There are very minor spoilers in this review.

I grew up on Lunar Silver Star Story Complete & Eternal Blue Complete. When I got my first PlayStation, I picked up Final Fantasy Fantasy VII, VIII, and these two games. And I fell in love with them.

For a long time they were out of print and difficult to find, but this Collection has made them easily accessible again in a form that, while not perfect, is still a joy to have.

At the time of writing this review, I have put about two and a half hours into Silver Star Story. I'm playing with the Remastered graphics at 1440p and everything runs absolutely fine. I've had no issues with performance -- which isn't always a given these days -- and there are no weird frame pacing issues caused by character walk speed not matching up with camera pan speed (similar to those seen in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters or Sea of Stars).

Where I expect people will be divided is on the new localization and the game balancing.

The script is very similar to the original PS1 script, but with some minor changes that have been made mostly to the scenes with recorded dialog. This might be to avoid issues regarding the original dub and Victor Ireland, who supposedly still owns the right to the original recordings. A lot of the jokes are the same in the prose-only dialog, but there are minor changes (for example, the little boy in Burg who wanted to eat his Wheaties and grow up big and strong in the PS1 translation now wants to eat his veggies instead).

I have not heard the entire new voice cast yet -- at present I've just beaten the first boss in Silver Star Story and am about to board the boat to Meribia -- but the voice actors I have heard thus far do a fine job. If you have a lot of nostalgia for the original actors it's going to take some adjusting, but they are not doing a bad job and they sound fairly similar to the original cast.

The place where I think most folks will get hung up is the balancing. I've read that Working Designs re-balanced these games when they released it in America on PS1, so I don't know how the original Japanese releases played, but this Remastered collection is MUCH easier than I remember the PS1 versions being. I recall there being a lot of grinding in that first dungeon.

In this release, I've done almost no grinding, I've basically fought my way through every enemy I've encountered on the map without leaving an area to respawn the mobs to fight them again, and within around 2 hours everyone in my party is level 11.

Apparently, Working Designs completely butchered combat balancing to make the game artificially harder in an attempt to prevent rentals (they figured you were more likely to buy the game if it took significantly longer to get through it). From what I've read, regular mobs were made 20 to 40% stronger, EXP payout was reduced by 15%, Silver payout was reduced by 11%, and all in-game item prices were significantly increased to force more grinding. These changes have been restored to the Japanese original in the Remastered Collection.

Bosses still scale to Alex's level, but the values of their stats have been adjusted back to the Japanese original as well, making them a little less spounge-y than they were in the North American release.

This is closer to how the game was intended to play when released in Japan, but a lot of players are going to be nostalgic for the higher difficulty of the North American release. I expect there will be mods in the future that will restore the North American PS1 difficulty, so if that's really important to you, you might want to wait to buy this.

If the lower difficulty is not a deal breaker, then I reckon this is a fantastic (and affordable when compared to eBay prices for the original PS1 releases) way to re-experience a couple of classic RPGs that have for a long time been trapped on 30 year old hardware.

There are very minor spoilers in this review. I grew up on Lunar Silver Star Story Complete & Eternal Blue Complete. When I got my first PlayStation, I picked up Final Fantasy Fantasy VII, VIII, and these two games. And I fell in love with them. For a long time they were out of print and difficult to find, but this Collection has made them easily accessible again in a form that, while not perfect, is still a joy to have. At the time of writing this review, I have put about two and a half hours into Silver Star Story. I'm playing with the Remastered graphics at 1440p and everything runs absolutely fine. I've had no issues with performance -- which isn't always a given these days -- and there are no weird frame pacing issues caused by character walk speed not matching up with camera pan speed (similar to those seen in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters or Sea of Stars). Where I expect people will be divided is on the new localization and the game balancing. The script is very similar to the original PS1 script, but with some minor changes that have been made mostly to the scenes with recorded dialog. This might be to avoid issues regarding the original dub and Victor Ireland, who supposedly still owns the right to the original recordings. A lot of the jokes are the same in the prose-only dialog, but there are minor changes (for example, the little boy in Burg who wanted to eat his Wheaties and grow up big and strong in the PS1 translation now wants to eat his veggies instead). I have not heard the entire new voice cast yet -- at present I've just beaten the first boss in Silver Star Story and am about to board the boat to Meribia -- but the voice actors I have heard thus far do a fine job. If you have a lot of nostalgia for the original actors it's going to take some adjusting, but they are not doing a bad job and they sound fairly similar to the original cast. The place where I think most folks will get hung up is the balancing. I've read that Working Designs re-balanced these games when they released it in America on PS1, so I don't know how the original Japanese releases played, but this Remastered collection is MUCH easier than I remember the PS1 versions being. I recall there being a lot of grinding in that first dungeon. In this release, I've done almost no grinding, I've basically fought my way through every enemy I've encountered on the map without leaving an area to respawn the mobs to fight them again, and within around 2 hours everyone in my party is level 11. Apparently, Working Designs completely butchered combat balancing to make the game artificially harder in an attempt to prevent rentals (they figured you were more likely to buy the game if it took significantly longer to get through it). From what I've read, regular mobs were made 20 to 40% stronger, EXP payout was reduced by 15%, Silver payout was reduced by 11%, and all in-game item prices were significantly increased to force more grinding. These changes have been restored to the Japanese original in the Remastered Collection. Bosses still scale to Alex's level, but the values of their stats have been adjusted back to the Japanese original as well, making them a little less spounge-y than they were in the North American release. This is closer to how the game was intended to play when released in Japan, but a lot of players are going to be nostalgic for the higher difficulty of the North American release. I expect there will be mods in the future that will restore the North American PS1 difficulty, so if that's really important to you, you might want to wait to buy this. If the lower difficulty is not a deal breaker, then I reckon this is a fantastic (and affordable when compared to eBay prices for the original PS1 releases) way to re-experience a couple of classic RPGs that have for a long time been trapped on 30 year old hardware.