History Headscratchers / ShiningForce

* In ''Shining Force II'', the Master Monk class equips gloves, yet when they attack, they're clearly kicking. What is up with that?

* This might not be a [=JBM=] proper, but the first game has a book in the first town titled "The Legend of MAX", seemingly predating the DanceDanceRevolution song. Did the phrase have origins prior to this?

<<|ItJustBugsMe|>>

* Why they are yet to release a collection that contains all the games in the series, especially the ones that weren't released in English? I mean if other franchises can get collections, why not Shining Force? Sonic's Genesis thing for the 360 had Phantasy Star I-IV.
** Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection also contains the three Genesis Shining games.
*** Sadly you have to have a PS2. Fortunately enough for Wii owners though you can buy the three games for Virtual Console.
**** Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection is only on PS3 and 360. If you mean that most of the later Shining Force(in name only) were released on the PS2, though...
* Just how nearly every villain in the first game besides the BigBad turns out to have been under some kind of mind control or fighting for their country and not Dark Sol. This troper just hates not being allowed to hold a grudge against bosses that were exceptionally difficult to beat.
** The second game had a lot more legitimate JerkAss bosses, which was less annoying than the constant milking of the RedemptionEqualsDeath trope the first game did.
** Do yourself a favour and avoid Fire Emblem 10. Great as that game is, the finale from Part II onward is all "you'll never defeat me!" *super-hard fight* "Thank you for defeating me!", and ''they aren't even brainwashed!''
*** The UpdatedRerelease of the first game improved on that: Balbazak is a dirty coward right to the end, with no option of forgiving him, Mishaela is a massive bitch (and a bit of a coward, running away during the fight until you finally corner her on her throne) despite keeping her promise of giving up the Light Saber, Ramladu's brainwashing (courtesy of Darksol) is established way the Hell back in the epilogue of the first chapter, and only gets worse, and Darksol is an unrepentant jackass throughout, gleefully and voluntarily sacrificing his life in order to fully revive Dark Dragon. Really, the only sympathetic villains are Elliot (last of his kind, only doing his duty of protecting his homeland despite his personal distaste at Ramladu's and Darksol's actions), Kane (mind-control mask, then later makes up for it with TWO [[HeroicSacrifice Hero Sacrifices]]), and Chaos (reprogrammed).
* The fact I never got to play part 2 & 3 of Shining Force 3 bugs me no end. Hell I read all the fan-translated scripts of the games but it hardly makes up for not being able to play them. All that effort just to end up with a cliff-hanger.
* It bugs me that the series is often remembered for the first game, when the ''second'' game is better than it. The first game had terrible AI and even worse balance, two things that were fixed in the second game, yet a lot of people seem to prefer the first one. I don't get it.
** Relating to balance, the first game was also absolutely brutal about letting you play through most of the game without a guide, and then BAM! hitting you with a brick wall you can hardly surpass without having the optional gamebreaking characters.
** This troper's introduction to the series was the second game. When I went to play the first, the AI and balancing drove me nuts. I never actually finished the Genesis version, though I did finish the remake of it.
** When this troper was younger, the first Shining Force game's cartridge was unable to save files, which led to the second one becoming more memorable, even after playing the first years later.

* The GBA remake of the first game improves on the original version of the first game in various ways, but what ticked me off about it was the wonky leveling. Stat gains pre-promotion are really inconsistent and lacking, but after promotion is worse - the first seven or eight levels you get nearly nothing, then suddenly for the next bunch your stats go up astronomically, and then virtually nothing again after that. The fact that post-promotion your stats go DOWN is bad enough, this caused me gridlock for a while because the enemies were suddenly more difficult and it took a long time for my characters to catch back up. Why this instead of Shining Force 2's quite reasonable leveling system? I'd much prefer a slow and steady rise than waiting a bunch of levels for a sprint that ends up being less useful overall.
* How promotions, at least in the first game, are much more like ''de''motions at first. Expect your HP, attack, defense and speed to actually go ''down'' when you promote a character in the first game. It's wiser to only promote a few key characters, unless you don't mind going through a few battles and probably dying a few times before grinding all your characters up again so they can survive more than two hits. The second game fixes this.
* How blatant the Tiers are in Shining Force I. I mean, yes, it's understandable to have your earlier characters not be as a great as others, but a lot of them were ridiculously bad.(not helping by the extremely poor levels up. Damn you RandomNumberGod! By that I mean Hanz. And Diane... and... okay, just find a list, it's a lot.)
** Good Old Hans. He's been known to go through three-or-four straight Level-Ups with NO stat gains AT ALL. It has happened to me. Diane, on the other hand, was consistently one of my final party members.
* Shining Force II. The ''ending''. Dear ''Mitula'', where to start. [[spoiler:Well, let's start with hefty doses of StrangledByTheRedString - as noted on that trope's page, hooking up a practically blank slate protagonist with a DamselInDistress with pretty much ''no'' warning whatsoever. Let's follow up with hefty doses of FantasticRacism ("She's a human! Obviously another human should be the one to be paired up with her") followed by a half-assed PairTheSpares attempt with an equally shoehorned romance - but at least an understandable one, as it involves aforementioned protagonist and his UnluckyChildhoodFriend. The question is, why did they need a romantic ending at ''all''?]] After the fairly solid writing in the rest of the game (grammatical errors aside), it's just jarring how the entire ending sequence seems so... ''rushed''.

* Jogurt. A hamster or something. His class is YGRT, which can only stand for "yogurt" Jogurt can be promoted over and over again which does nothing. His attack always deals 1 damage. If he actually manages to defeat an enemy, it drops a Jogurt ring...Which lets the equipper look like Jogurt.
** For reasons not clear, this is actually the most obscure, hard to get special character in the original.

**** In the Original Shining Force, you had a male Monk. The Male Mastermonk used Punch attacks. Ready for it? There are no glove weapons in Shining Force 1! He uses bare hands! I cant even begin to fathom the line of thought that made this happen across the two games.

** Good Old Hans. He's been known to go through three-or-four straight Level-Ups with NO stat gains AT ALL. It has happened to me.

* How promotions, at least in the first game, are much more like ''de''motions. Expect your HP, attack, defense and speed to actually go ''down'' when you promote a character in the first game. It's wiser not to promote anyone at all. The second game fixes this.

* How promotions, at least in the first games, are much more like ''de''motions. Expect your HP, attack, defense and speed to actually go ''down'' when you promote a character in the first game. It's wiser not to promote them at all. The second game fixes this.

* Being sent clear across the continent in the second game after you die, even though there are priests much nearer by than that. It just adds total insult to injury, having to spend so much time walking back to the battle after you've been defeated.

** Do yourself a favour and avoid Fire Emblem 10. Great as that game is, the finale is nothing but "you'll never defeat me!" *super-hard fight* "Thank you for defeating me!", and ''they aren't even brainwashed!''

* The fact I never got to plan part 2 & 3 of Shining Force 3 bugs me no end. Hell I read all the fan-translated scripts of the games but it hardly makes up for not being able to play them. All that effort just to end up with a cliff-hanger.