It does. Though in my experience, it's not worth using. It has a chance of freezing your game or skrewing with any FMVs, and it doesn't really shorten the load time by a lot. And I think it contributed to my last PS2 breaking down with a case of DRE.I haven't played any of the other Lunar games, so my opinions on it probably wouldn't be worth much. The game has a few not-so-great ideas, though:

1) You can't choose who to attack. You choose to attack, it attacks automatically. And the AI that chooses the targets doesn't seem to be that great. (Seriously, I've seen better AI in Dragon Warrior 4. And that's an NES game!) Typical battle scenario so far, my fighter attacks, defeats the first monster in one strike. Then my weak mage goes for the second monster. Next turn, my fighter goes after the same monster instead of going after the third monster for a one-hit defeat in order to leave my weak mage a chance to defeat the second monster (which would shorten the battle a bit).

2) You can't get Xp and items from the same battle. You're either getting XP, while a timer counts down between monsters, and you're trying to defeat all the monsters in the room without the clock going a full rotation in order to clear the room and obtain a special item in a blue chest, or you're fighting monsters just to recieve quest items.

3) The only way to get money in the game (aside from selling the stuff you find, which aren't worth a lot) are going on missions. While I'm not against that idea, most missions seem to require collecting certain items from monsters and delivering those items to a specific person. Which I'm not that against. The problem is, you have to know what monsters give what items, because the game sure doesn't tell you.

4) Actually, this isn't something restricted to this game as it is a problem I have with a lot of RPGs. And that is, healing spells cost way more MP than I'd like. Specifically, my cure-one spell costs 10MP. My mage is currently L10, with a little over 40MP. Not that this puts me in any serious trouble (so far). The spell seems to completely heal HP (there's also a cure-party spell that costs 30MP and has the same effect), and there's at least one statue in each level and town that completely restores HP/MP. Except, if I'm trying to clear a room of monsters, I can't very well head back to the last room that had the statue, or else the room resets.

It's not so bad that I don't want to play the game, though. But I can see why Lunar fans probably won't like it. (Oh, and the battles move just a bit slow, unless you hold one or both of the shoulder buttons.)

As well as this, I'm also playing Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES) when I need a break from role-playing. My attention span with games isn't big enough to keep at a 20-hour-or-so RPG for very long.

Wow. It sounds like Lunar is way out of balance. It's too bad.
If you do like it ( or don't, either way ), see if you
can get your hands on the first Lunar game ( port )
for the PSone ( comes in a shiny box! ), or Lunar 2: Eternal Blue,
also a port for the PSone ( in a shiny box! ).

Those two are some of the best games I've played.

Man, Zero Wing takes a little bit of patience... The only reason I'm putting myself through this is to hopfully run into some more dialog at the end of the game....

As far as Chrono Trigger is concerned... it is the best game ever made. The SNES version had no load times. And Akira Toriama did a great job on the scenes in the PS version... Still my favorite to this day....

*sighs*

(this would be the part where I use that "Dreamy" emotion with hasslehoff... but it's gettin old)

Well one thing of note, is if Lunar: Dragon Song goes well enough, more new (NEW!) Lunar games will be made.

I've seen the PS1 Lunar games. Due to their extras though, I never see them cheap. Cheapest I've seen is $40.

^ $40? Shoot. Lunar 2 was $60 when I was in Florida in '00. It was pretty pricey even back then.

Yeah, they're all pretty expensive, although I did happen to spot Lunar 2 in a GameStop the other day. It didn't have the nice box, the fully illustrated manual nor the thumbpad sticks, though. It was 4 GameStop CD cases tied together with a rubber band (that sounds really cheap when you think about it).

Of course, it lacked the features, and it was a preowned one.

Then again, I've never seen a copy of the first Lunar in a store. I got the first Lunar PSone box set off of a friend. I traded him Saga Frontier 2 for it. Heheheh...

Suikoden II, Suikoden IV, and Tales of Symphonia. About to add the two Halos to the list.

^ A really good trade!

playing Tales of Phantasia on the gba. great game ^^