[RHDNBot]

Update By: Ms. Tea

The 2.0 version of the Lunar: Eternal Blue Unworked patch has been released!

When it was localized by Working Designs, Lunar: Eternal Blue for Sega CD had a lot of very controversial gameplay changes - from needing to use experience points to save the game, to jacking up the difficulty of most fights. This patch reverts all of that back to the Japanese version while keeping the official translation, restores the Japanese version's uncensored graphics, and switches to a much easier-to-read font. No more all-caps dialogue!

The old 1.0 version of the patch was released on the Romhacking.net forums, but it had a few cutscenes which would desync along with slow loading times and a few bugs. The new 2.0 version fixes all of those problems while also fixing a large number of issues with the script.

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[TimeCop]

Thank you for this. I hope the rest of the "Unworked" patches are finalized and submitted to romhacking.net as well.

[love_undub]

Thanks a lot for this, I still own the original retail discs from both Sega CD Lunar games and consider them as two of my favorite JRPGs, especially because of the amazing music  Being able to experience them more like the original Japanese versions and with better fonts is a great excuse to finally play them again 

Some suggestions/requests if you should plan to do some future updates, could you add the option to remove the added song by Working Designs in the final Star Dragon Tower dungeon? I think that would make sense if the goal is to make the game more like the original Japanese version however I also just think that the song sounds kind of out of place and doesn't fit with the rest of the music.

Also an undub version would be interesting, even though Working Designs did a good job here unlike many other games from those times, but having listened to the Lunatic Parade audio dramas with the original Japanese cast I also got used to those voices 

[kaine23]

can't wait to try this! hope to see others soon!

[Iceman100x]

Thank you for this. I hope the rest of the "Unworked" patches are finalized and submitted to romhacking.net as well.

you can easily download this patched.

[ifightdragons]

you can easily download this patched.

With the 2.0 patch? I've only seen it available pre-patched with the old patch. Please PM me if you can.

[kaiisen]

It seems to be the perfect moment for me to try the Lunar series on Sega CD!

I guess not everybody does but I really do appreciate the effort of bringing restored content to the english ports.

Make them so much enjoyable to try.

Thank you!

[Lord Igniz]

Will Silver Star Story also get a 2.0 patch?

[Supper]

I swore I'd never open the thread I started for this project again, which I suppose is terribly irresponsible of me as the original author, but... well, frankly, I really don't want to look at or think about, much less play, the English versions of these games ever again, which sort of precludes working on these hacks. But thanks for taking the time to clean up my terrible, terrible old hacking work for people who are interested in this sort of thing. It's a miracle the original release functioned in any capacity, because I really had no idea what I was doing. I don't envy you having to pick up after the mess I made... Sorry

[julayla]

Thank you for the finalization of this. And honestly, I hope that more will be undone from the Working Designs team (especially Rayearth) on what they did back then.

[Vebent]

I honestly didn't know Lunar was originally on Sega CD. I thought it was only on Playstation. So is the Sega CD version (after this patch) the better version?

[clockworkbutterfly]

Thanks so much for this.  It looks beautiful!

I don't know if there's a plan to do anything more for Eternal Blue, but I've always wondered about swapping the PCM music files for rips from the Saturn version.  The quality difference might be negligible to some, but others say it's better than the Playstation version.

Either way, can't wait to play this!  Thanks for all your hard work!

— CB

[love_undub]

I honestly didn't know Lunar was originally on Sega CD. I thought it was only on Playstation. So is the Sega CD version (after this patch) the better version?

Having played both versions I'd say that at least for me the original Sega CD version is much better for a couple of reasons. First the dungeons are far too much simplified in the PS/Saturn versions, while in the Sega CD version they are real mazes like you expect from classical JRPGs there is in most cases in the PS/Saturn versions just a straight path.
Another reason are missing small elements and puzzles in the PS/Saturn versions, I can't remember them all right now but I am sure there were quite a few One I remember for sure is when you are in the snowy village looking for the snow monster on the mountains on the Sega CD you had roll down some snow balls to close some holes to be able to move on. This element was completely missing in the PS/Saturn version and it was just a straight path to the snow monster.
Another thing that disappointed me that the first encounter with the Phantom Sentry was missing on the PS/Saturn. On the Sega CD you meet and fight him quite early while passing the top of a mountain and it is quite a mystery who he was (Lucia seems to know who he was but doesn't explain it any further) and you won't meet him again until the Epilogue.

Here you can see the two encounters on YouTube:

First Encounter:

https://youtu.be/c0HzakuM_lY

Second Encounter:

https://youtu.be/DDbmSiu46iE

I think in the Epilogue of the PS/Saturn version a boss called Phantom Sentry is also there guarding one of the crystals to enter the Star Dragon tower but he is just that, a boss you have to fight with no dialogue or mystic aura because of an earlier encounter, so he was basically cut out of the game as a character.

Overall it also makes me wonder why the Playstation/Saturn version is called Lunar Eternal Blue Complete, since I feel that the Sega CD version is the more "complete" version 

[KingMike]

Overall it also makes me wonder why the Playstation/Saturn version is called Lunar Eternal Blue Complete, since I feel that the Sega CD version is the more "complete" version 

The only time I see "Complete" used in the Japanese titles is a Saturn re-release of Silver Star which claims to add support for the MPEG Card add-on, so I assume it was probably more complete in relation to the standard Saturn version.

Otherwise is more complete in Victor Ireland's mind.

[love_undub]

The only time I see "Complete" used in the Japanese titles is a Saturn re-release of Silver Star which claims to add support for the MPEG Card add-on, so I assume it was probably more complete in relation to the standard Saturn version.

Otherwise is more complete in Victor Ireland's mind.

I actually remember the MPEG-Card version for the Sega Saturn, one of the best things about was, that you could put the disc into a PC and watch all the videos from the game (including the nice opening and Luna singing on the boat scene) with a normal video player, since they didn't a proprietary Saturn specific video codec, great thing in the pre-YouTube days  But I didn't remember this specific version was called Lunar Silver Star Story Complete which is kind of misleading since people might expect additional content in the game and not just a little better looking video sequences.


Coming back to this great 2.0 patch, I did a little research about the added song for the Star Dragon Tower and checked out, which music was being used there in the original Japanese game and having played the PS/Saturn version just once I made sure if it was used again or not.

Here you can hear the music used in the original Japanese Mega CD version, it is the same as in the Blue Spire:

https://youtu.be/TSakbrq-b_E?t=5519


And here the Star Dragon Tower in a video someone playing the PS-version, here the music from Zophars Domain is being used like in the Japanese version but they didn't add their own song again:

https://youtu.be/rBcSrqGvnWQ?t=144


Like I said, the added song by Working Designs doesn't sound very good (it kinda wants to sound dramatic but is a far to simple composition to make it happen) and it doesn't fit into the otherwise wonderful soundtrack of the game. And the fact that they didn't do this change again to the Playstation version tells you that probably most other players also felt so. So I'd be more than happy if by any chance a 2.1 of this patch could be made which undoes also this change by Working Designs, it might seem on the first sight that they added some value to the game but to me this was always the most annoying change they made to the game, more than the controversial paying magic exp to save change 

[Maverynthia]

Maybe someone will take this further with a complete retranslation and undub of the horrible voices.

[julayla]

Undub it first at least. Though I wouldn't mind a redub, but that's only in a dream. But hey good work on it so far.