Let’s Talk about Shining Force

Today I want to talk about a retro game. Why? No real reason just felt like playing an older game. So, I picked up Sega Mega Drive Classics on the Nintendo Switch to quench my retro gaming thirst. This is the 4th or 5th time Sega have released a compilation like this and it probably won’t be the last. We could get to a point where we have fully immersive VR experiences, and they will still find a way to sell us old Mega Drive rom dumps.

Ah well. At least I’m enjoying it, going back to a lot of the games I grew up on like Sonic 2, Golden Axe and Streets of Rage 2. Good stuff, but there’s one game I played when I was a kid that’s always stuck with me, even though I only played it for about 10 minutes, Shining Force. I played it briefly on an emulator years ago and then played it briefly again on another Mega Drive compilation for the PlayStation 3. While I never got very far it did stick out to me due to its unique presentation and gameplay. Sure, we have plenty of strategy games now but back then it was pretty new to me.

And this was in the early 2000’s, when it originally came out it was unlike anything we had ever seen. This was 1993, years before the west would get its first Fire Emblem release so it stood out even more for a lot of gamers. Nowadays it’s seen as Sega’s answer to fire Emblem though the games director has said that this wasn’t the case, saying he took more inspiration from Dragon Quest which definitely shows in the final product. But does Shining Force hold up all these years later? Let's find out.

Shining Force doesn’t mess around with the plot. Right from the opening cutscene it gets right to the point, going over the backstory of how a technologically advanced civilization known as the ancients sealed an evil being called Dark Dragon away thousands of years ago. Now in the present an evil wizard known as Dark Sol plans to release Dark Dragon and take over the world. So now it’s up to a swordsman named Max and a group of his friends, dubbed the Shining Force, to travel the land and try to put a stop to Dark Sol’s evil.

If you’re the kind of gamer that plays RPG’s for their story, Shining Force likely won’t be your kind of game. That's not to say the story is some godawful, plot hole riddled mess or anything, it’s because there isn’t much of a story at all. Not in the western version anyway, there were a few extra details in the Japanese version that ended up getting cut during localization. I’m not sure how much those would have helped, but it does make some of the later sections a bit more awkward without them.

What disappoints me is the complete lack of character development. Oh, the cast is an eccentric bunch of weirdoes, but once they join your team they just fade into the background. Doesn't matter if they’re your best friend, a knight looking to avenge their father, a princess or an armadillo man in a steampunk battle tank suit, once they join the Shining Force, they become little more than pawns. At least the story doesn’t drag and moves along at a fairly brisk pace. It doesn’t waste your time unlike a lot of modern games where the cutscenes can go on for 20 goddamn minutes, this game cuts the bullshit and gets straight to the point.

So, the story is fine, for what it is it’s perfectly serviceable, but it’s in the gameplay where Shining Force truly shines. If you’ve played any strategy RPG before then a lot of what Shining Force offers is going to be very familiar. Most of the game is spent in the battles where you try to move your units around to try and take out the enemy units on the map. Thing is, it’s a lot more streamlined than most other games in the genre. There's no weapon triangle, no enemy weaknesses to think about and no other types of objectives, just kill all the enemies, or the boss, before they kill you. Some might see this as simplistic, but it does makes it easier to pick up and play. I honestly think that Shining Force is the most beginner friendly strategy game out there and would recommend it to people who want to get into the genre.

Even if you’re a fan of the genre, I do think Shining force has a lot to offer due to its large cast of characters. This is where the true depth of the game lies. The maximum number of characters you can have in your team is 12 but there are 30 characters to pick from, so you have some leeway in who you want in your team. Each character has two different classes, a base class and a promoted class they can reach at level ten. Though there is a benefit in waiting to promote at later levels since you will get a bigger boost in your stats.

Some of the character classes are shared between characters, you’ve got your warriors, mages, healers and centaur knights, but you do have a wide variety of unique characters to choose from. There's a werewolf, an old man in a steampunk flying suit, a dragon, a robot, even a samurai and a ninja. It's an eclectic roster to say the least. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses but there are some characters that are perhaps a little too overpowered. The two that come to my mind are Zylo and Domingo, Zylo is a wolfman with insane movement and attack power and Domingo is a flying squid with a surprising amount of bulk who fires very powerful ice magic.

Speaking of magic, there are a variety of different spells to use, with each spellcaster being able to learn 4 different types of spells, except for Gong the monk who can only learn a healing spell, which is all he really needs. That's the thing, for all the different spells a spellcaster can learn, you only need 2 of them at most. For mages/wizards I used their standard attack spell and for healers I used the basic healing spell. I also occasionally used a buff spell, but I never used a de-buff spell, mainly because they never frigging worked. Not that it bothered me, the standard spells were still useful enough that my mages/wizards were still some of my best damage dealers, especially the later level spells that hit multiple enemies at once.

The only downside is that there’s no way to replenish MP. I had to be careful in my use of magic lest I run out. It made it harder for healers since they could only heal my team so many times. This also made it harder to keep my healers at the same level as the rest. See, in Shining Force every action you take rewards you with experience points, even missing an attack will “reward” you with a single experience point. But the fastest way to level up is still fighting and killing enemies. Healing does give a little experience but it’s not enough to keep your healers at the same level as everyone else.

This also meant that some of my squad were at a way higher level than everyone else. I often had to hold certain characters back just so the rest of my team could get some hits in and level up. This also makes adding new characters to the team in the late game not worth doing because they’re severely under-levelled. There is a way to repeat battles by casting Max’s Egress spell to flee but that would mean having to replay the same battle over and over just to level up one character. Look, when I'm not adding a ninja and a robot to my team because it isn’t worth levelling them up, that’s bad.

At least micro-management is significantly easier. This is always the biggest pain in RPG’s, strategy RPG’s especially, but here it’s not too bad. So long as you’re not constantly swapping out characters the team should be at a decent level and level grinding should be a none-issue. In terms of equipment, the only thing that’s really important is their weapon. There is some other equipment like gloves and rings, but these act more as a bonus. Most characters can only equip one type of weapon, with the exception being the knights that can equip lances or spears, main difference being spears are weaker but have a longer range.

The characters equipment will take up one of their four item slots. This isn’t that big a deal since you don’t need that many items but managing this can be a pain. Like swapping items for instance, you have to scroll through every character in a long list just to get to the character you want and then you have to do it again to get to the character you’re swapping items with. It's annoying and only gets worse as more characters are added.

I did say this game made micro-management easier right? At least it doesn’t involve itemizing every character's stats or buying a copious amount of equipment for every character, I just pick the characters I want, buy their weapon and then I’m away. Buying weapons isn’t even that bad because, A: there aren’t that many weapons to buy and B: you have more money than you know what to do with. It’s not like there’s much else to buy. There are only 4 items to buy and I only needed the healing seeds as they’re the only thing that’s useful, maybe antidotes as well but you very rarely get poisoned so I wouldn’t bother.

But I haven’t talked about what separates Shining Force from a lot of other strategy RPG’s, the overworld. In between battles you’ll visit towns, talk to NPC’s and explore to find hidden items and secrets. This is typical stuff for an RPG but not so much for strategy games. In those games you just go through menu’s and get some brief story bits to get into the next fight. This makes sense because strategy games are all about the battles and they want to get you into them as soon as possible. But Shining Force’s overworld map and added degree of exploration does possess its own unique charm. I would also argue that this approach creates a better connection between the player and the world, it’s easier to become invested in a games world when you’re allowed to interact with it as opposed to seeing it in a menu. My only complaint with the overworld is that, for some reason, Max won’t pick up an item from a chest when his inventory is full. Instead of just handing it to a character with a free inventory slot he just puts it back where he found it, so every time I ran into a chest, I had to manage my items just to pick up what was inside it.

The overworld segments don’t last particularly long though. The game doesn’t waste too much time and I appreciate it. Even the fights go at a decent pace with most not taking too long. As the game progresses fights do get longer with more enemies to kill and it does start to drag on a bit. Mind you, it’s not too bad, most fights shouldn’t take any more than 15-20 minutes to beat even at their absolute worst. I think it only really becomes a problem when we get to mountainous terrain. Like a lot of strategy RPG’s, the terrain in Shining Force can affect how your characters move, with mountains and forests lowering the movement of most characters. It isn’t so bad to early on, but in the late game more and more battles take place in mountainous areas that can slow fights down to a crawl. It's one of the reasons Zylo is so good because he isn’t affected by them, well him and the flying characters who can just go wherever they want.

But once you get close to the enemy and the fighting starts, that’s where the game truly shines if for no other reason than the presentation. The game overall looks pretty for the Mega Drive, very bright and colourful which I like, but the overworld graphics aren’t much to write home about. They're fine, if a bit standard for the time, but the battle animations are the real highlight. Every action is played out in a brief little animation. While the animations themselves are only two frames they do help spice up the battles. It helps make the fights more visually interesting and some attacks, like the magic attacks, are visually stunning for the system. There's a lot of little details in these I like, every character has their own unique sprite and some of them have multiple animations depending on whether they do a heavy attack, even the backgrounds will change depending on where you fight. The characters also have their own portraits when talked to that look pretty damn good.

I can’t say I’m as impressed with the sound as I am with the visuals. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad it’s just not particularly great. I do like the sound effects and their crunch Mega Drive feel, but the music is only just ok. It's not bad it’s just a little too repetitive and you hear the same songs a little too often. I get that’s a thing with RPG’s, but other RPG’s make up for this fact by either having lots of songs or making the songs absolutely amazing and Shining Forces soundtrack is just kind of alright.

That covers most of the major points but now I want to talk about some of the little aspects about the game. Talking to NPC’s is a little awkward. Instead of going up to them and pressing a button, like every other game ever, you have to open the menu and select the talk option. Granted it’s always the first option highlighted but still. The menu itself was innovative in its use of icons to indicate each option, even the yes and no options do this with a shaking and nodding head. This would go on to become a trademark for Camelot, the developer of the Shining Force series and who would go on to develop, the Golden Sun and Mario Tennis/Golf games.

Now let’s talk structure. The game isn’t open world like a lot of other RPG’s, instead it uses a chapter system. There are eight chapters in the game and each ne indicates which areas you visit. Shining Force is a very linear game and there isn’t a lot of side content. There are a few secret characters to find and even some secret items, they don’t do anything, but you can unlock alternate outfits for some of the girls. At least the game is designed in a way that you always know where to go next. I did get stuck a couple of times because the game didn’t make it clear what I had to do but it wasn’t too hard to figure out. Here’s something the game doesn’t tell you; some items can be used in combat to cast some spells. Not sure why the game doesn’t inform you of this but there you go. Also, I hate the flying enemies in this game. They're evasion stats is way too high. Why are flying enemies always the worst in games?

So how does Shining Force hold up? It's certainly aged in some respects, but I still think it holds up very well. Shining Force is arguably the perfect strategy RPG for those who aren’t a fan of strategy RPG’s. It's far more streamlined than most others but it does so without removing all depth and complexity from the formula like a lot of other games do when they go down streamlined route, hi Final Fantasy XIII. Even fans of strategy games will find a lot to like with variety of characters and the excellent presentation. It may not be as deep or complex as other strategy games like Fire Emblem, but it has a unique charm that’s all its own. Plus, I like to think if it weren’t for the trail blazed by Shining Force, we wouldn’t have seen the release of games like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy tactics in the west. I guess you could say Sega did what Nintendidn’t.

Now if you want to play Shining Force you do have a few options, outside of emulation that is. You could try to get the original cartridge but that’s probably not the best option given it’s become very expensive these days. Thanks retro gaming scalpers. Luckily it is available on several compilations, the most recent of which is on the Sega Mega Drive Classics on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch which is the version I played for this review. This version comes with a fast forward function that lets you zip past enemy turns, something I wish was in every strategy game. There is another version of Shining Force on the Game Boy Advance. This version includes updated visuals, more story content, a better translation that includes cut content from the original localization and a few new characters. I've never played this version, but it looks like the definitive version of the game and might be worth looking into if you’re a collector for the console.

Whichever way you decide to play it, Shining Force is an excellent game that stands among the very best on the system. It was also a very popular game, receiving high praise from gaming publications at the time and while actual sales numbers from the period are hard to find, it did do well enough that Sega would bring its sequel to the west. Maybe we’ll look at that game sometime down the line. But you know, playing the Sega Mega Drives Classic really brought back a lot of nostalgic memories. Maybe I should look at the collection in a bit more depth. Until next time, remember to stay safe and have fun.