Shining Force EXA challenges you to unite a planet. A bitter war between two world superpowers has raged on for decades; armies of beasts and demons devastate the people and the land. With both sides deadlocked, two young heroes rise up to begin a heroic journey to stop the fighting and unite the divided world. As either Toma, a talented sword fighter boy, or Cyrille, a cunning female sorceress, you’ll venture into a stunning world of swords and sorcery teeming with a huge variety of tribes. With aggressive offensive and defensive strategies, you’ll lead your battle party into combat while protecting your home base, the Geo Fortress, from massive attacks. Enhanced Power Arts System – Players will master different Power Arts and unleash a wide variety of magic attacks
User Reviews
5 Stars Great game
The graphics are solid and the gameplay is just right with a nice storyline package. If your a fan of the series this is a must addition to your shining force experience =)
4 Stars It’s fun to bash monsters, but slowdown shouldn’t be a problem at this stage…
So, I decided to purge my shelf of about 15 or so duds I had managed to acquire over the last 5 years for my PS2, and with my shiny new store credit, I purchased “Shining Force.” I know this series has been around for a long time, but I had never played it, and the game promised real-time fighting with elements of strategy, right on the cover!
OK, so the cover description was completely misleading. Instead, “Shining Force” is simply monster-bashing goodness, in the spirit of “Gauntlet: Dark Legacy,” with a bit more story. I won’t go into the story, but it’s nothing to scream over. Certainly, it’s been told thousands of times before. Instead, I’ll jump straight to the fun…
GAMEPLAY! “SF” lets you take it to some ancient-ruin streets, sword (or book) in hand. Your goal? Does it matter? You just bash monsters. Sometimes, you’ll have TONS of monsters to bash, sometimes few, but you still bash ‘em. You can choose between two characters: Toma, a good old-fashioned swordsman, and Cyrille, a powerful(?) sorceress. Whichever character you choose, the other waits behind to defend the fort from onslaught of evil minions in what I guess the game thought was tactical, but really is more of a matter, “Can I beat them before they beat me?”
And no, there is no “Turn-based” nonsense here; you are put in the middle of pretty glorious battles. Wave upon wave of evil sweeps down on you, and you fight it off in a button-mashing fury. It’s glorious to behold. Unfortunately, the developers couldn’t quite fix slowdown issues, and at times, the game slows to a crawl (particularly in the fortress defense battles – it can be downright ridiculous at times). There’s no excuse for a game this late in the PS2 cycle to experience such issues. But anyway…
Characters level up in the traditional sense, but one can also mine for mythril, which allows characters to “carve” Power Arts. Basically, these Arts power up your character, and some of them are severe. Arts which give resistance to status effects, or grant more attack – heck, some arts give attack bonuses against certain types of enemies in the game (and these are by far the most powerful of the bunch – when you are hitting for millions of points in damage, you really feel high). Unfortunately, the arts ruin the balance in the game – for some reason or another, they just don’t work for Cyrille’s magic, and her weapon use leaves a lot to be desired. Thus, the later stages tend to skew toward Toma (and in particular, he is indispensable for one of the bonus dungeons unlocked at the end of the game). And wow, once you get enough mythril (and you’ll be bringing in TONS of the stuff in the endgame), you can really, uh, carve out a powerful character.
In addition to the main party, one can also choose to bring along 2 additional characters. These characters have pretty distict fighting styles, and some can use healing magic (a trait which you do not possess). However, ultimately they all share one flaw – they’re idiots. The computer AI leaves much to be desired for your party members. You can tell your archer to hang back and heal, and she’ll run into the fray attacking. It boggles the mind. It doesn’t really matter – in the endgame, they are pretty useless. Hell, against the (nominal) final boss, they don’t even participate in the battle.
I mentioned a few notes on the story above, so I won’t go into that here. There are two endings (or more precisely, two ending paths) to the game, but they are pretty much the same. The graphics are pretty nice. I mean, this isn’t FF here, but the monster design is pretty good, and the level layouts look OK. The music and sound is so-so – the score reminds me of the original “Kingdom Hearts.” Finally, the voice acting isn’t bad, and you can skip over most of it, anyway. The two notable exceptions are the shopkeeper and the blacksmith, whose voices are by far the most grating in the game. To make matters worse, they say the SAME THINGS every time you speak to them. For 40 hours (the estimate is given on the back cover, and it’s pretty accurate), you’ll hear the same phrase repeated every time you visit them. Incredibly annoying.
Anyway, that’s it. If you like whipping monster tail, you’ll like this game. You’ll see around the slowdown issues, and I think you can turn the voices off, although I can’t remember. Anyway, have fun!
4 Stars A fun action RPG
For those that like action rpg’s this is a very good option!
Easy to get into and not to difficult. For those new to rpg’s
this is also a very good way to start. Only drawback is some
slowdown and the story is a bit slow moving. Recommended,
but don’t expect it to be Shining Force III:-)
5 Stars Great game
I loved the game it has a lot of free moments and makes fighting fun
3 Stars Poor technically, but still fun to play
So I read the lack luster reviews for this game on Gamespot and IGN, and read the fantastic reviews this game got from the fans and decided to get pick this up and see for myself who was right…
Despite its many short comings, such as poor voice acting, and game lag during large battles this game still manages to be a lot of fun to play. This really is a hidden gem for fans of combat RPG’s.
In addition to your standard dungeon crawling for gear and experience to get stronger you also inherit a huge fortress that you are responsible for beefing up and protecting from enemy attacks. I certainly loved that aspect of the game, it’s simple and not much to it but I really like having a house or fort that I can watch develop and change throughout a game along with my characters.
The interface is really smooth and easy to navigate, big kudos on that. Everything you need is easily accessible from the game screen.
Level designs are pretty boring to be honest, there are never any “wow that’s awesome” type moments. Typically just more cave walls, bushes and stairs painted a different color.
The combat is simple and there’s really not much to it other than mashing buttons and have sufficient stats to kill whatever you are fighting. The only real technique that’s needed is being able to dodge if you see a boss charging an attack.
You can’t control your two party members and they are…to put it as nicely as I can…incredibly stupid. Several times I’d be fighting a boss with Toma and turn the boss away from my two party members so they would not get hit by frontal attacks, only to have them go out of their way to stand in front of him and promptly be killed.
Despite all this the game is still fun to play…but definitely this is not a 5 star game by any stretch of the imagination. It is fun to play and definitely worth trying if you are in the mood for a combat/action RPG.
