YMMV / Shining in the Darkness

• Breather Level: After the hell that is the Trial of Wisdom, the second level of the labyrinth is much more forgiving by comparison. The trader opens up at this point, allowing you to get much better weapons and armor than you once had, and the enemies don't attack in nearly as large groups as before, or at the very least, aren't split up into multiple rows as often.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Chestbeaks that start showing up in several treasure chests in the Cave of Strength. Each one is effective a Boss in Mook's Clothing, far more powerful than the KaiserKrab which was the strongest enemy you'd faced before this, with brutally high damage that will cause it to drop Milo or Pyra in 2-3 hits at most and the hero in only a few more, high defence that lets it shrug off your best attacks until Pyra can cast Slow on it, high magic resistance that makes it very hard for Pyra to affect with Slow, the ability to put your party members to sleep with its basic attacks, as well as the ability to use a party-wide sleep mist attack (which doesn't do any damage and has a fair chance of being resisted, but can be crippling if it affects two, or heaven forbid all three, of your party members). The Ghosts that spring out of the chests in the Cave of Truth are even worse, with their habit of casting DeSoul on you instead of the sleep mist, which is crippling until Milo learns the Revive spell (or if it's Milo they kill, since you can't buy revive items). Fortunately they can be avoided by simply ignoring the treasure chests in the area until you're much higher level.
  • The Smoke enemies in the Cave of Wisdom are brutal and arguably actually overpowered for that stage of the game for one simple reason: they can cast Freeze 3 on your party, which will do 40-50 damage to each of your characters, while also being tough and fast enough that it's hard to wipe them out before they can act (they're also magic-resistant, reducing the damage they take from offensive spells). If you get ambushed by a large group and the A.I. Roulette lands on "blast them with magic" too many times, they can literally wipe you out practically before you can act. Some fans have even theorised that there was a mistake when coding them and they were given Freeze 3 instead of Freeze 2, which would have been much more reasonable for the area.
  • Pretty much any magic-using enemy counts as this, actually, due to how much damage enemy magic does all throughout the game. The Salamanders that start showing up (fortunately very rarely) in the second half of the 2nd floor of the Labyrinth are unbelievably dangerous because their flame breath attack can and will hit for 40-70 damage when your characters will only have about 140-200 HP. If a group of them jump you and more than 2 of them unleash it on you in a row (or your party isn't on full HP at the start of the battle) they will wipe you out.
• Difficulty Spike: The Cave of Truth is when the game starts to take the gloves off when it comes to difficulty. Enemies start to hit much harder and attack in much larger groups, and status effects are much more frequent compared to before. It's still doable without substantial grinding, but this is around the point where you're likely gonna seriously consider the more pricer equipment. Additionally, you have to open the treasure chests that you could have comfortably ignored earlier^note treasure chests very rarely contain anything of value, usually only tiny amounts of gold, common consumables, or pieces of obsolete equipment you already grew out of ages ago, meaning they're rarely worth the bother of opening in order to find an item you need to obtain the Rune Key you need to open the next cave, putting you at risk of encountering the Ghosts that lurk in them if you don't know exactly which one to open.
• Fanon: A lot of people assume that Mephisto is actually somehow related to Darksol from Shining Force.
  • He is; Shining Force: The Final Conflict, a Japan-only Shining game, reveals Mephisto is the son of Darksol and Mishaela.
• Nightmare Fuel: The fact that the knight, when you first fight him, closes in and attacks, rather than just shaking back and forth to attack.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The fact that your equipment still takes up inventory slots, cutting your inventory space in half when you're fully equipped. It gets even worse with key items you have to carry which also take up space.
  • As was common for JRPGs of the time, the Random Encounters can be insufferable. Sometimes you'll be able to go for quite a long way without meeting an enemy- but if the game feels like it, you can find yourself being mobbed by enemies three times in three steps.
• That One Boss: The KaiserKrab, the very first boss in the game, is absolutely brutal. For starters, even if you level grind and have decent equipment, it hits like a truck. Second, you're likely to stumble upon it by accident before you have a chance to prepare. Third, you're by yourself and have very limited inventory space, meaning it ultimately comes down to a damage race between you and the boss. It's not uncommon to squeak by with your health in the single digits.
• That One Level: The Trial of Wisdom, by far. It is filled to the brim with Goddamn Bats and in incredibly confusing to traverse thanks to having multiple pitfalls that drop you down to the lower floor. To make matters worse, the game likes to break the rows of monsters in this area into groups of two, meaning area attacks won't be of much help, as it's not uncommon to get into fights with four to five enemy groups in a single encounter. Combine this with your equipment beginning to slide and the one of the best weapons in the game for The Hero being located here, you're in for a very rough time. It's telling that the next floor of the labyrinth proper is considered a Breather Level by comparison.