Shining Force - The Thread of Great Intention

[Kazin]

Seems to! I like it a lot.

I found another tie-in with Shining Force III, this time in terms of graphics. Below is a statue found in the Tower of Illusion dungeon, the one I'm in now (which was a huge pain in the ass to get into, btw - I looked up the answer. You walk around this area a certain way and it opens. The clues are cryptic and the order you do it in is not clear. Thankfully, once you've done it a single time, you don't have to do it again). This is the statue in Shining the Holy Ark:

This is one of the Great Priests in Shining Force III:

These guys are not explained in depth in Shining Force III - there are good and evil ones, it seems. The one above helps you, but you fight three "evil" ones later on. So you know, that's all neat. Apparently at the end of the dungeon I'm in, I'm going to "evolve" which was a plot point in Scenario 3 of Shining Force III - what's weird is, if it's true that I "evolve" at the end of Shining the Holy Ark here, that kind of contradicts what happens in Shining Force III. The grey haired kid in the photo above, for example, is supposed to be the only person in 1,000 years that can (or has) evolve(d). I suppose it's possible that I won't evolve at the end of this dungeon, or that everybody in Shining the Holy Ark dies or something at the end, I dunno, but I find this all pretty interesting, seeing how the games do and don't die together. The other problem, of course, is I'm dealing with a translation from Sega in the 90s and a fantranslation from Shining fans twenty years later, so there could be discrepancies that weren't there originally. Who knows!

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, I definitely got evolved at the end of that dungeon. Maybe I'm misremembering or misunderstood the details of Shining Force III's process... Of course, in that game, the protaganists were never possessed by weird alien things that I can recall lol

Great dungeon, though. Very large, and just the right amount of complex. Boss popped up out of nowhere and was punishing, though. I was able to beat it first try, but was running up against my healer (finally some decent multi-character healing!) running out of MP. Only Doyle ended the battle dead, but I had to revive Akane at one point too.

I appear to be going back to the first dungeon of the game to finish it out. I'm sure I'll get teleported to hell or something in there, I guess, since there have been no teleport puzzles so far, though there have been spinners.

 

[Kazin]

Cleared!

I am, to my eternal shame (kidding), slightly slower than the average howlongtobeat playthrough (apparently it's roughly 29 hours, not 25 like I said in an earlier post). Ah well! I grinded a little bit for the final boss, since it felt like I could beat him if I had juuuust a bit more HP. Despite beating the penultimate boss at a poor time (right when someone died and another person got poisoned), I was able to get things together, use my MP regen items wisely, and beat the final boss on my second try without any major issues.

I really liked this game a lot! It's well balanced, difficultywise. I didn't think I was ever over or underleveled, and yet the random battles pretty much always had to keep me on my toes, even if the turn to turn decision making wasn't all that deep (lots of single target attacks, but I had to watch out to make sure half my team didn't get put to sleep or get confused or whatever, which happened often enough to not make me lose interest in each battle). I wish you got more team members earlier, is really my only slight complaint with the game, but it's really not that bad. If anything, a button to just, expend MP to heal everyone to full automatically would have shaved a decent amount of the time off the first half of the game, since you really do want to keep people topped up. It's touch and go when you just have three party members.

I'm glad I finally played through it, though. It didn't really add anything to my understanding of what the heck happened in Shining Force III, it just seems like a sidestory. I still do not know if Arthur ends up growing a second pair of legs and ending up in the world of Shining Force III or not. I also wonder if he's like, Gracia's dad or something, which would explain why he inherits innate Innovator power? Or something? I have no idea.

...Ah. I just did some Googling and found out wtf is up with Galm. Spoilers for both Shining the Holy Ark and all three parts of Shining Force III:

If you keep the screen on after beating Scenario 3 of Shining Force III, you get a secret, voiced cutscene between Galm and Elise (a character who only shows up in Shining the Holy Ark). It is, for some reason, untranslated in the SF3 fantranslation, not that I kept my game on long enough to see it lol:

Elise: Well done, Galm.
Galm: What are you talking about?
Elise: Quit acting innocent.
Galm: ...
Elise: To eliminate the eyesore Bulzome, you guided that Enrich boy's fate onto the track you laid. You even aided the Expedition, didn't you?
Galm: If I say that's true, what are you really trying to say?
Elise: You really are the most powerful, the most vicious, Vandal of all Vandals.

So I guess Galm wants to be basically the only Vandal left standing? I wonder if there was ever plans to make another game where he takes out Elise or something lol

Anyway. I apparently missed 18 pixies in my playthrough, and I don't know if they count towards your item completion or not (I don't particularly care, it's neat they track that, but this ain't Super Metroid where it's fun finding them all). I opened most of the treasure chests, if not all of them, but I'm sure I missed plenty of items that are hidden in random places you have to search.

God, now I kinda want to play Shining in the Darkness... It is now the one classic Shining game I haven't beaten (besides a complete playthrough of all four chapters of Shining Force CD)...

 

[Sarge]

From the bit I've played of Shining in the Darkness, it's a much more traditional dungeon crawl than StHA. Looks really cool, though, and it's also one that I've had on my list for a long time to eventually play through.

 

[Kazin]

I suppose there's also Shining Wisdom, which I forgot about and have also never beaten because I've always found it super dull.

 

[Sarge]

I hate the running mechanic in that game. Bleh. I'd probably have played more of it otherwise.

 

[Kazin]

Decided to play a few hours of Shining in the Darkness today:

Dug out my graph paper, and look what I found on the top page lmao:

So, you know, that's helpful for at least the first two floors (I have a decent amount of the second floor mapped out too). The game is so grindy, though. There are so many fights. They go by quicker than Shining the Holy Ark, to be sure, but there are times when you fight every step for a bit, which is why I think I've gotten burned out in the past. Ah well, I'll keep trying!

 

[Sarge]

Yep, the encounter rate isn't great! Especially when you just want to explore. I don't remember if there's a spell to repel encounters or not.

EDIT: Apparently so, learned by Pyra eventually. If it's like Dragon Quest, it may be less than effective, though...

EDIT 2: Huh, they really did follow the Dragon Quest II party template, didn't they?

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, I don't think you get any additional party members, but I sure haven't played all that far in the game to know for sure. There doesn't seem to be any way mechanically to switch your party around, so it's probably just these three!