Aside from the PC, which has been my primary gaming machine throughout my life, this is my personal console genealogy:
Sega Genesis -> PlayStation 1 -> PS2 -> PS3 -> PS4.
Before the PS4, which I purchased very early in the console’s life, I’ve always preferred to be a late adopter. I’ve held on to each system a year or two into the next console generation, amassing large pools of quality games for the older system, and then finally upgrading once the new system had a healthy selection of games of its own.
My Genesis lasted me for years and years. I first got my hands on it in September of 1990, barely a year after its North American introduction. By the time I finally moved on to PlayStation in 1998, I had over 45 Genesis games — many of them bad, because I was too young to know what a bad game was. I had Game Genie, wireless controllers, the Nomad, and even Sega Channel. I had it all.
And Shining Force II was the greatest Genesis game I ever played.
I’m not sure how I initially came to own Shining Force II. Most likely it had something to do with the box art, which was a major determining factor in my gaming purchases at the time. It definitely wasn’t because of my experience with the first Shining Force, since I didn’t play that game until later.
Regardless of the miraculous circumstances that allowed it to happen, I owned Shining Force II, and it was incredible.
Shining Force II was in some ways a traditional Japanese RPG. The non-combat sections of the game consist of you guiding your cartoony character around a series of villages and other areas, talking to townsfolk, spending money to upgrade weapons for your party, and advancing the plot, which concerns the awakening of an ancient demon king named Zeon.
Pretty standard RPG stuff, really.
But the combat! The combat is what made Shining Force II (and its predecessor Shining Force) special.
Shining Force II was an early installment in a genre that would eventually become known as “tactical RPG.” You commanded a party of heroes that started small, but which could eventually number as high as 30 if you were diligent about finding all the secret team members. From that crew of 30 you were limited to 12 heroes on the field for each battle, which meant that you needed to learn the strengths and weaknesses of your different party members in order to construct a balanced and powerful team.
Warriors, for example, are solid front-line troops who can both dish out and absorb damage, but have an extremely limited movement speed. Centaur Knights are strong combatants as well, and they can be armed with long-range spears, enabling them to attack from behind Warriors. Archers can be powerful ranged damage dealers, but they are weak defensively and unable to attack adjacent enemies. Mages and Priests are essential for their magical abilities, but too many in your party is a recipe for disaster.
And that is just the tip of the strategic iceberg.
Within each class, each individual hero you encounter has their own strengths and weaknesses. You can also run across a variety of enchanted rings, permanent stat-boosts, and other items you can use to enhance your favorite heroes. Formations are critical too, as closely-packed ranks are safest up until the point you encounter an enemy wizard with area-of-effect damage spells.
There is also the matter of experience points to consider, as killing foes awards the most XP, so it is smart to find ways to allow even your healers to get the final blow on enemies in order to level them up more quickly. And then there is the question of promotion, which transforms your characters graphically and unlocks new abilities for them, and which can be done at any point after level 20.
And of course there is the matter of your main hero, named Bowie by default (but usually AAAAAAH! in my personal games). Bowie is the team leader, and you’ll instantly lose any fight when he is killed. It is usually simple enough to keep him far back from the front lines, away from combat — which is what I did when I first played the game, so many years ago — but that means he will lag behind the rest of your team in level, and will end up weak and extremely vulnerable as the game goes on. And since Bowie is the one character who will always be a part of your on-field squad, keeping him entirely out of battles is a serious handicap in the long term. So you are best off using him near the front lines as much possible, while still being cautious of his critical importance.
And then you eventually come to a fight where only Bowie’s weapon can damage a powerful boss, and you’ll be ripping your hair out trying to keep him alive as he goes toe-to-toe with a giant statue.
Shining Force II is a deep and richly complex game that was a true challenge in the days before the internet was the answer to all of life’s gaming questions. I played the game for countless hours without discovering all of its secrets. I learned strategy the hard way, by slamming head-first into obstacles that were utterly insurmountable until I became a wiser player. I was stuck on a simple puzzle for months because I didn’t realize I had to slide a wooden panel into a particular tree. It was tough in a way games just aren’t tough anymore, and I loved it.
Once I finally played the first Shining Force I loved that too, as it had all the same elements I loved about II (the same can’t be said of the true first game in the series, Shining in the Darkness, which is a first-person dungeon crawler and a completely different experience). I sang the praises of Shining Force to all of my friends, but by then many of them had already gotten their first taste of Final Fantasy VII on PlayStation…and they were hooked.
I played Final Fantasy VII too, and I thought it told a fine story…but the battles seemed boring and shallow compared to the rich grid-based strategy of Shining Force. I couldn’t understand why I would want to play an RPG where my heroes just stood in place trading swings with their enemies in every fight, occasionally using healing items and magic along the way. Where was the fun in that? Why waste my time controlling a party of just three heroes at a time when I could be deciding how to best split my team of 12 in order to attack a boss from multiple angles at once?
Of course, as we all know, the Final Fantasy-style of RPG battle won the day, and became the expected system in RPGs. It still exists even today, in games like Bravely Default and countless other JRPGs. Shining Force-style combat still exists today, but it’s a rare and odd thing in the world of RPGs (usually designated with words like “Tactics” in the game title). Even the Shining Force series itself abandoned the system, and has been bouncing from one weird kind of combat to another for decades.
All the fans want is to fight big battles on a grid from a top-down perspective, damn it! Just give us that again!
Sigh.
If you’ve never played Shining Force 1 or 2, obviously I recommend them both highly. The first game is available in a decent port on iOS devices, and both titles can be played on the Wii’s Virtual Console. For that true classic gaming experience you could invest in the actual cartridges and a Retron gaming system. And, of course, there are other ways out there that people manage to play old-school games.
However you play the games, I envy your chance to experience them for the first time. You’ll have a chance to promote your team’s talking turtle into a fire-breathing monster, hatch the mysterious Domingo Egg, discover the powerful ninja Hanzou lurking in a random bush, lose your mind save-scumming to get the best items in the Dwarven Village, and experience the childish joy of giving your main character an unorthodox name:
If we lived in a better world, Shining Force never would have strayed from its tactical RPG foundations. But since it did, if you’re looking for modern Shining Force-style turned-based battles, tactical military games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown are your best bets.
The post Throwback Thursday: The Strategic Mastery of Shining Force appeared first on GameCrate.
64-bit Chrome creeps closer to a stable release
Can we get some of that 10Gbps, please?
