I am honestly of impressed at how deeply committed to not revisiting the SRPG well Sega is with the Shining series. Especially after Fire Emblem took off.
Are the action RPGs really that popular?
Are the action RPGs really that popular?
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Shining Force - The Thread of Great Intention
- Thread starter Kazin
- Start date
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
Well, unless you count Shining Force CD, which was a remake of the first two Game Gear games and the best way to play through them. (That's how I did it, anyway.)
I really wish I understood how to hack a rom. I would love to put the script from Book 1 on the CD version into the Game Gear rom. I want to play the original!
I'm past the battle I usually got hung up on when I was a kid in Sword of Hajya - the one where Natasha's group has to climb vines on a cliff while fighting enemies along the way. It's not as though the enemies are particularly difficult, it's just that the frickin Master Mage and his frickin Blaze 3 can one shot anyone with 24ish HP or less, which is... most of the team. So, you have to carefully lure him out with either Luke or Randolf to tank a Blaze 3, and then have everyone rush him and hope you don't get Natasha (or your whole team!) killed if he gets a second turn. ...which happened to me the first attempt at the battle. Successfully took him out in the second.
I love this game lol
I'm in new-ish territory now. I've done the battle I've just arrived at before, but I used to give up on the cliffside Master Mage wall when I was a kid so I'm unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the battles from here on out. How exciting!
I love this game lol
I'm in new-ish territory now. I've done the battle I've just arrived at before, but I used to give up on the cliffside Master Mage wall when I was a kid so I'm unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the battles from here on out. How exciting!
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
I always wanted a legit copy of Sword of Hajya growing up, but never found it cheap enough. It sat in the closest Toys 'R' Us for the longest, but since I lived an hour away, I couldn't keep an eye on when it hit clearance. Oh well. 
I did get my Game Gear from there, though, for nice and cheap.
I did get my Game Gear from there, though, for nice and cheap.
That's how I felt about the first Shining Force game when I was a kid - we could never find it, or when we did chance across it, I didn't have the money and/or my parents were unwilling to just buy it for me at random (and fair enough, I suppose). I didn't play it until I found a used copy in the early 2000s, and iirc, the first time I beat it was on the GBA version, which I bought with money from my first job. Still, I had the second game and Sword of Hajya, so I wasn't bad off, really.
I coveted Shining Force III for so long, and even after I eventually got it in like 2010 or 2011 or whatever, I still haven't beaten it, much less scenarios 2 and 3 :/
I coveted Shining Force III for so long, and even after I eventually got it in like 2010 or 2011 or whatever, I still haven't beaten it, much less scenarios 2 and 3 :/
Never got to play Shining Force CD, that music above is lovely.
Still impresses me how much the artists got out of the MegaDrive's colour palette in the franchise. Not to mention the illustrative style of the character portraits/etc.
Just charming and pops. Could be my bias for really similar PC-88, 98, MSX, and other low colour Japanese PCs of the 80s/90s though.
Still impresses me how much the artists got out of the MegaDrive's colour palette in the franchise. Not to mention the illustrative style of the character portraits/etc.
Just charming and pops. Could be my bias for really similar PC-88, 98, MSX, and other low colour Japanese PCs of the 80s/90s though.
SF II did get a symphonic album as many 90's JRPGs did:
I love shining force. I think I like the original better than II. More focussed, less wandering. More Zylo.
Shining in the Darkness (wonderful title) and Holy Ark are pretty great, too. Solid dungeon crawls.
I haven’t played Shining Force III. I own Japanese copies of all three scenarios because I knew there was a translation in the works and didn’t realise they were retranslating the near impossible to obtain English release rather than the readily available Japanese. I should get around to it.
Shining in the Darkness (wonderful title) and Holy Ark are pretty great, too. Solid dungeon crawls.
I haven’t played Shining Force III. I own Japanese copies of all three scenarios because I knew there was a translation in the works and didn’t realise they were retranslating the near impossible to obtain English release rather than the readily available Japanese. I should get around to it.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
Oh hell yeah, this is a valid point. Distressing lack of Zylo in Shining Force 2
I see your Zylo, which is legitimate, but I counter with Peter.
I mean, you do get a wolfman in 2 as well, but he's uh, kinda not worth it?
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
If I recall correctly, and it has been a while, you have to be vaguely careful with Peter early on. Zylo starts out busted and only gets more and more busted. My friend's Shining Force was basically some underlevelled jobbers and Zylo the incredible murder machine and it just about worked.
I learned the word "hirsute" from a description of Gerhalt in Shining Force II, and after looking up the word in the literal dictionary as a kid, I thought I'd sound smart being able to use it in sentences in the future. Unfortunately, the only time I think I've ever used it is in this post, itself about Shining Force II's use of "hirsute" lol
Yeah, I think the big problem with most of the non-weapon using units in II (hi Peter) is that their attack growths usually don't carry them alongside their weapon-using brethren.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
I still don't own a legit copy of SFIII. I bought and modded a Saturn way back in like 2002/2003, and the game was a reason I did so. Well, that and Panzer Dragoon Saga. Anyway, @Aleryn's statement is what I think has always made me iffier on the third game - it just loses so much charm from the Genesis games with the move to 3D. I mean, I expect bad 3D from that generation, but it's a heavy downgrade in every way from the fantastic battle sprites and colorful overworld and character portraits. Far be it from me to judge a game based on how it looks, but... I'm judging it on how it looks. The "video" aspect is important!Never got to play Shining Force CD, that music above is lovely.
Still impresses me how much the artists got out of the MegaDrive's colour palette in the franchise. Not to mention the illustrative style of the character portraits/etc.
Just charming and pops. Could be my bias for really similar PC-88, 98, MSX, and other low colour Japanese PCs of the 80s/90s though.
(I still plan on playing through them, though, especially as the final polishing passes are happening in the S2/3 translations.)
Sure, but you've also got Kiwi, Claude, and Zryk there too, and they're all kinda crud.
I agree for the most part on the graphical quality of III, though I actually really like the "battle scenes" or whatever they're called where it plays the attack animations. It has its charm, though.
I forgot about Claude. Yeah, he kinda sucks lol. I never use Zynk either.
Booted up my childhood copy of Sword of Hajya (I've been playing on an Everdrive so I can backup saves and whatnot), and lol sure enough, this is where I left off:
Just reunited the two parties, I think I'm nearing the endgame? I think I'm on battle 19, and there's 24 or 25 battles iirc.
Ah, yes, I've arrived at the battle I never beat as a kid. Behold:
That cool looking statue dead center, the Statue of Iom, shoots a beam 3 spaces wide every few turns which damages everyone - friend or foe - for about 13-15 damage each, the whole way down the map. There's a canyon you make your way up through south of it, with a few spots your characters can hide from the beam, but not many - you are going to get hit by it. Worse, note the mage in blue in the upper right - that jerk has Freeze 3, which pretty much one shots anyone who has less than 45 HP (pretty much everyone, at this point) and also has an enormous, enormous area of effect. It's more dangerous than the statue, frankly, since it has enough MP to cast Freeze 3 three times, which if you're not careful, could wipe out literally every member of your team, especially because even the people with high HP probably took some damage from the statue. All of this is why I couldn't beat this battle as a kid.
...and I just beat it! I let the statue whittle down the HP of the enemies in the central canyon while picking them off from the cliffs on the side with my ranged characters, then cast Quick on as many people as I could right after the statue fired to run up the canyon as quickly as possible. The mage hit four of my characters with Freeze 3, but since they were all at full HP, only one died. I then threw everything I had at the mage and luckily, Luke got two attacks in one turn to finish it off, but I'd have killed it and won the battle regardless, even if it fired off another Freeze 3. I managed to kill the statue before I took down the mage, as well, which was cathartic since killing the mage ends the battle.
I loved this battle and am happy to be past it. It was by far the most strategic I had to be in the game so far. And now the rest of the game is new to me. I love Shining Force so much haha
That cool looking statue dead center, the Statue of Iom, shoots a beam 3 spaces wide every few turns which damages everyone - friend or foe - for about 13-15 damage each, the whole way down the map. There's a canyon you make your way up through south of it, with a few spots your characters can hide from the beam, but not many - you are going to get hit by it. Worse, note the mage in blue in the upper right - that jerk has Freeze 3, which pretty much one shots anyone who has less than 45 HP (pretty much everyone, at this point) and also has an enormous, enormous area of effect. It's more dangerous than the statue, frankly, since it has enough MP to cast Freeze 3 three times, which if you're not careful, could wipe out literally every member of your team, especially because even the people with high HP probably took some damage from the statue. All of this is why I couldn't beat this battle as a kid.
...and I just beat it! I let the statue whittle down the HP of the enemies in the central canyon while picking them off from the cliffs on the side with my ranged characters, then cast Quick on as many people as I could right after the statue fired to run up the canyon as quickly as possible. The mage hit four of my characters with Freeze 3, but since they were all at full HP, only one died. I then threw everything I had at the mage and luckily, Luke got two attacks in one turn to finish it off, but I'd have killed it and won the battle regardless, even if it fired off another Freeze 3. I managed to kill the statue before I took down the mage, as well, which was cathartic since killing the mage ends the battle.
I loved this battle and am happy to be past it. It was by far the most strategic I had to be in the game so far. And now the rest of the game is new to me. I love Shining Force so much haha
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I just got to battle 23. The rest of this game seems to be just "limit how many people enemy mages kill" because they are absolute chaos on these maps lol. I'm more scared of them than the bosses! Nothing that attacks physically does even double digit damage unless it crits. My even leveling for my team is out of whack now because the challenge has ramped up - I'm losing several characters per battle because of the dang mages lol. Still having a blast, though.
I know it's not a difficult game, I know the story isn't particularly great (though I wonder if the Sega CD version expands a bit on the dialogue), but I never really thought I'd beat Shining Force: Sword of Hajya. Either because it was too difficult or because I wanted to save it for a rainy day or something. And while it's not raining today, I guess month 11 of lockdown is as good a time as any to beat a game I've played on and off for nearly 30 years for the first time. I really enjoyed it! Sorry about the washed out pictures, but look at the neat art you get as the credits roll:
It's... nice. There's not much too the story, but I really enjoyed the back half of the game, especially when the challenge ramped up and I had to be careful around those mages. The last battle wasn't too bad, considering - no one there has Freeze 3 or something equivalent, though there are respawning enemies with Freeze 2, but that's very manageable. Once I figured out the "trick" to the last boss, I just threw everything I had at him and ended up beating him with the whole team alive. Hooray!
Going to charge my Game Gear batteries (because of course I am, the thing sucks em down even harder now that I have a nicer screen - I get maybe 2, 2.5 hours battery life tops at full brightness) and make some soup, then I might dip into Final Conflict.
Thanks for indulging me in posting about this - no one really cares about these old Game Gear games but they really mean a lot to me. I was very, very young when I first played Shining Force II and Sword of Hajya, and this is the first time I beat the latter. Lots of good memories with the sound turned all the way down, literally under blankets when I was supposed to be sleeping playing this. Good times.
It's... nice. There's not much too the story, but I really enjoyed the back half of the game, especially when the challenge ramped up and I had to be careful around those mages. The last battle wasn't too bad, considering - no one there has Freeze 3 or something equivalent, though there are respawning enemies with Freeze 2, but that's very manageable. Once I figured out the "trick" to the last boss, I just threw everything I had at him and ended up beating him with the whole team alive. Hooray!
Going to charge my Game Gear batteries (because of course I am, the thing sucks em down even harder now that I have a nicer screen - I get maybe 2, 2.5 hours battery life tops at full brightness) and make some soup, then I might dip into Final Conflict.
Thanks for indulging me in posting about this - no one really cares about these old Game Gear games but they really mean a lot to me. I was very, very young when I first played Shining Force II and Sword of Hajya, and this is the first time I beat the latter. Lots of good memories with the sound turned all the way down, literally under blankets when I was supposed to be sleeping playing this. Good times.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
Funny that you should have that image, there's an interview with the programmers around the release of Shining Force II and they mention that exact picture