Shining Force is the quintessential RPG, in my opinion - although its fitting into the category of RPG is a bit dubious... perhaps, 'strategy RPG'... Either way, there is nothing better to play.
The series started off with a first person dungeon-crawler, called Shining in the Darkness. This was followed up by Shining Force itself, which saw you take the role as leader of said force, 12 strong but with many more to choose from, taking on two of the three Demon Kings (one of which was the antagonist of SitD). The second in the Force series was much the same, battling the Demon King, Zeon, although as a game it was far superior to its predecssor, in terms of sound, graphics, and actual playability.
There were also versions on the Game Gear, two of which were made into a Mega-CD game (which also had its own quest). However, they revolved around a different Devil, Iom. On the Saturn, a new genre in the entire Shining collection was created with Shining Wisdom, an adventure game much the same as Y's or Zelda. It is perhaps the least popular of the series, although as a game it is still fun to play.
Finally came the other two Saturn games... Shining the Holy Ark was first, and was a '3D' dungeon crawler like SitD. However, it had more playable characters (8 as opposed to 3), and was a much more in-depth game (or so I feel). Even still, one would get the feeling that it was just an introduction to the final instalment (thus far), Shining Force 3, as the story did not sit too well with previous games.
New villains and good-guys were introduced, the Vandals and Innovators. Their exact connection plot-wise with the Demon Kings and original Gods is, as far as I know, absolutely unknown to those except their creators, although several people (such as Moogie) have come up with their own ideas s to what is going on. The way I see it, is that the Vandals are simply Greater Devils, as were Geshp and Zalbard of ShF2, and the Innovators minor Gods, like Mitula. They are not as powerful as the God Volcanon (who was labelled the Creator in ShF2) and Zeon, the King of the Devils.
But this is all in (un-)interesting aside. As a game, ShF3 was remarkable. It came as 3 separate scenarios, each separately playable as games in their own right, but together became a whole epic saga. This was followed up by a limited edition "Premium Disc", available only to those with all three scenarios (or plenty of wonga), which had special battles with enemies old and new, artwork, graphics and so on...
So, what of the future? Due for release any time soon is Shining Soul, on the game-boy advance, which seems to be of Wisdom ilk. What that is about, or like, I do not know, but I certainly look forward to it! |
