series and its name is totally misleading.

Honorable mention: the Japanese name of Nash’s AE thunder spell: シュペルグローム [shuperuguroomu]. No one’s figured out what it means, as far as I know.

Oddest spell variant:
* Healing Litany (TSS, Jessica). Heals everyone but Jessica herself.

Most unlikely spell:
* Althena! (LL). It’s not the spell, it’s who casts it: Nall. (Kind of -- it’s out of battle only, so it’s just a selection from a menu. But still, it’s his.)

Most overpriced spells:
* Red Dragon Anger (EB). It’s a remarkably weak AE spell and costs 99 MP in the NA game (80 in the Japanese game).
* Black Dragon Shield (EB). Also 99 MP (45 in the Japanese game).

Most expensive spell (more worth it than you’d think):
* Holy Light (TSS, Alex), the final Dragonmaster spell. It costs 120 MP and on first glance seems to be the same as Black Dragon Grief in the rest of the games, making it ridiculously overpriced for something that doesn’t even give you EXP. However, it also does 510 damage to enemies with more than 510 HP, of which there are a fair number after gaining the spell. Also, Alex will probably have at least 400-500 MP by that point in the game. Plus, it looks cool.

Best bargain:
* Poe Sword (EB, Hiro). At 4 MP it’s one of the cheapest attack spells in the series and is Hiro’s go-to spell for the entire game, in a game where the caster’s MP is consistently around 70% of his HP so he has plenty to burn. It’s also stronger than any of the comparable attack spells (e.g., Sword Dance). Its EBC edition isn’t as much of a bargain, though it’s still pretty good.

Honorable mention:
* Tranquil Litany (Japanese EB, Ronfar). 17 MP for several hundred HP recovered. (45 MP in US game.)

Most variation in English names:
* Mia’s assist spell グランドウェポン (Grand Weapon): Power Drive (SSSC) / Buck Up! (LL) / Endow Weapon (SSH). Lemina’s EBC version is Power Flame.
* Mia’s and Lemina’s (EBC) AE ice spell コールドストーム (Cold Storm): Ice Wall (SSSC) / Sleet (LL) / Ice Geyser (SSH) / Freeze Claw (EBC). (The EB name was Freeze Claw in both English and Japanese.)
* Nash’s AE thunder spell シュペルグローム [shuperuguroomu]: Thunder Thrust (SSSC) / Blitz (LL) / Electroshower (SSH).

Runner-up:
* Jessica’s full-heal spell 慈愛の祈り is Althena Litany in SSSC, LoveAve in LL, and Charity Litany in SSH.

Honorable mention:
* LL’s names for the four Dragon spells are Quarker, Amelian, Cyanic, and Rubean. This solution to the character limitation only works because this is the one game in which all four dragons have names.

Not enough variation in English names:
* SSSC’s Escape Song (Luna) and Escape Litany (Jessica) do entirely different things (run from battle and return to dungeon entrance, respectively).

Runner-up:
* Nash (TSS). All ten of his spells are named Thunder Something. TSS doesn’t have icons or MP costs for its spells, so it’s pretty easy to get the wrong one. (The Japanese names are more varied, though I don't have real translations of them.)

Least versatile spellcaster:
* Nash (TSS). See above. Nine of his spells are 1E or AE thunder attacks; the tenth paralyzes enemies. He got a little more to do in the remakes, but not much.

Most versatile spellcaster:
* Mia (TSS). Fourteen of her twenty-one spells are attacks with the appearance of 5 different elements (cosmetic only, as TSS doesn’t actually have elemental damage, but the idea is there); her other seven are a confuse spell, a decent heal spell, an enemy debuff, two HP absorb spells, one MP absorb spell, and a dungeon-escape spell. The only thing she doesn’t do is assist. She also has the most spells at once (EB Ronfar and Lemina each have 28, but it’s really 12 spells apiece, eight of which can be levelled up twice).
* Jessica (TSS) -- see below. She has no straight attack/damage spells, but pretty much everything else.

Runner-up:
* Ronfar (EBC). Sixteen spells in total, and almost unique in Lunar 2, each of the six spells that get powered up increase their scope -- although they also at least double in cost. In addition to the standard heal/cleanse/revive spells, he also has an absorb HP, a couple of attack spells, and the game’s dungeon escape.

Honorable mention:
* Lucia (EB). Though good luck getting her to cast some of those.

Most spells you’ll never use:
* Jessica (TSS). Five of her eighteen spells are healing and four more are condition-curing, but she also has four stat boosts, three condition-inflicting spells, an AA magic shield comparable to Dragon Protect, and the aforementioned encounter rate lowering spell. She also has a pretty decent attack and range. So probably you’ll use her for attacking and healing and never get around to trying out any of the others.

Honorable mention:
* Ronfar (EB). Chance Dice is fun, but I suspect hardly anyone uses his other Chance spells at all. He has enough to do with healing and the occasional regular attack, and who wants to potentially knock him out?
* Alex (TSS). In addition to the five Dragonmaster spells and his three healing spells, he has nine attack spells (all putatively Fire spells). But outside of the Cave of Trial, which you won’t survive without using magic, he’ll rarely need them.

Most spells you’ll never want to use:
* Hiro and Leo (EB). Their non-sword/blade spells suck. At the beginning of the game, that first Wind spell being 3MP instead of Poe Sword’s 4MP can make a difference, but by the time you get Ronfar you’ll never use them again. And don’t even bother with Leo’s Earth spells. Since in this game you can expend points to level up certain classes of magic, you'll likely never see them, because it'd be a complete waste.

Runner-up:
* Nash (SSSC/LL/SSH). Five of his eight spells are status effects, and how many people use those? (Although they can be useful in the Meribia Sewers, and the forest around the womens’ spring if you’re feeling masochistic.)

Anyone want to add (or argue with) anything?

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Temzin
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Temzin »

Alun, these/you are a treasure! Fantastic stuff.

One of the stranger things about TSS is that they didn't even have MP costs listed for spells. I guess it did encourage us as little kids to do the equivalent of drawing our own dungeon maps in Phantasy Star II, meaning that we actually had calculators on hand to observe and write down each spell cost as it happened. Not that it mattered much by the end of the game, but hey.

EB spells for Hiero and Leo: Yeah, wind really sucks. But but but! While earth is 90% useless, Leo's third or fourth spell from the left (I can remember it spatially now but not by name), the one that's a brown re-color of a flying ice dagger spell, has a more-than-occasional instant-death effect which is pretty neat. The large barbarian guys in the epilogue get crushed by this, among other monsters.
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Greco12 »

This is a great breakdown!

I think SSSC's limited number of spells is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it makes the party members more specialized. Nash suffers from this greatly, as he relies on lightning/electricty spells for damage; this makes him useless against any enemies that are immune to lightning. And while Jessica has good defense, speed, and melee damage (as is appropriate for her tough-as-nails personality), I kind of wish they had given her some kind of holy smite attack; I'm thinking like one of those holy damage attacks that priests and paladins use in World of Warcraft.

On the other hand, it also means you don't have a bunch of spells which no longer serve any real purpose because they're outdated and don't improve with your leveling. For example, once you get spells that remove all status effects, you won't really need to use spells that remove only sleep effects.

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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Alunissage »

Aww, thanks. I wasn't sure if anyone else would be interested.
Temzin wrote:While earth is 90% useless, Leo's third or fourth spell from the left (I can remember it spatially now but not by name), the one that's a brown re-color of a flying ice dagger spell, has a more-than-occasional instant-death effect which is pretty neat. The large barbarian guys in the epilogue get crushed by this, among other monsters.
Oh, really? I never levelled up the Earth spells enough to see the others. it's on my list for my next playthrough.

Say, would you mind having a crack at approx translations for Nash's TSS spells? I originally had them pasted into the post but decided it made things too long. I also can't be 100% certain I transcribed them correctly, as I did it the hard way (squinting to pick out a radical and guessing a stroke count, then searching the WWWJDIC for matches).

雷撃
雷撃波
雷しばりの呪法
放雷玉
放雷弾
放神牙
放神撃
放撃砲
天放砲
超雷陣

Oh, and these are Leo's Earth spells, to jog your memory:

Rock Viper ロックバイパー
Rock Cobra ロックワインダー
Rock Riot ロックライアット
Earth Spike アースネイル
Earth Knuckle アースナックル
Earth Fangs アースファング
Asteroid Break コメットブレイク
Comet Break スターブレイク
Solar Break メテオブレイク
Crackpot クラックポイント
Crack Point クラックゾーン
Crack Zone クラックフォース

The Break ones are EZ and I have a note ("disappearance"?) in my sheet. The Crack ones are AE. I wonder why WD shifted the names by one on those. Maybe they just really liked "Crackpot".

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Alunissage
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Alunissage »

Greco12 wrote:And while Jessica has good defense, speed, and melee damage (as is appropriate for her tough-as-nails personality), I kind of wish they had given her some kind of holy smite attack
I suppose that was sort of remedied in LL and SSH with the Arts move. Her default one is actually named Smite in LL, though I think it's just a vacuum-all spell. Her alternate Arts in that game is a 1E attack that's decent, and I think that's also the case in SSH but I probably didn't get it. Man, I really need to play that game in English. And replay...well, everything.

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Temzin
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Temzin »

Alunissage wrote: Say, would you mind having a crack at approx translations for Nash's TSS spells? I originally had them pasted into the post but decided it made things too long. I also can't be 100% certain I transcribed them correctly, as I did it the hard way (squinting to pick out a radical and guessing a stroke count, then searching the WWWJDIC for matches).
Wow! With dedication like that, you bet I'll do my small part! Here are Nasch's spells below, with asterixes by small corrections--or at least, this is how they appear in the instruction book. I put an explanation by the corrected ones just to make sure you can match them, but I'm pretty sure they do. (I can't confirm his best magic because it's not listed in the instructions...I'll update if I go on Nico sometime and find a playthrough where they use it or dig up an old site.) Thunder and lightning track closer together in Japanese than in English, especially with 雷. Lightning feels more like an attack to me, so I used it...Kiz can confirm if he feels the same about this choice of English, of course!

雷撃: raigeki – lightning attack
雷撃波: raigekiha – lightning attack wave
雷しばりの呪法: kaminarishibari no juhou – lightning paralysis incantation (and a semi-pun on kanashibari, a state of sudden paralysis)
放雷玉: houraidama – lightning-emitting orb
放雷弾: houraidan – lightning-emitting bullet
**雷神牙: raijinga – Raijin (lightning god) fang [attack one with lightning bolt]
**雷神撃: raijingeki – Raijin (lightning god) attack [attack all with lightning bolt]
**雷撃砲: raigekihou – lightning attack cannon [attack all with lightning attack]
**天雷砲: tenraihou – heavenly lightning cannon [attack all with lightning attack]
超雷陣: chouraijin – massive lightning field

Thanks too for Leo's spells. I'm almost positive that the instant-death daggers I had in mind are the third set, the Break series, especially if it's a narrow enemy area, not singular or all.
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Alunissage
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Alunissage »

Thanks! I'm glad to get those corrected. :) I wonder if with those ones you noted I had a copy/paste error, since I'd evidently found the right kanji previously. It was several years ago that I did this. I was also probably reading from a pretty pixellated guide page.

Would you be open to helping me out with a few more, if they're easy? I don't want to impose. I have most Japanese names and translations filled in (obviously, the katakana ones are easy...) but have a few holes here and there. Sometimes just the translation, sometimes the Japanese name as well.

This is a typical line from my spreadsheet:
L2-SCD Tranquil Litany やすらぎの洗礼 Peace Baptism Tranquil Litany Health Ronfar 45 restore HP to party AA Health 28 costs 17 MP in MCD ver

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Temzin
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Temzin »

Oh sure, these only take a second to do! Happy to help with any that Kiz is too busy to tackle. Er, except for Nasch's weird German-sounding spell in SSS, though! Some mysteries will remain eternal.

Edit: it was annoying me again, so I looked around and see that it must be Russian! The グローム is apparently the cyrillic "гром" (roman characters: "grom") for "thunder," and the シュペル may be "cупер" (roman characters: "super") for the Russian pronounciation of "super," but not confident here at all except with the grom since I don't speak Russian and can't read cyrillic. Could be supergrom, could be something else. Oh well.
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Alunissage
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Alunissage »

Thanks!! I figure bilingual Japanese/English people must get a ton of inane translations requests from fans -- heck, even I have been asked in a Kinokuniya if I could read Japanese and tell what this massive sealed Pokemon book set was -- so I don't want to overstay my welcome. I'll paste some more stuff tonight, or if you'd like I could send you the spreadsheet.

Just noticed your edit... hey, wow! One of my former coworkers is Russian and probably wouldn't mind opining on this. I'll try to remember to shoot him an email about it. That spell has been bugging me for over a decade, ever since Kizyr made his Lunar Legend walkthrough in 2002.

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Temzin
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Temzin »

My pleasure! You all do so much to commemorate my favorite games of bygone times. It's easy enough to do them here, but you can always send stuff to the maoujacky at hotmail.com address if it's easier for you in a spreadsheet.

Neat, give the Russian a try with the pronouciations as you'd do them in katakana! I've seen Nasch's formation in Japanese in a couple of blogs featuring cloudy skies, so it mayyy not be an entirely random contraction (so it may not be "super" at all, even if I'm pretty sure about the grom). Probably someone on the TSS staff was studying Russian and thought this would be fun...who knew the confusion it would continue to cause two decades later?!
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Sonic# »

Wow! That's a great list, Alun. I just want to note a couple of things:
Not enough variation in English names:
* SSSC’s Escape Song (Luna) and Escape Litany (Jessica) do entirely different things (run from battle and return to dungeon entrance, respectively).
Yes. I ran across this the first time I played as well as on my most recent playthrough. I expect that Escape Song and Escape Litany would do the same thing, only to find out that I actually have no way to run from battle. I guess there still is a "stop battle" spell with an emphasis on scaring enemies away (Fear Litany).
Best bargain:
* Poe Sword (EB, Hiro). At 4 MP it’s one of the cheapest attack spells in the series and is Hiro’s go-to spell for the entire game, in a game where the caster’s MP is consistently around 70% of his HP so he has plenty to burn. It’s also stronger than any of the comparable attack spells (e.g., Sword Dance). Its EBC edition isn’t as much of a bargain, though it’s still pretty good.
It's still the go-to attack spell in EBC. It's possible to defeat Zophar using Poe Sword and some buffs while underleveling, since the triple-attack version of this spell (Triple Sword) doesn't come around until level 50.
Least versatile spellcaster:
* Nash (TSS). See above. Nine of his spells are 1E or AE thunder attacks; the tenth paralyzes enemies. He got a little more to do in the remakes, but not much.
I end up making Nash my designated item-user. In later boss battles he's the one feeding Mia and Alex Star Lights or Silver Lights in addition to his less effective lightning attacks or staff attacks. Mia feels more versatile with her stat buffs as well as her varied attack magic.

It makes sense narratively. Nash has never been raised to be a team player. His spell selection feels like a more thematically focused version of Ghaleon's own - strong attack spells with little that promotes one's companions. Both show a tendency to make decisions that affect their companions without considering what they feel, only questioning what they decide in the face of individuals important to them: Althena/Dyne and Mia. Given a few of the ways that spells seem to tie to character traits, I don't think that saying "Nash's relative detachment is shown in his spell selection" is too much of a stretch.
Sonic#

"Than seyde Merlion, "Whethir lyke ye bettir the swerde othir the scawberde?" "I lyke bettir the swerde," seyde Arthure. "Ye ar the more unwyse, for the scawberde ys worth ten of the swerde; for whyles ye have the scawberde uppon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded. Therefore kepe well the scawberde allweyes with you." --- Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory

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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Alunissage »

Good point about Nash. It's kind of ambiguous in the games whether he's actually a good magic-user or not -- hard to say whether the students' putting him down is from jealousy or actual assessment of his skills. Though I think one of the teachers in SSS says something like "Pity I never saw it myself" when referring to whatever Ghaleon saw in Nash that made him select Nash as his protege. It seems likely in that case that he was selecting for blind obedience and an ego that would keep him from questioning the importance or rightness of what he was doing, but it could also be that Nash is more advanced in attack magic than his classmates, while weaker in everything else. He's being sent to Saith and Burg on his own to gather intelligence, so he'd have to be able to fend for himself.

Speaking of Nash, I got a response regarding that spell name:
"cупер гром" - this is exactly how it sounded to me before I read your Russian version. However, in Russian, super - sounds exactly as super, not shuper. Other than that, sounds right.

So I think we can consider that one settled at last. As a bit of a cross-check, I put "cупер гром" into Google and found that that's how Russian game sites list the Megadrive game Super Thunder Blade. And yes, now I really wonder how that bit of Russian got into Lunar.

ETA: Temzin, I emailed you my spreadsheet. Figured I should say so in case it gets caught in a spam filter.

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Temzin
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Temzin »

Thanks! All set, back to you.
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Alunissage »

Temzin sent me some great additions and corrections (thanks again!) and I think I need to make a new category.

Most mystifying localization name change
* Good Luck (TSS, Luna) and Luck Litany (TSS, Mia and Jessica) are Ayakashi Song and Ayakashi Prayer respectively. “Ayakashi are phantoms usually associated with the ocean; compare St. Elmo's Fire, Fox Fire, Will O' Wisp.” I really wonder about that change. It’s a confusion spell; what does that have to do with luck?
* Fusion Litany (TSS, Jessica). I complained above about it not having any visible connection to its effect (curing paralysis). It still doesn’t, but now I know the Japanese spell name is Softening Prayer, which does.

Honorable mention:
* Purity Litany (EB and EBC, Ronfar). In both games it’s the strongest 1A healing spell. Every other spell named something like Purification (in either language) cures poison or conditions in general. And the Japanese names for these two spells are Healing Baptism (EB) and Hand of Love (EBC).
* Purity Wager (EB, Ronfar). Even stranger. It’s the highest level of his Hades Wager spell, and its name is approximately Revival Big Match.

Best (well, only) reference to another series
* Haduken (Jean, EB). Temzin notes: “This one, 気功弾 kikoudan, is a pretty obvious nod to Chun-li's 気功拳 kikouken, or qigong (spirit energy).” I, er, had to look up what game this is from and verify that it’s the same series that Hadoken is in, because I know nothing at all about fighting games. I wonder why WD went for a takeoff of Hadoken instead.

Another minor meaning change in meaning is her first dance spell set. In English it’s Butterfly/Swallow/Vulture Dance; in Japanese it’s Butterfly/Swallowtail/Poison Moth Dance. I expect Swallowtail didn’t fit into the character space, but I wonder why they went with birds for the other two instead of substituting in other butterflies or moths. In EBC it went the other way, with her first spell being Moth Dance and it then upgrading to Butterfly Dance, in both English and Japanese.

I got curious about how long I’ve been making these lists of spell names, and found that the original file was created in 2006. But its genesis was probably in 2005, when a discussion here included a commenter mentioning that the SSS Japanese spell names were really odd. She sent me a list someone else had transcribed, and yeah, going by that list, the names were very strange. Except… the person who did the transcriptions had evidently just looked up the katakana on a chart, but didn’t know that a small ツ lengthens the following consonant. Worse, he’d confused two sets of lookalike katakana, シ / ツ (shi / tsu) and ソ / ン (so / n), as well as occasional other errors, so Kyle’s Sonic Riser and Heat Up were transcribed as [nnishikuraezaa] and [huutoashipu]. He didn’t try to turn those two into English, but the rest he did, with such notable results as Ray Sheet, Spoke Bar, Flame Sucker, Curried Storm, and my favorite, Horatio Arrow. (Who married Fulari of Burg.)

(It seems a little mean-spirited to make fun of someone else’s efforts, I know, but I had to share those names.)

A different person had said that the White Dragon spell would be directly translated as White Dragon Nurse-Maid. That almost fits in with the SSS idea of too much dependence on Althena.

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Temzin
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Temzin »

Ha! The more Fulari around here, the better, I say.
Alunissage wrote: * Haduken (Jean, EB). Temzin notes: “This one, 気功弾 kikoudan, is a pretty obvious nod to Chun-li's 気功拳 kikouken, or qigong (spirit energy).” I, er, had to look up what game this is from and verify that it’s the same series that Hadoken is in, because I know nothing at all about fighting games. I wonder why WD went for a takeoff of Hadoken instead.
Oh, I think they were going for a reference that was so iconic that it would make sense to English speakers, too. Hadouken is so well known in both languages that the WD Haduken's intent it clear, whereas I'd be surprised if any English speakers outside of dedicated fighting game players would recognize Chun-li's Kikouken. Meant to say "qigong fist," by the way, left off the last word, sorry!
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MaroonChan
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by MaroonChan »

Pretty neat! Rather interesting read!

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Kizyr
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Kizyr »

Temzin wrote:Oh sure, these only take a second to do! Happy to help with any that Kiz is too busy to tackle. Er, except for Nasch's weird German-sounding spell in SSS, though! Some mysteries will remain eternal.

Edit: it was annoying me again, so I looked around and see that it must be Russian! The グローム is apparently the cyrillic "гром" (roman characters: "grom") for "thunder," and the シュペル may be "cупер" (roman characters: "super") for the Russian pronounciation of "super," but not confident here at all except with the grom since I don't speak Russian and can't read cyrillic. Could be supergrom, could be something else. Oh well.
Ok this is a bit of a revelation! I didn't think to start looking to other languages.

I can read Cyrillic, but I can't speak any language that uses its script (Russian or otherwise), so I don't know if I could be any particular help there. But the romanized characters for those is correct (except o isn't as elongated as the oo in グローム). KF
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Greco12
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Re: Spells in Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 versions

Post by Greco12 »

Someone in a thread on HCBailly's forums was doing a comparison between the SCD and PSX versions of Lunar 1's party members. His conclusion: Mia and Nash are overall more useful in the PSX version, Alex and Kyle were better in the SCD version, and Jessica didn't change much between either version. Kyle (skip to page 12 in the thread) in particular suffers in the remakes because he's slower and less powerful than Alex. The user also says there are dungeons in SSSC that would be excruciatingly frustrating without Mia's presence.

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