Shining Tears

"You'll be crying Shining Tears"

Flawed is the nicest thing I could say about Shining Tears. It is only remotely related to the other "Shining" games by name. If you are not an exceptionally patient person, Shining Tears is not the game for you.

Story-5 Unremarkable:
The story of Shining Tears is your standard boy wakes up unconscious, meets girl, and begins trying to sort out his life. Along the way they meet others and form a band of merry men, women... and animals... Pretty cookie cutter out to save the world etc. I can't fault it completely, but at the same time, games like Rogue Galaxy and Growlanser have come out just as recently and they've had fresh stories...

Characters-5 Attack of the Clones:
The characters in his game will seriously have you wondering if you've stumbled into the Keebler elves' factory as pecan sandies and el fudge aren't the only things that have been through a cookie cutter recently... There will be plenty of dialogue. Which would be great if more than 10% of it was meaningful OR a skip button (as in skip the entire talking sequence) was included. Searching for depth of character? Better keep looking. Imagine a second string drama club's acting skills as it's comparable to the acting. Speaking of acting, voice acting anyone? Maybe like 6 lines worth... but I'll assess that in a moment.

Graphics-10 Great:
I love 2-D. Call me old skool but I miss platformers of old. Faxanadu, The Legend of Zelda, most Mario Bros (until they hit the N64), POW, MERCs, TMNT, etc. Ah the old days... where simple was good. The graphics in Shining Tears are awesome. Well drawn, colored and animated, it has a nice visual appeal. From the different landscapes, enemies, and items designs, to the effects of special skills, great detail was put into this game. Yeah it's not 3-D, but I value 2-D over 3-D as I said. It adds more of a hand drawn touch even if it's mostly CG.

Sound-5:
I honestly can't remember a single tune from this game which should speak volumes. On the good side, it's beats getting something like the Macarena of a Spice Girls song stuck in your head, but on the other, there wasn't anything that really stood out. I'm not sure if which is worse, so I'll break it at even. There are roughly ten lines of voice acting. This to me is a waste. Why bother paying people to speak lines if you're not going to go all out. It really makes me sad because this could have turned out great if they'd followed through with it. On to the heart of the game and the real heartache...

Gameplay- -3 (as in negative 3):
NOW LOADING... NOW LOADING... NOW LOADING... If you found the preceding title even partially annoying, you have just begun to learn what annoying truly is. You will spend (no lie) at the very least 20% of this game looking at those two words.

Allow me to demonstrate. The game's base location (where you enter quests etc) is called the Heroes' Hearth. So let's say you want to buy some armor, cool, take a step outside the building- Now Loading... Now Loading... Now Loading... There's an armor shop right over there, let's go inside, hmm the selection isn't so great here; let's go to the other armor shop in another part of town- Now Loading... Now Loading... Now Loading... While we're out, might as well upgrade your weapon in the Blacksmith's District since you can't buy new weapons but must forge them. Did I forget to mention that there is no recipe list for how to forge these weapons (although some of the FAQs are "half"... decent), and that they also require a combination of three different types of material to forge an item (out of 16 materials). Those materials are found in missions/dungeons. So let's go get some materials... back to the Heroes' Hearth to start a mission- Now Loading... Now Loading... Now Loading... Now, downstairs to the HQ- Now Loading... Now Loading... Now Loading... Now select a mission- Now Loading... Now Loading... Now Loading... So much fun.

The combat system is actually pretty close to most Shining series games strategy/tactics wise (enemy mobs with a stronger boss in the center - hack and slash away until they all die), that's one of the few positives though.

A.I. teammates usually suck, but Shining Tears also allows a second player to control your partner. I thought this was kind of cool since at least someone else has to suffer with you. Misery loves company, especially so with this game. Speaking of combat partners, there are also highly overrated "link" skills which allow you and your partner to activate a combined attack in all of it's pea shooter glory. These are usually weak, status-inducing attacks that are next to worthless with the exception of turn undead (kill undead creatures and destroy their corpses that is... otherwise the corpses just lay there and count against your dead enemy count).

When your character levels up you will get the "privilege" of allocating 3 points towards a character stat and one point into the many useless skills you are given. Mind you that your HP and SP (MP) only increase 1-3 point per level and unless you have a regeneration item on, will take forever to recharge (SP recharges naturally; HP doesn't). If you want more HP/SP, you will have to put skill points into INT and CON. It's a 1 for 1 trade off. Yes, it's as great as it sounds... heh. The only stat that really makes a noticeable difference is AGI, IMO.

Another fun thing to mention about stats is that they determine what armor you can wear... if you can wear it in the first place (Remember, there are animals, and you can't expect to wear the same kind of armor as them or have them wear the same type of armor as each other. They're different species, and that would be "awkward"). So, I hope you didn't want to build a tank that dishes out punishment because it's **** near impossible. At least without repeating missions 3-5 times each it is.

Speaking of tanks, even if you manage to create said tank, Shining Tears likes to throw elemental enemies which skirt right past your armor via magic. So you've got 255 physical defense... well here's a lightning bolt for 75 right through your armor because you have no resistance to lightening. Not only that, but if a group of enemies decides they all want to shock you, prepare for the big GAME OVER screen as you will be toast. End of story. Another fun experience is where you slash your way to the center of a group only to realize the half dead enemies you just ran over to get here are now exploding right at your back, welcome to Iraq...

If your main character dies, it's game over: not unusual, but okay. If your ally dies, then you can revive them if you brought the proper item. Which leads into the next problem area, items. By "game over" I mean you are respawned at HQ less the items, exp, and stats you may have raised in the dungeon but with the record that you were defeated...

You can carry 150 items to include enemy cards, armor, accessories, and helmets. You have eight characters at least. Do I need to explain how fun this can get fast? Aside from these items, you have combat items which (thank you to whatever genius decided to keep it separate) does not count towards your item total. You can carry up to 9 of each battle item. The are four stages of HP and SP healing items (amounting to eight items for the math whizzes out there), four antidote style items, and four mostly useless combat items (excepting the mirror which makes a stationary clone to distract enemies). "Great" one might think, "all the healing and curative items I need." This would be true, except you can't assign them to specific buttons, but rather have to scroll through them. So if you're being poisoned, your partner is dead, and you need healed, you have to scroll through your HP healers, then toggle to antidotes and scroll though those, then keep going to get a soul return for your ally, while you're being chased/shot at by the enemy... This is especially fun when you revive your ally and are hit to critical life and then killed because you forgot to switch back to healing items and you had been desperately trying to heal by taking antidotes.The best part is having to scroll through items on the fly and repeatedly missing the item, meaning you'll have to scroll through over and over until you finally get it right. Clear the screen by meeting the goal, grab the completion flag and prepare for the next floor- Now Loading... Now Loading... Now Loading... Repeat the process over and over to completion...

Side Quirks-
Often between missions you will have to explore the town for clues to the next mission. Enjoy the- Now Loading... Now Loading... Now Loading... screens

If you plan to transfer your save file to a different memory card, don't because you can't. I've tried all concealable ways apart from hacking cards. It won't allow you to copy the data. Just make sure it's on your card and not your friend's or you will be really PO'd.

Closing Remarks-
What could have been and should have been a great game is terribly flawed by bad mechanics. I don't know if the developers were trying to push it out the door as fast as possible or if they just didn't feel like putting anymore work into this game, but it clearly has suffered. If you want to play a "Shining" game, play Shining Force Neo. It's much better IMO. I haven't played EXA yet, but the box art looks promising. I repeat, this game requires exceptional powers of patience and tolerance! Until next review, I leave you with two words- Now Loading... Now Loading... Now Loading...

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/04/07

Game Release: Shining Tears (US, 03/22/05)