Lunar 2 Remastered beaten:

Apparently there's postgame content but I just looked up the ending cinematic online because I can't be bothered to play this game any longer.  Beating Zophar and bringing world peace is good enough for me.  The trick to defeating Zophar is White Dragon Protect.  Zophar keeps pounding the party with magic attacks every turn, so the only way to limit his damage output is to put a magic-cancel barrier on every character every turn.  Then the healer can keep up with his physical attacks and your party stays alive.  The only way to keep up Dragon Protect on the party every turn for such a long fight is to equip Lemina with it, because she has the highest mana pool, and then give her a constant supply of silver lights which restore her mp to full whenever she's looking tired.  Luckily Zophar's hp is low enough that I still had some silver lights to spare when he croaked.

Zophar has a hand that sucks away at your mana supply, but it can be quickly chopped off with Hiro's triple slash, so that's the first priority in the boss fight.  The second priority is to kill the hand that keeps casting all that devastating magic, but sadly it's only vulnerable to magic attacks, and Lemina, the magic attacker, has to stay busy casting Dragon Protect.  Which meant Hiro had to deal with this hand, too, using super cyclone, an ability that's hardly his forte.

I lost to the boss multiple times before I won, he's not an easy encounter at level 51.  In fact I lost to most of the bosses in the game before I worked out how to win them.  The whole game wasn't forgiving.  The bosses in Lunar 2 all come after long and grueling dungeons that sap away at your mana supply and you never get to restore your mana before boss fights.  The same was true of Zophar, I used 14 star lights (mana potions) just to get my mana back before the boss encounter.  And you can only hold 20 in your inventory.

On another bright note, it turns out Hikaru Midorikawa (the voice of Kyosuke in Little Busters!) is the Japanese voice for the protagonist, Hiro.  The Japanese audio feature of the remaster keeps paying dividends.  I also learned that Noriyuki Iwadare was the composer of Lunar 2, not Isao Mizoguchi like I had long assumed.  Isao was a lowly underling while Iwadare did the real creative work.  It makes sense because the music of Lunar 1 and Lunar 2 is very similar in style and tone.  It turns out it was by the same composer, so of course it sounded similar.  This means Noriyuki gets all the points credit in my music hall of fame for Lunar 1 and 2, suddenly making him my 11th favorite composer of all time with 444 points in all.

It took years to beat these two remastered games from the time I bought them.  I always had something better to do, until now.  I finally found some time in my schedule to stroll back down memory lane.  I love the anime style of Lunar 2, it's the same 90's style I was praising in Samurai Spirits.  Studio Gonzo did the animation, a studio that went out of business long ago, but was legendary during its time.

My main complaints with the game are how pointless and repetitive the dialogue with npc's was, and the gameplay.  It's never made clear what your equipment or spells do.  In fact, you aren't even allowed to know the stats of equipment in stores until you buy them.  And there's all sorts of hidden drawbacks to spells that are never included in the tooltip, like that your attack and defense buffs gradually wear off over time.  How much time?  Nobody knows.  It's never made clear how long the buffs last.  How can I plan around spells when I don't even know what they do?  Heaven Burns Red gives detailed descriptions of what every ability does down to 1% changes, with clear descriptions of how many uses they have or how many turns they last.  It's just an infinitely better turn-based combat system.

One ability, Blue Dragon Rise, literally in the tooltip says 'unleash your fighting spirit.'  It doesn't buff any known stat, so nobody knows what it actually does.  And yet it costs 14 mp and a turn to cast.  A buff that nobody knows what it buffs.  A mystery that's lasted 30 years since the game came out and still nobody knows.

Oh well, everyone knows Lunar isn't about gameplay, it's about the anime cut scenes and music.  And those were splendid, just as I remember them being.  Now I can play Octopath Traveler 0 which I'm sure has a much more modern, complicated, yet well-explained combat system.

I also finished Kirame's route, so all the girls I included in my wonderful hall of fame, I've now properly done their content.  I don't endorse things I'm not willing to do myself.  There's only one route left in Futamata Ren'ai, Rui's route, a girl I really don't care for, but I'll do it just to finish the game.