Reviewed: April 4, 2007
Reviewed by: Megan Dyer

Publisher
SEGA

Developer
SEGA

Released: March 20, 2007
Genre: RPG
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone

5
7
5
5
5.2

Supported Features:

Shining Force EXA features:

• Tactical battles with deeper strategy. Use aggressive offensive and defensive strategies to protect your fortress and fend off encroaching enemies.
• Defend your Fortress with your own battle style. When you're not leading your battle party, guard your base with five battle types.
• Two playable heroes in one adventure. Bring peace to the war torn region with Toma's one-handed and two-handed sword attacks or Cyrille's long-range magic spells and crossbow attacks.
• Revamped Party AI. Utilize the specific battle tactics of your party members for more power and range in battle.
• Develop and customize your warriors. Upgrade your characters through battle experiences and customize them with hundreds of items and weapons.
• Enhanced Power Arts System. Players will master different Power Arts and unleash a wide variety of magic attacks.

Later, the group meets up with a cutesy, hotheaded black mage child named Amitaliri, and her meek white mage sidekick/lackey, Faulklin. The group finds Shining Force, of course, in a dark cave sticking out of a stone. They each take turns pulling at the sword, but Toma is the one who pulls it out, King Arthur style, and earns the title of Heritor. As the Heritor, he gets to use the Geo-Fortress, which is a castle made up of a mix of long lost technology and magic.

There are warring nations in the world of Shining Force, and of course, Toma and his group take it upon themselves to get to the bottom of the conflict, especially now that they have a technologically advanced, magical fortress, complete with cannons and robot butlers.

The whole premise is nothing we haven't seen to some degree a hundred times over in the RPG world. The gameplay itself doesn't stand out either, except for its glaring flaws. Basically, Toma and Cyrille are both playable characters who will never be in the same party together for this reason. At times, one party will go out to finish an objective, like clearing a dungeon, while the second party stays at the Geo-Fortress to fight defensive battles that consist of protecting the photon converter (a part of the Geo-Fortresses defense system) and beating a boss.

Toma is physically strong, fighting with larger than life swords that are bigger than him, or thin daggers and shields. Cyrille is physically weak, but can fight with magic spells or crossbows, depending on how you equip her. The other two members in your party cannot be controlled directly by you, although you can equip them with certain items that will alter their battle style.

Despite this small customization, it's frustrating to watch your supports do everything you don't want them to do, diving head first into battles with reckless abandon and fighting enemies that you would rather they not fight. Be prepared to deal with this...a lot. Even Faulklin, the white mage of the group will run up to enemies and whack them pathetically with his little staff instead of hanging back and healing like he's supposed to, and gets killed in one to two hits because of it.

This becomes a big problem, because there are honestly more enemies than is reasonable on the screen at any given moment. Expect to see a couple dozen enemies at once on screen, completely obscuring Toma/Cyrille from view, which will cause the frame rate to lag behind, making battles slow to a frustrating crawl.

When this happens, simply hitting the attack button over and over again will probably get you through the slow battles, but since when was button-mashing fun? The battle system consists almost solely of falling asleep on the attack button, and occasionally hitting another button to cast a spell. You can execute combos by basically hitting the button a certain number of times and then holding it down, but the response of the controls lag behind just like the frame rate often does, making Toma/Cyrille, sit there dumbly as an enemy whacks away at them about half of the time.

What's even worse with Shining Force's battle system is that the game goes from simple child's play to impossible without grinding for mindless hours, at the drop of a hat. One minute, you're mowing down enemy after enemy with the greatest of ease. The next minute, you're watching your life bar drain to nothing in a matter of seconds. Get used to seeing the game over screen, and be prepared to spend way too much time level grinding. The difficulty curve is ridiculously frustrating and can create some serious problems that will essentially render the game unplayable if you don't create two save files.

When defensive battles take place back at the Geo-Fortress, you cannot advance the game until you defeat the bosses, who get really strong, really fast. I personally don't mind spending some time level grinding at certain points in video games, but with boring, mind-numbing, overly simplistic battle systems? No thanks. I'd rather, you know, have fun when I play a video game.

Shining Force has a basic system of leveling your character's stats, such as strength, dexterity, magic resistance and that whole bit. Equipment can be upgraded at the blacksmith's by using mithril, which your characters collect from opening treasure chests, breaking open boxes and such on the battlefield, and defeating enemies. The Geo-Fortress itself can also be leveled up with core metal, which you can buy or find. The Geo-Fortress gains hit points, increased stats and defense systems this way, making it less vulnerable to enemy attacks.

And that's about it. Shining Force is painfully typical in just about every way. The storyline is okay, but not terribly interesting or different. Even if it were, advancing the story would mean playing more boring battles, which honestly, just isn't worth the effort. Some variety rather than button mashing would have been nice, and streamlined, responsive controls certainly would have helped. As it stands though, Shining Force gets old very quick and when it slows down to the pace of a slug, it's nearly unplayable.

But, Shining Force has its problems here as well. I've already mentioned the frame rate slowing down when there is a lot of action on screen, but that's not only problem this game has with its graphics. Characters have a tendency to get caught on objects and jerk around or run in place until they can dislodge themselves. This happens the most with Gadfort, the large centaur. He gets caught on practically everything he comes across on screen. Needless to say, the otherwise pretty graphics suddenly seem sloppy.

Still, there are some nice details in the game's design. When your characters switch weapons and equipment, it shows on the character model. Enemies look good overall and are varied enough to keep things interesting.

Toma sounds far too enthusiastic in everything that he says, even for a character with such a gregarious personality. Gadfort sounds like he's reading from a cue card half the time, Maebelle sounds generic, and listening to Amitaliri's far too cutesy voice is like being force fed barrel after barrel of cotton candy while being smothered to death with cuddly bunnies wearing pink tutus.

Cyrille and Faulklin's voices are merely mediocre. The shopkeeper, a fox-man, inexplicably slips into what sounds like a Speedy Gonzales accent, and then back to normal. As amused I was at this, I found myself wanting to just mute the television and throw something in the stereo after a while instead of listening to horrible voice acting. Also, each character has one battle cry that they repeat over and over and over and over and over again, which threatened to give me a nervous tic. There are only so many times and can listen to Faulklin yell, "They're...they're coming! They're...they're coming! They're...they're coming!" without wanting to scream.