Shining Series

One thing I dislike about Shining Force 1 though is that it is addicted to the Magikarp Power trope. Who of us knew that grinding that weak-ass knight in Chapter 2 would lead to a one... err, centaur Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? That said, the game is easy enough that you can beat it without much grinding.

Also, isn't there a popular saying that when you've got one particular character in your team, you're golden? I think that's Zylo, but I've never played SF 1 far enough for me to recruit him, so I can't say if this is right... ^^"

Zylo's really good but it's actually Bleu that has the rep of being really good, and you have to do a lot of grinding to get him at that level since he's AWFUL at first.

Or they might be referring to Mushashi.

Really? 'Cause as much as I LOVE Zylo to bits, I'd say that Domingo is the best character in the game. A good selection of spells (and plenty of MP to use them), High HP and DEF, and he can fly!

Don't ask what's wrong with me, because I don't know either.

The samurai, the ninja, Domingo, Bleu, Zylo, Guntz, Koichi and Adam absolutely wreck shit.

Well...
Bleu sometimes wrecks shit.
There seems to be a 50/50 chance that he'll be a powerhouse (constant attack gain) or a solid flying wall (constant defense gain).

Those guys are seriously the best units in the first game, though.

SEGA should revisit the Shining Force series...
Also remake the second one ala the GBA remake for the first.
Also remake the third one period. I don't care how.

While I won't disagree that Adam and Guntz are useful characters, they are most useful in forests and mountains because they're unaffected by terrain. When fighting in actual buildings, they just tend to lag behind everyone else.

As for Kokichi, I tend to not use him because I usually have Amon or Balbaroy to fill his role.

And Hanzou.... I want to like Hanzou, I really do. His stats are nice, but he's basically reduced a meat shield because his spells never work.

Don't ask what's wrong with me, because I don't know either.

Never got the love for Adam. He's cool but comes too late and is too slow to be of any use. The robot in the 2nd game I like a lot more(though he's slow too). Guntz I give move increasing items so he ends up being REALLY good. Plus he can use a spear which rocks. Koichi TBH I don't find that good later on, and he looks incredibly stupid when he promotes. Domingo is my preferred flyer.

Truth be told, the only reason that I liked Adam was because he had a laser cannon as his critical attack...

Being a robot probably didn't hurt his chances either.

To be honest, nearly half of the cast I never use. I only started using them (in the GBA remake) because I wanted to hear their dialogue trees, which you can only access by leveling them up. I suppose it does a nice job of fleshing out an assortment of stats though. (Hans tells your fortune, Gong tells you about the stuff he carries in his backpack, Zylo is adorkable as all hell, Domingo turns into a pokemon , etc.)

edited 12th Nov '12 9:35:06 AM by IWasJustPassingBy

Don't ask what's wrong with me, because I don't know either.

Yeah I did like the GBA remake for developing the characters more. Hans was so awful in the original though. Like he was good for the first 3 fights and then he just falls apart. SF 1's cast did seem to have a lot of unnecessary characters. Too many knights for starters. And Yogurt...blegh.

Archers in general are pretty garbage. Why bother having one when a knight has better movement, more defense, and (with lances) a better attack range? The only "archer" you need in Shining Force 1 is Lyle, who is a knight with a freakin' bazooka that can attack from 3 squares away!

Don't ask what's wrong with me, because I don't know either.

first heard about this series through Project X Zone and got interested in it.

You look happy, I can change that if you want.

I think Px Z chose terrible reps for the series though.

Anyway I downloaded Game Gear's shining force gaiden sword of whatever off the 3DS E-Shop, and it rocks. It looks REALLY good for a Game Gear game and the soundtrack ain't too shabby either. Unfortnately like the sega CD game partially based off it there's only battles/cutscenes, no town wandering although it makes sense with the GG's limited space. The members i have so far are

• Deanna - the Max/Bowie of the game, but more bishie, IMO he's actually worse than either of them so far. He doesn't get bolt(or hasn't yet, I promoted him around level 13-14 because he was drastically falling behind) and doesn't hit all that hard or take hits all that well. My first playthrough I usually have trouble keeping the leader up to snuff with the others but he started having a hard time keeping up midway through. Actually he does learn all 4 levels of bolt but it seems to take a long time.
• Natasha - she's the Tao of the game, and like Tao can be pretty useful. She interestingly has egress! Knowing how devastating Tao can be later on with Blaze level 4, I've been keeping her around awaiting that faithful moment.
• Jaha - he looks funny but honestly this guy has been The Load for my force. The wiki says he's awesome but I'm not seeing it so far, maybe it's because he's fallen too much behind. Honestly he's been kind of filler since the early game.
• Eric - the "Ken" of the game, so far he's been pretty good. But while a lot of fans drop Ken I ended up usually ended up getting good results with the guy, far more than with Chester in SF 2. He's not all that bad a knight and is really good early game.
• Dawn - the "Mae" of the game in being the she-knight counterpart to Eric. She's actually been really good for me and one of my core members. Once the cheeseball health grubbing enemies like Chimeras and hellhounds show up her weaknesses show a bit more but I like her.
• Luke - the "Gong" of the game, but unlike Gong, Luke kicks butt. This guy is awesome, able to dish out big hurts AND heal, although he's not on the SF 2 Master monks' level(Kanna will forever be the best MM in the franchise). I've found that later game the Difficulty Spike kind of hurts his power output noticeably but can still provide excellent support and hold his own.
• Slade - the token starting healer and only slightly better than Lowe from SF 1. He doesn't learn aura which sucks for him and after a certain point in the game he's pretty unnecessary. Also he's apparently an old pervert or something in the CD games, ugh a perverted priest into young girls? No, GTFO. Also, no relation to the awesome Slade of SF 2.
• Graham - a ranger and the first archer you get in the game. Unlike Hans, he is NOT garbage and actually stays pretty useful for most of the game, at least so far for me. He even gets an unpromoted weapon that lets him attack from 3 spaces instead of the usual two, which is mad useful. I really like this guy actually.
• Chester - an elf who looks a LOT like oldschool Link and seems to have his marksmanship skills as well. He's an archer too but unlike the ones in SF 1 he's actually pretty freakin good. In fact, having him AND Graham is a good idea since magic is stupidly OP'd mid-late game(level 3 freeze does like 42 damage and can hit up to 8 units while being aimed from 2 spaces away which is bonkers) and you want to be able to kill them ASAP, not to mention the cheap fire breathing flying enemies.
• May - she's the Anri of the game, but best part is she gets freeze level 3 which is BROKEN in the mid-game as mentioned above. This alone makes her a nice addition to the party but being a Squishy Wizard, the hardhitters later one will tear her foxy tail up. A Glass Cannon at its finest.
• Rohde - he comes prepromoted but so what, that doesn't mean you should bench him, as he hits pretty hard. But in typical gladiator fashion he's a bit slow and his meh health really hurts him with the stupid mages mid-late game. So far he's done well for me but if I can get his power with more durablity/movement, I'll replace him.
• Claude - oh no, a birdman...notoriously one of the most underwhelming classes in the Genesis SF games. But Claude flips the bird to such notions and is easily one of the best units in the game so far. He makes the PC look like an absolute scrub with the sword, can cover ground like crazy, does some serious damage, can actually take a hit, and will outlevel a good amount of the force if you keep him in the front lines. He's the only flier in the game but he's so freakin STRONG you won't even care. Only thing that gets him sweating are some of the nastier archer units and worse the higher mages who laugh at his defense with their one-hit KO AoE spells.
• Randolf - he comes prepromoted but isn't bad at all, yet I wouldn't call him the best unit either. Like he works well as a backup knight but moreso for finishing enemies off or babysitting softies. I'm not CRAZY about him but keep him for backup.
• Sarah - she's a healer like Sarah from SF 2 and supposedly the best one in the game since she learns aura. That said I never used her mainly because I HATE leveling up healers in SF unless it's Kanna. She comes promoted which is okay I guess, but I haven't used her much. She looks cool at least.
• Gyan - this couger/bear thing dude I guess is the token badass beastman of the group, but he's no Zylo unfortunately. He's not bad but so far he's been just alright. His attack animation is so bad lol.

edited 16th Nov '14 2:11:48 AM by Vertigo_High

I've been on the fence about getting Gaiden II. I keep hearing that it's really good, but I keep wanting to go through Gaiden I before I play the second. I suppose I should at least buy it before it gets delisted.

That said: Vertigo, would you say that Chester and Graham are kind of like the "Lyle" of the series, or am I getting ahead of myself.

And as someone who didn't have too much of a problem with Amon (Balbaroy is a coin-flip), I look forward to Claude.

edited 17th Nov '14 9:15:26 AM by IWasJustPassingBy

Don't ask what's wrong with me, because I don't know either.

Sword of Hayja was translated for this, right? I can't even remember if it was ever translated on the original Game Gear of it was Japanese only...

I don't remember what region you're in, Vertigo, though.

I'm in the US and the first Gaiden game was No Export for You sadly so a few plot points in So H kind of go over your head especially one late game fight unless you know the backstory. Sword of H. was the 2nd game and I think the English release had some balance changes, like the endgame sword is hilariously broken since it's basically an unbreakable level 3 freeze via use item command and level 3 freeze is stupidly good for some reason which I don't think it was in the JP version. In fact wikipedia says this:

The North American release of Shining Force Gaiden II made drastic alterations to the spells Blaze level 3 and Freeze level 3, more than doubling the damage they inflict while increasing the radius of their effect from two to three squares. This results in mage characters being overpowered compared to other playable characters. Enemies with level 3 magic are also overpowered, as any one of them can kill several characters at full health in a single move.

Thankfully there's usually no more than one demon master per map, as these guys are the ones who spam level 3 freeze most and multiple times at that. But when you take into account that no one on your force's health is going to be at least 50 until the last 3 or 4 battles and that that the spell deals 45-48 damage per hit on a three space radius to multiple party members it certainly does seem unfair. Both Natasha AND May can learn all 3 levels of freeze(there is no level 4 spells this time) and May learns it at level 12 so for your own sanity please make sure you keep those two leveled.

The Sega CD game is like a compilation/port of all 3 gaiden games so playing that is a good alternative, I only played a little on emulator since my old laptop went splut.

as for the archers, Graham is a bit closer to May since his defense kind of sucks but I would consider both him and Chester staples to the force for this game. Both join close to one another and remain useful the entire game. Though admittedly Chester's power output kind of faltered a bit late game but that was probably because I gave Graham the better weapon. So yeah, they are the Lyles of the game more or less.

Also the PC stops being important more or less after a certain point in the game, as in you no longer need him to participate in battle, as unlike the first two games the final battle can be won without him needing to fight. A lot of sites say he's a monster after a few levels of promotion with the white ring equipped but TBH I'd prefer devoting that time to training some of the other force members. A lot of units are actually pretty solid in this one and my force whooped for a good portion of the game until the late game mages showed up. I actually missed out on the two secret members, one of which is probably REALLY good. This wiki says the final boss is one of the hardest in the franchise but TBH he wasn't that bad.

The "gimmick boss map" battle for this game(think the laser cannon or prisim flowers from the Genesis games) was one of my favorite maps in the game since it really got your promoted archers a chance to shine but it's also where the game's biggest Difficulty Spike shows up. There's another fairly difficult fight later on as well.

But yeah I cannot emphasize how cheap the demon masters are. They are worse than some of the late game bosses and probably some of the cheapest enemies in the SF games I've fought against. Not even SF 1 chimeras were this bad.

Y'know, remembering this game and then knowing that there was a Shining rep in Project X Zone...

It... kinda made me wish that if there's a new Shining rep in the sequel, it'd be Blanc Neige. Also the wikia lists her to be included in Shining Blade, but I don't see her involvement there...

I wish our crossover rep was from the original shining series, back when the series had a good rep.

I loved the series when I was younger. Too bad that outside of Fire Emblem there's almost nothing like it today. Or are there any good recent games like it (or maybe even fangames)?