Lunatic Dawn IITrickless Play Log #01
#1 The Freedom to Cross the Bounds of Adventure!
He who fights with monsters
should look to it that he himself
does not become a monster.
And when you gaze long into an abyss,
the abyss gazes also into you.
-Friedrich NietzschePC98 Opening PC98 (September '94)
FM-Towns (November '94)
Windows (December '99)
I will be playing the PC98 version. I don’t think the FM-Towns version is too different, but the Windows version supposedly fixes some bugs and balancing issues. As mentioned in Derboo’s OP, the game is also part of the ‘Legend Pack’ that is available from Artdink’s homepage, and more recently Steam.
Open world games aren’t really my thing, but this one seems interesting. I don’t see myself spending too much time with it though. I may just stop playing after a while, but I at least hope that this will help act as a guide for others. Please do correct any errors you see, particularly the translations.
Character creation time!
You can make up a
Name, or keep the default as ルナティック (Lunatic). English, Russian and Greek alphabet is also available. Choosing
Family background will affect your base stats (and maybe also max stats?), and as I found out recently it also affects the amount of money you start off with.
As with the first game you can also pick a
Weakness for your character, but this time it seems they have limited it to the types of enemies you could face. ‘None’ is also an option, which may beg the question – why bother with any weakness when you can choose none? Maybe there is some kind of advantage if you do pick a weakness?
You then need to select a
Gender (will affect stats), and type in a
Title for your character. The default is 冒険者の (Adventurer) and shows before your name. It’s merely for show and can be changed within the game. Western alphabet is also available.
You don’t select an age this time, as every character begins 16 years old.
エキストラポイント (Extra Points) will need to be distributed to these stats:
I ended up creating a mercenary called Lord Fudge. I slightly focused on strength, intelligence and spirit, but chose no weaknesses. In hindsight I should have picked one just to see what type of effects it could have. Once ready, we jump straight into a town called オルデブルク (Oldebroek (?)).
Let’s take a look at those 4 options along the bottom and see what they bring up.
Before we explore the town, let’s see what the rest of the screen tells us. The right hand side shows the current party (just me at the moment). Clicking on a party member will bring up more details of them. Below the date and the town name are 3 icons. You can click on the icons to show something else.
Food is essential. It is consumed each day you travel, not enough and you’ll starve to death.
Oil is used during dungeons (for the lamp). I assume
Keys are used for unlocking generic doors and chests. I’m not sure what the
Hero and
Famous numbers can do within the game. May be you will get access to better quests and areas if they are high enough. Food, Oil and Keys can be bought from the Item Shop. Hero and Famous points can be increased/decreased depending on which Temple you donate to. There may also be other methods.
You can also talk to different residents by clicking on a house shown in the display window of the town, and also move to different parts of the town via the Map. It’s pretty impressive that they’ve made the effort into creating a whole (isometric) town.
Before I do anything I thought it’d be best to check up on my hero.
(Yes, I giggled at 'Stoned') Looks like there are more character stats to take into consideration. The first column is the same as during the character creation screen, the second and third are as follows:
Stats can be increased by visiting the Training School or Temples. As of yet I’m not sure if there is any other way. The stuff on the third row, with the exception of Thievery and Camping, relate to types of magic. I’m guessing I might be able to learn new skills and magic if I am able to raise those numbers to a certain amount.
Anyway, it turns out my hero has no weapons or clothes so we’ll need to head to the shops. The
Weapons Shop is a good place to start. Unlike LD1, there is only one of each shop.
The
Forge option lets you improve any weapon/armor you currently have.
Call A Master allows you to speak to the owner (This option is available in other shops). It’s possible to recruit a ‘master’ to your party, but at this early stage of the game they’re either busy or away.
I went ahead and bought a Broad Sword, Plate Helm and Hard Leather Armor. Weapon/armor details show up like this:
Time to hit the
Item Shop to stock up on supplies.
Food and
Oil doesn’t cost that much, so I just went ahead and bought maximum amount of each (99 days and 99 hours respectively).
Keys can also be bought but they were a bit pricey. The
Product section has some overpriced items. There were Glass Ornaments, Fur Mink and Fresco Artwork for sale – each costing around or over 30,000G! (I have less than 5000G…).
One last place to visit - the
Magic Shop.
You don’t actually buy any spells from here, instead there are healing and other consumable items. I bought a couple of Heal Needles (!) for my travels.
Enchant allows you to add magic to your weapon or armor (I didn’t bother).
I’ll visit the other places in due course but in brief –
Training School allows you to build up your stats.
Holy/Dark Temples allows training in their respective arts and receive donations.
Inn is the place where you can rest, recruit and accept quests.
Castle let’s you have an audience with the king (I was told to go away) or buy pass permits for other areas (I think). Lastly, you can hire a
Carriage to travel to other towns.
That’s it for now. Next episode, I will try to earn some money!