Shining Force Neo

"Not the Shining Force you grew up with, but it's still worth checking out..."

The Shining Force series will always have a special place in my heart. To this day, Shining Force 1 is one of my all-time favorite games. Even though SF1 is a tactical RPG, it is the game that introduced me to the world of RPGs, and I've been hooked ever since. The SF series has traditionally fallen into the tactical rpg genre and was definitely a forerunner of the FF Tactics and Disgaeas of the gaming world. When a new SF game (Shining Force Neo) was announced for the PS2, many gamers were hoping for another tactical rpg with that “Shining” charm. Unfortunately, Sega inexplicably went away from its winning formula and chose to make SFN a hack-n-slash dungeon crawler in the vein of Diablo. I was disappointed in the change and stayed away from the game for a while. However, my love for the SF series drew me to this game, so I decided to try it out. How does it stack up? Well, let's find out…

Graphics (8/10)

The SF series has always featured bright, colorful graphics, and the trend continues in SFN. Characters are no longer SD like they were in the 3 previous games. Instead, they sport a proportional look w/ solid character designs. Each character model (including enemies) is well-detailed and smoothly animated. The various weapons, armor and shields all have their own distinct look although the differences in various armor/clothing isn't as diverse as I would've liked. The backgrounds are varied enough. You'll travel through green pastures, icy snowfields, barren deserts, etc. The backgrounds won't blow you away, but they all have a nice clean look to them. Also, magic is presented well. Each spell has its own unique look and is accompanied by some pretty neat effects. Character dialogues are accompanied with textboxes and facial portraits for all characters that speak. Most of the characters have different portraits that express different ranges of emotions, which is a nice touch. Finally, cutscenes are presented in anime-style movies. The movies have an old-school anime look to them, which is nice, but you aren't going to see any jaw-dropping scenes. They simply give the characters a little more personality.

Sound (6/10)

Generally speaking, the sound effects and music are solid. You've got your usual assortment of weapon and impact sounds. There aren't any memorable tracks to speak of, but they all convey the light, adventurous tone of the game. Some of the tracks do have variations that kick in when you engage in battle. For instance, a light and cheery track might suddenly become faster paced and incorporate pulsing drum beats. If I were grading the sound solely on the sound effects and music, then I'd give it an 8. Unfortunately, the voice acting brings the score down 2 points. Simply put, it's atrocious to the point of being comical. Out of all of the characters who have major speaking roles, only one has a decent voice actor. The rest of the voices are either mismatched or amateurish. The 2 main characters, Max and Meryl, have very juvenile voices. It makes it very hard to take either of them seriously or develop any lasting attachment to either of them. The antagonist also falls victim to the same voice acting issues. It's too bad because the bad voice acting takes a lot away from the story. Also, when in battle, your allies will yell out their battle cries. However, to add insult to injury, the bad voice acting is supplemented with some genuinely corny battle cries. You'll get tired of hearing “Hot stuff coming your way!” and “Now, here's my super, super attack!” throughout the entire game, so you'd better learn to drown those battle cries out.

Story (7/10)

Most action rpgs are light with regards to the story to begin with. However, SFN is even lighter story-wise than your average action rpg. The story is pretty standard. Max, the protagonist, is a young boy aspiring to be a great hero, and he ends getting thrust into a quest to save the world. He eventually enlists or is joined by others who want to help in this quest. I'm not going to explain the story, but there are a few things worth pointing out. First, there is only one antagonist in the game who controls legions of monsters, beasts, orcs, etc. You are not going to be facing off against lieutenants and 2nd-in-commands, which goes against rpg tradition. Also, as mentioned earlier, the clichéd story isn't helped at all by the bad voice acting. Furthermore, the phrase “Shining Force” means something different in this game that it has in other SF games. In previous games, the “Shining Force” was the team itself that set out to vanquish evil. In SFN, a “force” is someone who has special innate abilities that separates him/her from normal beings. The “Shining Force” is like the ultimate warrior. Think along the lines of Star Wars, and you'll get the gist of what “Shining Force” stands for in SFN. On a final note, SFN does share some very loose ties with the original SF. Names like Max, Meryl, Cain and Dark Dragon should be instantly familiar to SF veterans.

Gameplay (9/10)

Even though the voice acting and storyline aren't up to par, at least the gameplay is fun and addicting. As I mentioned earlier, SFN isn't your traditional tactical, turn based rpg. Instead, it's a pure hack-n-slash action rpg in the vein of Diablo and is even presented in the familiar isometric view. You basically run around areas and destroy waves and waves of enemies. It sounds boring and repetitive, but there several factors that make the gameplay fun:

Equipment: There are dozens of equipment to collect ranging from weapons, to armor to shields. Weapons include one-handed swords, two-handed swords, clubs, axes, pikes, bows and staves. There are many variations within each category that make particular weapons more effective in certain situations. Half the fun is collecting equipment to see if you can get an upgraded weapon or armor or totally new piece of equipment that trumps everything else. Even if you get weapons/armor that you don't need, they are still valuable as sellable commodities. In fact, you'll make most of your money by selling unused/unwanted equipment, so it's important to go treasure hunting.

Combat: You can attack with melee weapons or use magic. The choice is up to you. One-handed swords provide for quicker close-up attacks with the added ability of being able to equip a shield for added defense. Two-handed weapons are much slower and lower your defense since you can't equip a shield, but they pack the most melee damage. Bows are fairly weak, but the number of arrows you shoot out and the speed with which you attack makes up for the weakness of individual attacks. Pressing the attack button generally locks on to the nearest enemies, but you can guide your attacks as well by using the analog stick. Just be forewarned that you will be pressing the attack button A LOT. This was the first game in a long time that actually made by hands and fingers hurt. Magic is handled differently than most rpgs. Max doesn't have any innate magic. Instead, he's able to use magic that is imbedded into specific weapons (usually staves, but magic is sometimes embedded in some of the more powerful melee weapons and bows). There are several types of magic that fall into the following categories: fire, ice, lightning, dark and light. There are various levels of magic within each category, but generally speaking, fire and ice are opposites just like dark and light. Lightning is neutral.

Generally speaking, you are going to be fighting waves and waves of enemies, and you're going to be using your melee weapons and magic to destroy thousands of monsters. Occasionally, you'll fight a boss who's usually a much larger, supped up version of the peons you fight. If you're a sword user, you can generally just wade into a sea of enemies and go to work provided your defense is sufficient. If you're an archer, you'll want to stay a good distance away from the enemy onslaught. If you do enough damage, then you can generally keep the enemies from even getting to your position. As a magic user, you'll generally be moving around a lot more. After you cast a spell, you'll generally want to move away from your position to prevent from being swarmed.

Party: In previous SF games, you had the ability to choose 10-15 allies to join your force and fight strategic, turn-based battles. Since SFN is an action rpg, the formula has changed a bit. You have a total of about 10 allies to choose from for the entire game, and you can choose 2 characters to fight alongside you in battle. Each of your NPC partners fights on their own. You don't give them commands or anything like that. Their AI basically boils down to “attack anything that moves”. Generally speaking, you won't have too much trouble keeping them alive, but they certainly don't make an effort to not get hit by their attackers. There is some strategy involved when it comes to selecting your partners. You have an assortment of bruisers, long-distance attackers and magic users, and certain situations will be better suited towards a certain character's offensive abilities. Most characters also have certain attacks that they have greater resistance to (i.e. certain magic attacks), and this plays into the strategy as well. An interesting thing is that it appears that your NPCs have an unlimited supply of magic. However, this is somewhat balanced by the fact that at a certain point, none of your partners deal as much melee or magic damage as you can. Throughout most of the game, it is usually important to pick the right teammates. However, towards the end, when your team is sufficiently powered up, you can pretty much choose your favorite NPCs to battle with. On a final note, it's disappointing that you can't customize your NPCs. You can't purchase armor or weapons for them or customize their abilities like you can with Max. You also can't view their stats, so you have no real way of knowing how powerful they are in comparison to Max.

Character Customization: There's a tremendous amount of customization involved in SFN. Max has access to numerous force arts. Force arts are basically attributes that Max can increase. These include hp, weapon strength, attack bonuses against specific types of enemies, specific magic strength, physical defense, magic defense, attack speed, various resistances, etc. I don't know the total count of force arts that are available, but there are several dozen. You don't have access to all force arts in the game from the beginning. Some are found after you destroy monster generators, which have a regenerative shield that you are unable to destroy until you've killed a fixed number of monsters. When you destroy the generators, you are rewarded with force points, money, weapons/armor, and/or the occasional force art. Other force arts are added to your list as you completely max out lower level arts. Every type of force art has at least 2 levels, and many have as many as 10. With the force points you earn from destroying monster generators and bosses, you can choose to upgrade Max in any way that you choose. Generally speaking, you have 2 paths that you can take – warrior or magician. However, if you want to max out Max, then you can eventually make him an equally effective mage and warrior. On a related note, if you go the warrior route, you will have to upgrade Max's magic abilities towards the end of the game. However, if you go the mage route, you don't necessarily need to build up Max's melee skills. As I said earlier, you can build up your skills as you like. However, normally it's a good idea to survey the situation and determine which skills would benefit you the most at the given moment. FYI, the level cap in SFN is 200, but you only need to get to about level 130 to wipe the floor with just about any enemy out there including bosses.

Miscellaneous: I like the way save points are handled in SFN. Essentially, there's only one save point you really need to use, which is located in your home town/base. However, 95% of the time you can teleport back to your base to save, heal up, upgrade your stats, sell your equipment, etc. Afterwards, you can teleport back to the exact spot where you left off in the battlefield. The only time you won't be able to teleport immediately to your base is when you fight a boss. At any rate, you'll need to teleport back to your base often to heal and upgrade after taking a beating from your enemies. You'll also want to get rid of some of your inventory, which will fill up quickly as you collect various equipment and item. I believe you can only carry 50 items on you, and you can store 200 more items at your base. This might sound like a lot of storage space, but you'll quickly find out that you collect far more than you can store. As mentioned earlier, you'll make most of your money by selling your booty. On a related note, you probably won't be spending too much money buying new equipment. I believe there are only 2 places where you can buy new equipment, but generally speaking, the best equipment is found on the battlefield. You'll be spending most of your money upgrading your existing equipment, which will cost you millions of gold coins. Fortunately, cash flow isn't a problem in this game.

As far as items go, there aren't too many to speak of. I like the way healing items are handled in SFN. You'll gain healing waters throughout your journey. One healing water completely heals all live members of your party. However, a healing water will also revive a fallen ally, but you'll need to use another to restore him/her to full health. The interesting thing about healing waters is that they aren't fully consumed. In other words, they don't work like healing herbs where once you used them, they're gone. If you consume all of your healing water, you can simply go to a spring/fountain and replenish your healing waters. Magic can be restored via 2 types of items. Fairy dust refills your magic completely, but is not reusable. Goddess Tears work similarly to healing waters and are replenished at springs/fountains. However, you acquire far less Goddess Tears compared to healing waters. All consumable items are easily accessed. You use the d-pad to highlight a specific item, and this item is mapped to one of your face buttons. With one press of a button, you can fully replenish your heath or magic. It's really a great system.

Replay (7)

It's a little bit hard to gauge the replay value on this game because you need to put in 40-50 hours of gameplay time to pass the game. That's more than enough gameplay hours for most games. The ability to customize your character adds to the replay value. However, as I mentioned, by the time you've reached level 130 or so, you'll pretty much be a one man killing machine with the ability to decimate foes with melee attacks and magic. That kind of takes away from the notion that you can choose to be a mage or a warrior. That notion applies as you progress through the early and middle parts of the game. However, by the end of the game, you should have a balanced fighter. You do have the ability to go through the optional 50 level dungeon after you beat the game. For treasure hunters and stat builders, this will definitely add to the replay value. However, others might find that they've had their fill of hack-n-slash action after they beat the game.

Overall (8)

SFN isn't your traditional SF, but it's still a lot of fun to play. The fun comes from beating down waves and waves of enemies. By defeating these enemies, you earn force points to upgrade Max and gain equipment that can either replace your inferior equipment or be sold for money to upgrade your existing equipment. Fighting, collecting and upgrading comprise the backbone of the game, and although it's a simple formula, it can be very addicting. If it weren't for the horrible voice acting and so-so story, which isn't helped at all by the voice acting, I would've given the game a 9 rating. However, even though I scored the game an 8, I must say that the game exceeded my expectations. I'm a die-hard SF fan and would have preferred a new tactical RPG. I didn't expect to put over 50 hours into a hack-n-slash action rpg. I recommend that you give this game a try. After enjoying SFN, I'm definitely going to check out its sequel – SF Exa. However, at some point, I do hope that Sega takes SF back to its roots. At the very least, they could release a localized version of all 3 scenarios for SF3 (only the first scenario came out in the U.S.). That would really make my day. :)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/20/07

Game Release: Shining Force Neo (US, 10/20/05)