Shining Force is a tactics role-playing game for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
that arrived in North America in 1993 with the subtitle "The Legacy of Great Intention."
Whatever that means.
The story follows Max
a guy that was found washed up on a beach with amnesia.
Hmm...that sounds familiar..
Anyway, he has become best friends with a local guy named Lowe
and has been studying under Lord Varios.
One day a mysterious man named Kane, who works for Darksol,
appears with the armies of Runefaust and attempts to break into the Shining Path
a place that holds the destructive Dark Dragon.
After the king sends Max and his friends to stop Kane,
the group is pulled into the nefarious plot of Darksol and must travel the world to stop him.
Interestingly the original translation of the game on the Sega Genesis
completely left out the fact that max is an amnesiac
which makes the revelation of who Kane is
-without spoiling I'll say that Max knows him -
completely pointless.
It's especially strange given that the translation is pretty good for a game that came out in 1993.
Breath of Fire 2 was released 2 years laters
and has one of the worst translations ever.
There's a plot divergence in the Game Boy Advance remake of Shining Force
in that you play as the princess of Runefaust, Narsha,
as well as Max.
After realizing that the king has been possessed by Darksol
she seeks out the Shining Force and eventually joins the main group after the first 6 chapters
To perhaps compensate for a lack of voice acting
all of the characters' dialogue is punctuated with sound effects
and while I normally don't mind that kind of thing
the tones they went for in this game are a little annoying.
Actually the music is fairly annoying as well.
The actual compositions aren't bad
if I find re-orchestrated versions, some of the songs are really amazing
but I vastly prefer to play this game with other music playing.
I think this really just comes down to personal taste
as I just don't really like the Genesis' sound chip.
Sega might have had BLAST PROCESSING
but the Super Nintendo creamed them in sound quality.
At least I think so anyway.
The gameplay in Shining Force is fairly standard for an isometric, turn-based title
but does differ in the way turns work.
Most modern games of this type have you move all of your characters in a single turn
before you pass it over to the enemy team
but that's not the case here.
The game sorts out every character and enemy into a turn order
and it moves from person to person
which means that you could have multiple enemies taking actions in the middle of two of your characters'.
This adds a different layer of difficulty to the game
as you could move one character to attack an enemy and then end up surrounded.
It would be a little easier if the game told you the movement order but it doesn't.
So you have to either memorize it as you go or just wing it.
The AI isn't even all that smart
it tends to move in very specific ways
but it can easily overwhelm you this way, leading to much more drawn out battles.
Speaking of not showing things
there isn't really much of a HUD to speak of here.
The game will show you a character's stats when it is their turn
but other than that, everything is hidden.
The only way to see more detailed stats
is to press a button when on a character and then press another one to bring it up.
It's oddly convoluted and kinda slow for a game on a cartridge.
Hiding everything like this does keep the screen from being too crowded
but I honestly would've preferred more information as switching is just kind of a pain.
Despite movement being tricky and the lack of HUD being annoying
the battles are generally quite fun in their simplicity.
There aren't any elaborate combo attacks or anything of that sort
just pure smashing things with weapons and magic.
If you're looking for something simple, Shining Force is a great choice.
Of course there is a problem with that simplicity
and it comes along with the territory of older, more archaic games.
The lack of more modern tweaks
means that you're probably going to be annoyed by some backwards-ass systems.
First of all
despite your characters gaining EXP to level up and become more powerful
the game doesn't offer you any side quests or random enemies to fight
so all you can do is fight in the main storyline battles.
It DOES seem like they thought of this at least a little bit though
as when you're killed you end up back at the last priest you visited without losing any progress.
So if you're really in need of some EXP
you can go into a battle,
fight as long as you can in order to gain some levels
and then die and try it again.
This works well enough but you will need to pay the priest a sum
to revive every single dead character, so be careful about your money.
There's another little nit to pick in that the RPG elements of exploring towns
and talking to people feels a little redundant at times.
There are times where it has you talk to a character
leave the screen to trigger an event
and then has you walk straight back.
It's cool that a game this early doesn't just have you going from battle to battle
but sometimes the exploration is just pointless.
At least there is treasure to be found and new characters to recruit from time to time.
The second old school aspect
and arguably the most annoying thing ever
is the inventory management
and good GOD have games come a looong way.
You can only buy items one by one,
every character has a limit of 4 items each,
- which effects treasure chests by the way, as in if Max's inventory is full
you can't get the items out -
you can't see what an item does just by selecting it,
and once your inventory is full
you have to pass items around. One by one.
The upside here is that you aren't going to be managing hundreds of items at once
but that's cold comfort when you have to deal with this tedium CONSTANTLY.
Equipping is dealt with slightly better
in that you can see which characters can use the weapons when buying from a shop
Buuuuut
the game forgets to let you know when it's just sitting in your inventory.
Have fun passing that random item around for 20 minutes while you try to figure out who it's for.
Can you tell what the worst part of the game is yet?
At least the graphics are a pretty great part of the game.
Everything is nicely colourful
- although there is an overemphasis of green for some reason -
and every character sprite looks unique.
What's also really neat is when battles take place on maps that you were just walking around normally on
like in towns.
The in-battle graphics are especially cool and blew my mind as a kid.
It wasn't common to see these large, super detailed sprites in games
and the addition of the neat effects were icing on the cake.
These sequences have been outdone
but these were definitely cool back in the day.
Overall I found Shining Force to be a fun game to play and my issues with it were small
except for the item management aspect.
While I've played enough retro games to be able to handle the frustration
this could be a deal breaker for some.
Add in the other nitpicks like the annoying music
and the length of the battles
and I'd have to say this one is firmly in the try before you buy category.
You may love it
or you may very well hate it.
Hey thanks for checking out my video!
Have you played Shining Force?
What do you think of it?
Let me know in the comments below.
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