Shining Tears

"A good game that is overwhelmed by the flaws."

Almost a year ago I got a demo of Shining Tears. Was blown away but the uber cute characters, simple yet addictive game play ect. Finally got around to buying it for like $32 and boy I feel ripped off. Perhaps I should have read the reviews more closely. But don't get me wrong it's a good game with many small annoying problems.

A girl founds a young man on the beach. She brings him to the local inn and when he awakes the only thing he can remember is his name. You can kind of see where this is going. He has two rings and they give him and a friend strength and courage but legend says it can have dire consequences. A big ole war is happening; someone in the group might be a spy. It's your normal cliché plot lines. It does kind of work but the characters are kind of boring.

The best thing about Shining Tears is its graphics. Beautiful 2D settings, vibrant and colorful. I couldn't believe how amazing this game looks. It's almost like a piece of art and you can tell a lot of work went into every detail. Heck, even the character models are nice on the eyes and despite the fact that a lot of enemies look the same, there is a large variety ultimately and they all are pleasing to the eyes.

Sound is the next area that could use some work. Sound effects are decent, nothing exciting and I wouldn't write home about them. Music is fantastic and beautiful. It fits the graphics well. Now for my problem. There is no voice acting. Having to read this boring text just gets tedious and without the voice acting the characters feel even more 1 dimensional.

Control is overly complex. Button placement is just odd. First, you can control the other character by moving them with the right stick. That's cool. They will dash if you hit R2 and R1 does their special skill. Now, you move the main character via the left analog stick. L1 is block and L2 is dash. Now, this is where it gets odd. The D-pad is used to switch which category you have selected. Item, you're special or your partners special. Now, X does... I don't remember I think it moves the items up and down... Circle is attack, hold it to charge and use your special. Square uses your item that you have selected and triangle does what I think I just said X does so maybe X moves the list down and triangle moves it up. Either way it's a bit too complex... Oh and Xion moves both in the towns and in the field like he has had Slow cast upon him. It's absurd how slow he moves...

Game play is very old school and to be honest rather boring. The game is mission based and it contains 18 story based missions and a number of side missions which are unlock by your affection towards other characters. Now, where do I start on the whole game play matter?

"NOW LOADING..."

You will see those words over, and over, and over, and over. Loading takes around 20-40 seconds per time. Now imagine this. You are in the Inn and you need to go to HQ which is in the basement. Oh we have to load and what? HQ is a still picture of a map of the world and the characters converse in still pictures and text bubbles? I had to sit through a loading screen for this. It gets even better! Imagine finishing an area, walk and run into a loading screen so it can load some text with someone and then a fight. You win, talk, leave and oh loading. Leave the Inn to go to town and load. Thankfully stores don't load but every section of the town has to load....

Okay, now onto the actual game play. The first 8 missions feel like training missions. They are super easy and don't have a lot of enemies (30-50). Then you reach the next missions where they are broken into 3 areas (final has 14 I think) and now there are 300+ enemies. Can you imagine how intense of a change that is. Thankfully the game offers areas to level up and stuff and you are really going to need to do that. There are a total of 6 characters to pick as your partners and you need to spread the love because sometimes you are forced a partner.

Now, you gain EXP as does your partner. Upon leveling up you may notice nothing much has changed for your character. That's because you need to go to the stat menu and upgrade them. How cute, I get to spend points in the attack, defense, and magic areas. You get the idea. You get 3 points per level I think, maybe 4. Also, you get 1 skill point. This all sounds familiar to me but I can't remember from what, I've been playing too many games lately...

Now, battles (after the first 7 or 8) are fields full of enemies. Enemies will sit there until you get close to them or attack them. They tend to sit in groups and just attack all at once. It's kind of stupid and makes the game rather boring. And maybe that's why I think I wasted my money. The game is just so boring after a while. I think I need to step back and play something else...

Oh and you may think having a partner is useful and it is because one is an archer, ones a mage and you get the idea from there. However, they have the dumbest AI ever in video game history. Most of the time I found that my archer had either died or she was just standing there twiddling her thumbs. Why even boring if you're not going to give them any sort of AI?

You can also buy equipment or get it from dead bad guys. The thing is, each piece of equipment requires specific stats. This also becomes tedious after a point but to be honest, it's not the most tedious part of it all. The most tedious part of the game is trying to figure out how to "activate" the next story mission. It wouldn't feel tedious to run around town talking to people if it weren't for those god awful loading screens.

Game is fairly long due to you needing to level your characters and work their stats to your advantage. Took me just under 10 hours to beat but I skipped the side missions because to be honest, I just didn't care for the characters. I actually found some of the bad guys more interesting than our heroes. Game offers new game plus upon beating it and everything carries over but enemies start at level 30. Not my cup of tea. The game also offers co-op play which gets rid of the horrible AI problems but it can't be done until you beat mission 7.

Truly the game is fun. In very small spurts that is. It would have been a fantastic game if the AI was a bit better and if everything under the moon didn't need a long boring loading screen. So the game is very rough around the edges and it makes a game that I would have given a solid 7 to (I actually use the whole scale so 5 = average game). Sadly, I can't give the game that score because the flaws really do bring the game down a few notches.

Story - 6/10
Graphics - 10/10
Sound - 8/10
Control - 6/10
Game Play - 5/10
Replay value - 5/10

Final Score - 5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/28/06