Shining Force EXA

There was no real reason why I decided to start Shining Force EXA. I was looking through the backlog pile and then realized I've never played a Shining game before. Knowing that this Shining Force was not true to its Shining Force roots, I decided to try it anyways. Why not?

STORY : 3.5/5
Story was weak. So, it starts off with you, Toma, the last survivor of your tribe in search for the Shining Force (which is a sword) which was said to hold the power to control the world. You're journey around the world with three other comrades who has promised to assist whoever that's able to find and wield Shining Force. They finally do find the sword and Toma ends up being able to pull it out. Upon pulling it out, a giant fortress emerges and you become the controller of that fortress.

The world which is controlled by two major forces (essentially the humans and the magic users), their rulers also wish to get their hands on the Shining Force so they can destroy the opposing power. So they come by and try and manipulate you to do their doing.

[spoiler]Alright so what puzzles me the most is when you find out that you must kill off one of the Heiritors to get the full power of the Shining Force. Why is that neither of them really DIE after you do kill them off? And it ends up to be some happy ending for some reason. They make it all dramatic and sad just so both of them end up living at the end anyways. That's just cheating.[/spoiler]

CHARACTERS : 2/5
All the characters besides the two main characters were pretty boring. In the beginning, they had brief introductions which made me think they'd elaborate on them more further into the game but it never happens so you end up not knowing much about anyone. You only really find out that, oh, the two main characters love each other but they're both too stubborn and shy to say anything. You find out small details like, this person's a friend of this person but that's really it. I can't say I liked anyone in particular but neither did I hate anyone either.

SOUND : 3.5/5
The intro bgm is pretty epic though it sounds like it's missing some lyrics to go with it. The rest of the game's music's pretty decent. Some dungeon tracks are basically the repeat of a few lines of music which isn't all entirely bad since you go in and out of certain dungeon tracks depending on the monster's proximity to you. Some are particularly plain sounding and very "cave/dungeon"-like and it totally goes with the graphics/feel of the game. VERY DIABLO.

It's so hard to find this OST!

The English voices fit their characters well. Sometimes they sounded extremely awkward and sometimes it really fit in. Must've been another read off the script without much knowledge about the context? I think I might like the English voices better than the Japanese. I don't think Paku Romi as Toma would've been what I imagined at all.

GAMEPLAY : 5/5
Since there was nothing much going on with the story, there was a lot of action instead. This is where I think the game shines particularly brightly for me because it reeks of Diablo! :V

There's two 'modes' to this game played in the game style and you take turns using the hero and heroine. You travel usually with two NPCs assisting you while killing stuff and getting drops. The main story requires you to venture through dungeons/fields to get to places to do more of the same stuff. Occasionally there are "fixed" and/or timed battles that happen back at base (your fortress) where monsters are attracted to your power and so they try and take over your base. Training dungeons under your base are randomly generated as you can repeat them endlessly which makes the game more slightly varied. Throughout the game, you can upgrade your base with defensive/offensive robots, a better barrier, better recovery abilities and etc.

Drops are mostly random and dropped stats are randomized too, so this game has to do a lot with luck and timing. Even if you don't get your most ideal equips, you can still manage to get a few relatively good combinations. If you find your equipment to be unfavourable, you can also upgrade your own stats with the use of mythril which you can find as random drops and grown mythril in dungeons as well. On top of that, you can also use gold to upgrade your equipment if you're filthy rich.

There are points where there are so many mobs, it becomes a serious clusterfucked lagfest. You end up not being able to see your characters anywhere, but if you're well prepared, they're usually no problem. If anything, they're actually more fun.

GRAPHICS : 3.5/5
There isn't much to complain about. I watched a short making-of for some of the game and they tried to make their character sketch look the same in the CG scenes and it sorta worked but it still looked very awkward -because- it was obviously CG. Though I would have preferred anime cutscenes over awkward CG that was trying to be anime-like. There was at least the intro which was a nice (but typical) anime movie.

Dungeons felt almost too Diablo-like but I'm not complaining actually. The shading, shadows, colours felt nostalgic so I got used to the game pretty quickly.

OVERALL : 4/5
I'm totally overrating this game but I really enjoyed it. I liked it so much I went on to complete it - optional dungeon, completion of training grounds, completion of weapons collection. If only there was more, I would still be playing it even now. Well, technically I can beat the game indefinitely as it saves you at the last chapter every time you beat it but then the challenge is lost. The optional dungeon and the last bit of the training grounds were pretty tough but the tougher the better.

This game isn't all that bad (I guess nor it was it all that great) but it's still under the radar. If you don't mind the bleh story and super-bleh characters (which most people probably would) it's suparrr fun.

I think I should try a 'real' Shining game now.