Shining Force - The Thread of Great Intention

[Kazin]

It's pretty weird, yeah. I don't think giving the enemies the attack power of Super difficulty in Nightmare mode would make much difference - they could already one shot my characters with regular attacks, so having higher crit chances wouldn't change things too much lol. Though I suppose it really would require lots of grinding to get HP high enough to output all that damage. Who knows! Not sure why things were programmed that way.

 

[Sarge]

I wonder if it's like that in the Japanese release as well? Wouldn't be the first time they messed up the balancing during localization *coughWorkingDesignscoughThe7thSagacough*.

 

[Purple]

Wait is the original version of the 7th Saga not absurdly difficult in some way?

 

[Sarge]

Wait is the original version of the 7th Saga not absurdly difficult in some way?

Nope. In fact, it gets quite easy. Pretty much all the characters become god-like by the end. I'll probably play through the game that way at some point just to compare to my run of T7S.

 

[Kazin]

Booted up Shining Force III: Scenario 1 again with the intent to play through the entire 3 part series, and I'm about ten hours in after playing most of the weekend. Been having a blast - what's interesting is how pretty much every battle has some sort of weird gimmick, and I don't mean that in a negative way. The second battle has a missable character who you have to keep alive if you want to keep him in your party. The third battle teaches you about adds and the strange ruins exploring mechanic. That's basically what you're dealing with through the first chapter. The second chapter has another recruitable character who is a pain to get to before she dies, Irene. Why would you not use the medical herb or your heal spell when controlled by the CPU? Who can say.

A few battles later is the freaking railroad battle, which isn't super difficult if you don't care about too many of the refugees getting killed, but is frustrating because the king does not allow anyone to wait on the tracks, even if you know damn well the train will not hit them before they get another turn. If I could have had the refugees stop on the tracks, they all would have survived, your majesty. Then you're in a train, then you're on top of the train, then you're in a haunted town where the villagers are all enemies who you don't want to kill, and another uncontrollable NPC has to use an item on to save them while you kill the like, four adds the battle throws at you. Then there's a tough, long boss battle in a mansion. Then there's a battle where a third faction shows up, destroys a group of your enemies, and peaces out.

The game is wild. They really went all out making sure each battle has unique mechanics, and none of them so far have been straightforward "your army vs. another army" battles like in pretty much every prior Shining Force title, including my beloved Shining Force II. I am currently at the battle with the giant statue that you have to save, and although I've beaten scenario 1 before I can't remember if it's actually saveable or what. At the very least, now all my characters are promoted, and I've been able to use the stat boosting items I've found so far. I also loaded up on accessories in the de-haunted village, which has helped me promote the bird battler, who I didn't use in my playthrough a couple years back.

EDIT: Oh and also, this game looks amazing on a CRT tv. Even on s-video, the parts of the graphics that would otherwise have aged terribly look fine, and dare I say good. I even find myself enjoying the low polygon attack scenes. And you can turn off the voice "acting" in this version of the translation! (that may have been available in vanilla SF3 but I can't remember)

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Are any of these games good for someone who loves the Tactics Ogres, but loathes the Fire Emblems? I've heard a few good things about the series, but have always been wary of trying them, considering that the development studio behind them has a...less than stellar record, shall we say.

 

[JBear]

They really went all out making sure each battle has unique mechanics, and none of them so far have been straightforward "your army vs. another army" battles like in pretty much every prior Shining Force title,

Man, that's exactly my shit, and has always been characteristic of my favourite tactics games. I've wanted to play this game since I was a teenager, and now I want to play it even more. Last time I tried, though, I couldn't successfully navigate the saturn emulation hellscape to make it work, to say nothing of translation patches. Is there, like, a dummy's guide to playing SF3 in english anywhere these days?

 

[Kazin]

Are any of these games good for someone who loves the Tactics Ogres, but loathes the Fire Emblems? I've heard a few good things about the series, but have always been wary of trying them, considering that the development studio behind them has a...less than stellar record, shall we say.

That is a tough question - it is a far simpler series than either of those games. For example, unit placement matters, but unit direction at the end of your turn does not matter, which is Fire Emblem-y. However, there is not like, whole sides get to go at once like in Fire Emblem, each unit moves according to their agility stat which is (iirc) more like Tactics Ogre. Unless you play on hard mode, these games will likely not challenge you too much, although I will say SFIII gives me a light challenge despite being a series veteran otherwise. I'd give Shining Force II a shot (which is my favorite and where my username comes from), see how you like it.

Man, that's exactly my shit, and has always been characteristic of my favourite tactics games. I've wanted to play this game since I was a teenager, and now I want to play it even more. Last time I tried, though, I couldn't successfully navigate the saturn emulation hellscape to make it work, to say nothing of translation patches. Is there, like, a dummy's guide to playing SF3 in english anywhere these days?

Yeah... I'm playing on original Saturn hardware with a Fenrir ODE, so I don't have to navigate the Saturn emulation hellscape lol. I will say Saturn emulation on Android via my Retroid Pocket Mini is very good - SF3 runs via the Yabasanshiro 2 emulator (or possible Beetle via Retroarch? Can't remember). Depends what device you're trying to run it on, though - presumably by now it should run very well on Windows? You'll need to have a Saturn bios and whatnot but it's hard to give advice not knowing what you're looking to run it on. I'll tag @Sarge here because he likely has some advice either via FPGA or perhaps emulation.

I will say, regarding translation patches, if you'd like, DM me, I can source you some prepatched files if you know what I mean. Just can't link them publicly.

 

[Sarge]

I haven't done a whole lot of Saturn stuff on MiSTer, as the core is still in active development, but it's nearly feature-complete at this point. I mostly use Fenrir myself. On MiSTer, I think there's just a few small quirks that should affect gameplay.

It has been a while since I've really used it, but emulation isn't nearly as dire as it's made out to be for Saturn - I think it's solid enough, it's just performance is not great. Probably in a better state than N64, at least from the games I've tried. The Beetle core is the most accurate in RetroArch, but Yaba Sanshiro is faster and it probably runs it okay, too. I have more experience with the older SSF, which seemed to run the game fine but had a sound bug that made one of the instruments unbearably off-pitch.

Anyway, I typically check the Emulation Wiki for this kind of stuff - it usually has solid recommendations on what to use on various platforms.

Sega Saturn emulators - Emulation General Wiki

emulation.gametechwiki.com

 

[Kazin]

Ah, right, mednafen. That's probably the emulator to go with on Windows. Really says a lot that I completely forgot about the Emulation Wiki lmao

Played up to what I remember being a difficult battle in a cave with lava in it last night. I really suck at the ruins exploring! It's super dumb that if the thieves die, the ruin collapses. So if, say, Dantares gets a critical hit, you just miss out on all the treasure despite your best planning. I didn't feel like redoing the entire battle considering both the rewards I saw were underwhelming (just a bunch of mithril of which I have a decent stack already) and that the ruins were literally right next to the boss of the battle, so I just moved on. So far, I've got all the secret characters including a penguin (?) who I haven't used yet, but from what I recall I need to level them up, too, so I'll probably have to do some grinding at some point because I remember the last battle being tough.

 

[Kazin]

I believe there are only two battles left including the one I'm on, in Shining Force III Scenario 1 (possibly three, I can't recall). I'm really having a great time with it. Really my only complaint so far is an optional thing I do in all the Shining games - grind out good Mithril weapons by just resetting whenever the blacksmith gives me a weapon I don't want - which sucks. But, the shiny Pokemon hunting I've done over the past few years made it really not so bad (this is why shiny hunting breaks your brain, I don't recommend it). Otherwise every single battle has thrown a wrench in my plan/instinct to evenly level my party, when there's always something weird going on in each battle, be it adds, a Golem throwing boulders down a narrow path that also happens to be your only way through, etc. They're mostly even, though. The battle where you have to fend off a whole army with two characters while you wait for the rest of your team to arrive is a highlight, I think. It's not especially hard, but given you have no idea when they're going to get there, it's a bit tense, because the enemies chasing you down hit hard and you don't have access to a healer until the rest of the team arrives (healing items negate this, really, but I had none on the two characters this go around, but I managed).

 

[Kazin]

Yep, beat Scenario 1 just now, there were only two battles left, though I did an optional one to level up my backup team for the pretty phenomenal final battle. There is a lot going on mechanically - you have both your 12 person main party on this very narrow bridge that makes up the entire map for them, and your backup team of anywhere from, I believe, four to eight people, depending on how many secret characters you found and whether or not you hired any mercenaries before the final battle (I was only able to hire one - I'm not sure if you can hire more if you have a smaller team or not, there seem to be four to choose from). Used the optional battle to level up my backup team because while their section isn't too difficult on its own, you don't want to dawdle - after several rounds with your main team, the titan shows up, and it can hit the entire stage - only my single flying unit could avoid all of its attacks, which means you have to win the backup teams battle as fast as possible to take out the titan. Thing is, once you beat their section, you have a single round of turns for each of your characters to get to safety before the floodwaters they unleash wipes out anyone in the middle of the bridge, titan included. I knew all this going in, so this time I was prepared, but my first time around I lost a few units there. You don't want to lose anybody because you have one more fight afterwards which has the final boss in it, who has a giant pile of HP and two mages standing behind him who refuse to move, meaning you have to use ranged attacks to take them out and lessen the huge AoE damage they and the boss put out. It's a really well designed fight, though it takes quite a while to get through - I think it took me two hours total (better players could probably beat it faster, or those who really powerleveled their backup team).

I really, really enjoyed it. I do not think it's a hard game, especially for those of you who are experts at strategy/tactics games. It's pretty forgiving regarding character deaths - if a character gets knocked out, you can revive them after the battle, they're not lost forever like in Fire Emblem or if you don't revive them in time like in Final Fantasy Tactics. I don't think the story is all that special, though I've only played through scenario 1 and a couple hours of scenario 2, so maybe seeing it from the other protaganists angles will make me appreciate it more. It's not bad at all, just standard JRPG fare, really. Doesn't matter anyway, I'm in it for the fun battles. Looking forward to starting up scenario 2 tomorrow, off to bed for now...

 

[Yimothy]

I’ve been meaning to play SFIII for years now but I think I’d stress about missable stuff like the ruins and things like keeping the civilians alive in the train map. Am I overthinking it?

 

[Kazin]

I’ve been meaning to play SFIII for years now but I think I’d stress about missable stuff like the ruins and things like keeping the civilians alive in the train map. Am I overthinking it?

I would say yeah, you're probably overthinking it (or worrying about optional stuff too much). It's funny - outside the two examples you listed, I think I did pretty well overall in my playthrough. I would say I largely failed at exploring the ruins in general, though - I would crit the stupid thieves or not get to the ruins quickly enough like in the penultimate battle, causing them to collapse and me to miss out on a bunch of treasure. Also, one battle, thieves just... never showed up, and I couldn't open any of the chests. Not sure what happened there! But I didn't need any of the treasures to beat the game, at all, really. There is a lot of Mithril to be found even just on random tiles on battle maps, and only one of the Mithril weapons I got for my characters was at all even slightly broken - the one for the hero, Synbios, restored 2 MP per turn, which allowed him to spam Spark/Bolt a decent amount, which really just helped me easily level him up. Really the only thing I missed, as far as I know, is hitting Fiale once in the first battle where he stays on the map for a bit - apparently had I hit him, he'd have dropped an item that allows you to get a secret character in scenario 2, so I'll be missing out on whoever that is. Oh well! I didn't worry about missing stuff too much and had a blast.

 

[Kazin]

Been playing Scenario 2 most of today, and so far the difference between it and the first part, mechanically, is that most of the battles so far have been on strict terrain, and you're usually wildly outnumbered. I wouldn't say it's been difficult, but there hasn't been many chances to upgrade equipment, so you're limited by level up growth and a small team about five hours in, as I am now. It's fun, still! Just... different. I'm sure the gimmicks are coming, of course, I assume Camelot/Sega is just warming me up considering however many months came between Scenario 1 and Scenario 2's releases in Japan.

The celebration your characters do when they level up is both cute and cheesy. I love it.

 

[Kazin]

I just played probably my favorite battle in Shining Force III so far, including scenarios 1 and 2 - in the treetops above Stump Village where a future party member, if you don't opt to kill her, is controlled by the enemy throughout the whole battle until you kill the boss. She is a mage with Freeze 2 - very, very dangerous at this point in the game, since prior to beating this battle none of my party was promoted yet, so our HP totals are very low. The mad lads at Camelot made me cast Dispel, and it was super useful! Preventing her from being able to use magic for a few turns meant she just plonked whoever her target was for 1 HP, which meant she was harmless until she could cast again. I couldn't do it for the whole battle, so eventually I got her surrounded and had her run out her MP while I healed whoever she targeted. Once she burned through her MP, I could go finish off the last few enemies, although the boss himself has two casts of friggin Spark 1, so that made me forego killing all the enemies to burn down the boss since I was out of healing items and my healer was out of MP. It worked, though! What a fantastic battle.

Kinda annoyed I hadn't gotten to this battle before - I got distracted by some other game while on the previous battle which, while kinda interesting itself (your army is split in half on the map until the very end), is by no means as interesting as the one that follows it. Now I can promote a few guys, which I've not done in scenario 2 yet...!

 

[Kazin]

This battle was really fun, too. I wasn't surprised this guy showed up given a lot of the bookshelves in the prior town hinted heavily at it, but given the tide is lowering throughout the battle, I was kinda stressed going through it, when this popped out of the sea:

After advancing a bit, being careful to not get slapped by the legs and arms, the "Dark Kraken" appeared:

This is also the battle where Zero the flying unit rejoins you, although he's at the level I last had him, 8, unpromoted. He's carrying the Elbesem orb that Kahn from the Synbios army gave him in Scenario 1, and you have to use it to be able to then start damaging the Dark Kraken. At least, I think - I don't know what happens if Zero dies before you can use the Elbesem orb on the Kraken, but it was the first thing I did before getting him the heck away so the rest of my team could kill it.

Unlike most other games where the Kraken shows up, I was able to get through this battle without losing any units! By the skin of my teeth in Hedva's case - she was at 2 HP, but moving Medion in range of the Kraken makes him prioritize damaging him, the army leader.

It wasn't really a hard battle, just one I took very methodically and slowly. I'm really enjoying Scenario 2 so far!

 

[Kazin]

I just finished Shining Force III: Scenario 2, and I'm pretty sure it's now my favorite in the series and certainly, easily, is my current favorite Saturn game of all time. They even got me involved in the story, this time around (again, nothing incredible or out of the ordinary, but it feels a bit like the Trails in the Sky games, to an extent, with all the political machinations going on, at least in this one). You play as Medion, third in line prince to the throne of the Empire, and the whole game there is this tension where you are torn between being a good person and helping people, but also being forced to do your duty and, eventually, become an invader to a sovereign nation. There's even a line by one of your companions that goes like "Let me fight, Prince, even if I must become labelled an invader," which is nuance I didn't expect, slight though it is .

The battle design, pretty much from the go, is incredible. Here's a small sample of the (fun!) shit they throw at you: a battle on a ship, in which you must man two cannons, to blast at another ship's cannons to prevent them from shelling you to death, while your characters not on cannons shuffle around, nervously, on the deck while you try to guess where the enemy is going to attack. A battle, possibly my favorite but there are a lot to pick from, where all but two of your party members are locked in prison cells unarmed, and you must unlock each of their doors, one by one, while fending off the enemies attacking you from both sides. Once you spring someone free, they have to get their weapon back from a central table before they can fight (unless they know magic, of course, so prioritizing your magic users is a good idea). A battle where these weird tower things shoot out electricity every round, in different patterns, doing damage to everyone in their path, and as far as I could tell, are pretty much unavoidable at least occasionally - all while solving a puzzle ruins dungeon in the same battle that nets you a secret character if you complete it (I did, thankfully, but barely. I had some poor luck with poison with the hero, Medion, but I got through it just in time). Another battle where, because I chose to defeat a baby dragon in scenario 1, caused a giant dragon to appear here, which was interesting because there are also three sections of the ground that basically act like elevators, which you must use to advance to the boss. On the way, the enemies are laid out in such a way as to be able to attack you while you wait for the elevators to go up. And, finally, the final battle, in which you again split into two teams, the second of which is inside a giant tank that you must stop (which is done, basically, by killing a boss). This is easier said than done, because there are no mercenaries to hire in Scenario 2 like for the final battle of Scenario 1 - your only option for extra team members is recruiting monsters with the last character you can get, Pappets. This is wild, because outside the "control enemies" code in Shining Force II, I've never controlled monsters in this series before (legitimately, anyway). I chose a Queen Worm, Wyvern, and 2 Minotaurs, mainly because of their high HP and the flying ability of the Wyvern. They were pretty crucial to the fight, too, there are a good number of enemies inside that tank and the boss has 320 HP.

Can't recommend this series enough - if the pattern continues, Scenario 3 will be even better than Scenario 2 (honestly, this feels unlikely, though I fully expect to adore the finale).

God I wish we still got Shining Force games. You know, real ones. What a series.

 

[Sarge]

Well dang. I should probably front-burner SFIII soon.

Actually, what I'd really like is a version that goes back to the wonderful sprite-based artwork. Those Genesis games are just magical-looking to me even today. And while I'm dreaming about things that will never happen, give us a port of Final Conflict to Sega CD as well to finish up that trilogy there!

(I'd also just take a legit release of the games unchanged, much as I would Panzer Dragoon Saga. It's like Sega doesn't want my money or something.)

 

[Kazin]

Yeah... The graphics are probably the only meh thing about Shining Force III compared to the other games in the series. They have their charms, though - I find myself really enjoying the developers drunk on being able to rotate the camera, and the 3D effects have that lovely Saturn charm, where they are clearly 32 bit but don't have that weird PS1 warping and warbling every time the camera moves. I don't think I've talked about the music, which is actually insanely good - there's just too few tracks. Not that what is there is annoying, I just wish there was more of it.

I meant to say in my last post that the final battle in Scenario 2 isn't quite as good as in Scenario 1 - it's quite a bit more straightforward - but still fun, and the battle design elsewhere in the game is so damn good that I didn't care.

I started Scenario 3 last night and have played three or four battles in. It is fun so far, but I'm looking forward to getting more team members - it's been pretty difficult with the very small force I have now. Still having a ton of fun with it, though.

 

[Cadenza]

I don't think I've talked about the music, which is actually insanely good - there's just too few tracks. Not that what is there is annoying, I just wish there was more of it.

You can thank Motoi Sakuraba for that! I'm not very familiar with the original form of Shining Force III's soundtrack (I should fix that, honestly), but you may be interested in the accompanying arrange album, which was released back when those were still commonplace. It kicks a tremendous amount of ass!

 

[Kazin]

You can thank Motoi Sakuraba for that! I'm not very familiar with the original form of Shining Force III's soundtrack (I should fix that, honestly), but you may be interested in the accompanying arrange album, which was released back when those were still commonplace. It kicks a tremendous amount of ass!

Oooh, I was completely unaware of that and from what I've heard of it so far I really like it! Thanks for the heads up, I never think to look for arrangements... ever lol. I really appreciate it!

 

[Sarge]

Yeah, I think the graphics are my only hangup, but I do appreciate some of the charm of those older visuals at times. I'm going to force myself to look past it and dive in one of these days.

I know there's a lot of folks that apparently don't care for Motoi Sakuraba's work (and some of it does have a very similar sound to it), but when he's on, he's on. He's absolutely composed some of my favorite soundtracks ever, with Valkyrie Profile immediately coming to mind, as well as several Tales games, Star Ocean: The Second Story, and Baten Kaitos.

 

[Kazin]

Shining Force III: Scenario 3 has been fun and I'm still really enjoying myself, but there's a long stretch in the middle with completely uninspired battles, at least compared to the first two games. They're not bad or anything, just big maps with lots of enemies and some adds, nothing as creative as in Scenario 2 in particular. It does start with some crazy stuff though, and it seems to be picking up again these past few battles. They've gone completely bonkers as far as party members this time around - early on, I got a unicorn, then a dragon who gains levels and can be promoted but whom I cannot control, a lion man, and recently a fairy and then a witch. I also have been able to recruit enemy dragons for nearly the whole game, although only one is deployable at a time (besides the earlier mentioned dragon who I can't control. Weirdly, these ones I can). I've been stocking up on these guys because I assume they'll act as this game's mercenaries in the final battle.

It also appears to be shorter than the first two parts as well, although I'm getting the impression the final battle is going to be an enormous, insane three fully-player-controlled-army spectacle (at least I hope it is. That seems to be what it's building towards, anyway), so that'll be fun. I appear to be five or so battles from the end, which makes me sad.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

I know there's a lot of folks that apparently don't care for Motoi Sakuraba's work (and some of it does have a very similar sound to it), but when he's on, he's on. He's absolutely composed some of my favorite soundtracks ever, with Valkyrie Profile immediately coming to mind, as well as several Tales games, Star Ocean: The Second Story, and Baten Kaitos.

I'd say Sakuraba is very hit or miss, but he did indeed compose some good stuff for Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean 2. And, with a composer as prolific as him, there's bound to be some misses, even if he was the best composer that ever existed.

 

[Kazin]

Well, this made me sad to see:

I've fought both the Synbios and Medion armies (threatened and mind controlled, in that order), and they are largely how I left them from the end of the first two Scenarios, which is neat. They were a bit scrambled in terms of who I'd have used - there was no way anyone from my backup team from Scenario 1 would have made the full roster - but apparently the game decides randomly who to put in each battle besides the hero of each unit, so, you know, whatever. Really goes to show how you need a good plan to wield an army effectively - I was able to beat the Synbios battle by not attacking one of the Synbios units once, and just beating the boss. It wasn't easy - they killed a few of my units - but had they kept together and been smart they would have obliterated me, assuming I still refused to attack them. I didn't even bother with the Medion fight - you're packed in much more closely there, so it would have been nearly impossible to get to the boss, much less kill it with it's 600 HP while the entire formidable Medion army attacks me. Not to mention Medion himself, who, if killed, means you lose the battle (you can kill the rest of his army with no consequence, though, thankfully. Apparently you can do that with the Synbios army, too, but I didn't want to lol). The opposing team still gains levels as they attack you, which is a small benefit, since it means I'll have to grind them slightly less for the final battle... I don't know how hard the final battle is going to be, but I have to get the Synbios and Medion armies up to 20 to Super Promote them (not the game's term, just my name for it because everyone is already promoted once lol), apparently. Or at least the characters make that out to be the case. At any rate, both of the teams from the first two scenarios are several levels behind the Julian team (roughly 6 for Medion's army, and about 8 for Synbios'), so I'll have to do some grinding, which the game basically said is outside the door to the right lol. I'll be starting that after dinner.

We're in the final stretch... It's been a fun ride. I'm sad that, once I roll credits, there will be no more new Shining Force for me (well, barring the final book or so of Shining Force CD, but I doubt that will be as good as Shining Force III, to be honest). Shining Force Forever, indeed...

 

[Kazin]

The final two battles are insane, which is pretty much what I hoped for lol. They are linked, in that you can't retreat after beating the penultimate battle, you have to beat them both back to back (you can save at any time as usual, though - which is good, because the first battle took me nearly TWO AND A HALF HOURS last night lmao). You fight as all three armies simultaneously, although it's one army at a time (it is, thankfully, not loading between units based on the speed of all 36 Shining Force members and enemies across all three maps at once, which would make the battle tedious to the extreme because each map takes a few seconds to load). Once the Synbios and Medion armies complete their objectives (beat a boss, basically, although they have a TON of units to fight and if you play too conservatively, some of those units get sent to the Julian map and he'd have to deal with them if you wait too long), then the Julian army can advance to the final battle once they beat the two bosses on their map. I was able to get all the way to the final battle last night with zero casualties in any army, which is great, but for all the time I spent leveling and prepping the Synbios and Medion armies, I, er, kinda forgot to rearrange my Julian army, meaning I was stuck with no ranged units besides mages, had no MP restoring items (which is a *problem*, as I'll get to in a moment), and was stuck with the two sorta jokey characters, the unicorn and the penguin (the former is actually decent, but since you can't give her new weapons, she lags behind in damage output by the end. The latter is useless once he runs out of MP, and he doesn't have much to begin with). My mages are insanely powerful, but once out of MP they are basically dead weight. The final boss has, apparently, 2400 HP, which is just shown as ??? on the HP bar so I have no idea how far I got last night. I just couldn't burn it down with what I had... Although the weapons my mages have regen MP slowly (2 per turn), the map generates two adds that prevent me from moving away from the boss and turtling while my MP is restored, and even that wouldn't work because each time the boss gets a turn - and he gets like two or three per one for my full team! - he regenerates 30 HP. It just wasn't doable. So, I will have to redo both fights tonight.

I reorganized my Julian team this morning (because I could not sleep, so I was up early), and went into the level grinding dungeon, mainly to catch up my archers and gain a few precious MP and maybe some MP restoring items. I got a few of those, thankfully (including one that restores all MP to my entire team!), but I also unexpectedly was able to clear the level grinding dungeon, which makes me think I'm definitely ready for the final boss with this team - the final enemy in the level grinding dungeon has 5000 HP, and yet I was able to take it out just before work started today, which is rad (he does not regenerate HP, though)! I got an extremely powerful sword for Julian as a reward, although it doesn't regen MP so I'll probably only use it sparingly (Julian has Spark level 4, which does over 100 damage to a single target and can be used from quite a distance).

I went to bed last night frustrated with myself because of my mistake with the main party (though I did save after Egressing, meaning I kept the few levels I gained, and I didn't really use any items so nbd), but the work I put in this morning means I should clear the game most likely tonight, barring some surprise in that final battle, which I suppose is possible. As is, I will likely beat it tonight, then tomorrow move onto the bonus disc, which was also fan translated and apparently has some fanservice battles, which I'm looking forward to.

Shining Force III is amazing.

EDIT: Also, I wanted to revisit a decision/mistake I made in Scenario 1 that I wish I'd have done differently:

...the only thing I missed, as far as I know, is hitting Fiale once in the first battle where he stays on the map for a bit - apparently had I hit him, he'd have dropped an item that allows you to get a secret character in scenario 2, so I'll be missing out on whoever that is.

Anyone looking to play this, know - hit the mage in the battle that has Conrad, your dad, in it, in Scenario 1. Just hit that Bulzome mage guy once, and he'll drop the key. You want that key. I regret not getting it (not for gameplay purposes, but for story purposes - nothing major, at all, but not getting that key makes a certain scene kinda sad in Scenario 3). I point all this out because this sort of decision affecting your future games is super neat, and this is really the only one, in retrospect, I wish I'd have done differently. I mean I guess I wish I'd have kept the baby dragon alive in Scenario 1 for some treasure in Scenario 2, but whatever.

 

[Sarge]

Ah, thanks very much for the PSA. Will keep in mind for my eventual play.

Also, congrats on finishing it all up! Glad it still holds up and you had a blast with it.

 

[Kazin]

Haven't quite finished it yet! Faltered at the last battle. Should finish it tonight.

 

[Sarge]

Oh, wait, I misread that. I thought you'd jumped back in already, my bad. Good that you didn't lose any progress - sometimes those few levels can make a real difference.

Good luck wrecking the finale!