Shining Force - Chapter 8 (with final boss) - Sega Mega Drive

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Published on July 28, 2017 7:53:21 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_bh5MUXrW4

Game:

Shining Force (1992)

Duration: 2:37:15

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Shining Force is one of my all-time favourite Sega franchises and unfortunately Sega don’t seem to make these games for Europe anymore. The last instalment that I know about was back in 2013 for the PSP called Shining Ark.

Shining Force was originally an exclusive for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis made by Climax Entertainment and Sonic! Software Planning with the publisher being Sega. However since then it has been released for a whole bunch of Sega Compilation packs, so you can get it on virtually everything these days. I also like to mention the brilliant Game Boy Advance remake in 2004 called Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon which adds extra battles and characters to this original game. Shining Force 1 isn’t actually the first in the series, that distinction goes to Shining in the Darkness, which is a first person dungeon crawler.

So the game is a single player turned based strategy game where you have to simply beat your opponent’s army in fantasy medieval style combat. Now in your party you have various different types of fighters such as centaurs who are fast and strong, but slow in rough terrain, magic users and archers who are useless in close range combat but can attack multiple enemies and from a distance and warriors such as dwarves who are slower but are better defensively and hold themselves up in most close range battles. Naturally part of the game is to position your troops accordingly, leaving your magic users and healers near the back so that your warriors can go toe to toe with the enemy.

The majority of the game is seen from an overhead view which gives you a good viewpoint of the battle and allows you to inspect the weak points in the enemy lines. Whenever you attack an enemy it goes into these cool 3rd person attack scenes which contains some of the best visuals in the game. The title looks great, although the Mega Drive has done a lot better, it still looks solid.

I love playing Shining Force however it is pretty clear to see that it is an early game in the series. There’s many things which has been improved in the sequels that I noticed coming back to this one after so many years, from the weapons not being inventory items, the streamlining of the menus, particularly when trying to buy stuff (you really wish the shopkeeper would keep quiet) and AI seems a little dumb and predictable at times. Shining Force 2 and definitely 3 are much better games, but I still recommend that you play this one and to be honest if you pick up the Game Boy Advance remake that I already mentioned then it actually helps to fix some of these problems.

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