Shining the Holy Ark

"A Great Game For Hardcore Dungeon Crawling Fans"

After not having played my Saturn in years, I decided to hook it back up and play a game that I had never finished. That game was Shining the Holy Ark. I started from the beginning and I remember having fond memories of the game. While Shining the Holy Ark has not aged very well graphically, the core gameplay is rock solid and holds up well even by today's standards. I'd like to first say that Shining the Holy Ark is a hardcore dungeon crawler RPG. It contains long and arduous dungeons that offer little charity in your favor. While you are able to visit towns and castles, the majority of the game will have you nested in dungeon after dungeon.

Shining the Holy Ark is a turn based RPG which offers a few little nuances that keep things interesting for the most part, but it's not a game for the lighthearted RPG fan. I say this mainly because of the difficulty. This game is very tough and it may scare away some players.

The dungeons contain lots of tricky puzzles that make Zelda dungeons seem like trips through Candyland. You can have up to four characters in your party, and once you get additional characters, you can swap them out in between rounds in any given fight. The classes of the characters will be very familiar to anyone who has played an RPG before. They range from your standard sword fighters, to magic users, summoners, ninjas, and dragon men.

The game starts out in the Kingdom of Enrich. Three mercenaries, Arthur, Melody, and Forte set off to dispose of a renegade ninja named Rodi. You will take control of the three mercenaries, and things may not be what they seem once you meet up with Rodi. This starts the adventure which spans the entire land of Enrich and its surrounding areas.

The entire game takes place in the first person view, so the only time you will see your characters is when they are fighting. The characters will briefly walk forward, attack, and retreat. However, you will rarely see Arthur, since you are seeing the game from his eyes and he doesn't often show up in cut scenes.

You will be sent on quests to find hidden items, traverse shrines, and take out dangerous enemies that the townspeople will you to.

Shining the Holy Ark is somewhat a spiritual successor to Shining in the Darkness on the Genesis. This is not a Shining Force game by any stretch of the imagination. This didn't bother me since I played through Shining in the Darkness many times on the Genesis and really liked it.

So after years of letting this game sit idly by in my collection, I found myself knee deep in some heavy handed dungeon crawling. How did the game hold up after all this time? Let's find out.

Graphics 8/10

Anyone who has played a Saturn before knows that 3D gaming is not what the system does best. The Saturn can do some fantastic, silky smooth 2D gaming without a hitch, but it has major issues with 3D gaming.

Shining the Holy Ark is a completely 3D game, so there are bound to be some graphical issues with the game, but I really have to commend Sega for their valiant effort. For the most part, the game looks great, but suffers from some pixelated models and some slow down.

The dungeons themselves look pretty good and most of them look completely different from one another. This does a great job of keeping things fresh while you try to get through them.

There are only a few towns in the game, but most of them are vibrant with NPCs to talk to and interact with. However, there are a lot of frame rate issues while in the towns and things often slow down a good bit. The NPCs in particular are rather pixelated. Some of them look rather goofy because of this, but it's forgivable, given the 3D limitations of the Saturn.

Sega really tries hard to make a convincing 3D adventure, and they have one clever way of having their vision realized and that's how the battles take place. In most RPG battles, you will be facing a slew of enemies in any given battle. In Shining the Holy Ark, Sega has trimmed this number down and you will only be facing off against one to three enemies on most occasions. There are times when there are more, but for the most part, it's only a few. Sega then chose to ramp up the difficulty of the few enemies, and make the battles last longer this way, but still retain a profound level of interest.

While most of the enemies are pixelated, some of them give off a nice, smooth effect, often making the enemies look like they are made out of Play-Doh. It's a neat effect, but as I said before, this doesn't stop the game from slowing down during the battles.

For a 3D Saturn game, Shining the Holy Ark looks very good, but it still has some technical problems that could have been ironed out.

Sounds and Music 8/10

Shining the Holy Ark has some very nice musical tracks, many that will stick in your head after you are done playing, but there are only a handful of them. So even though the tracks are pretty good, you will be hearing them quite frequently. It also contains one of the best battle music tracks I've ever heard in a game. I never got tired of hearing it.

The sound effects are pretty typical and are about the same as any other RPG. One stand out sound effect is the long scream that the enemies let out once they are defeated. It's a sure fire way to know that the enemy is dead, and you will enjoy hearing it every time.

So the music and sound effects are substantial, but could have been better IMO.

Story 7/10

As I said before, Shining the Holy Ark takes place around the Kingdom of Enrich, which was recently overthrown by an evil sorcerer named Rilix. Rilix is the current head of the castle, but odd things have been happening ever since Rilix came into power.

Arthur will lead your band of mercenaries, and despite being a complete mute, he has an innate ability to lead the group and accomplish these tasks. The other characters will join you for various reasons, but little information is given about their back stories except for a select few.

Brief cut scenes will drive you to your next dungeon and give you some purpose for going to each one, but most of it is pretty straightforward, and your objectives will not weigh too much on you once you are in the dungeons.

I found the story to be one of the weakest parts of the game, but it's by no means bad, it just takes a back seat to the constant dungeon crawling.

Gameplay 8/10

The gameplay is pretty standard for an RPG and as I previously said, it's not a game for the light RPG gamer. This game is pretty darn tough and has some really tough puzzles to solve in each dungeon.

On top of this, you will have the enemy encounters to put up with, and you will need to spend a good bit of time leveling, just so you don't get wiped out in two rounds.

Another cool thing about the game is the initiation of the battles. All of the enemies come from the environment in some way. Some will come up from the ground and confront you, others will come from around corners, and others will drop down from the ceiling. This is pretty cool, since after a while, you can predict where your enemies will come from and be prepared for the battles beforehand. There are also pre-emptive strike Pixies which you can use for almost all of the fights. These allow you to get the first hit in if you are fast enough.

The Pixies are an interesting part of the game. While traveling around, you will come across many different styles of Pixies. Once you have collected a few, they will show up at the bottom right of the screen. When one is selected, if you press the attack button right when the enemy is coming to attack you, you will get a pre-emptive strike in first, before they can even attack you.

Each Pixie attacks an enemy that comes at you from a different direction. So it's worth your while to know your enemies and how they attack you. The more Pixies you have of any given kind will increase the power of the pre-emptive strike.

The dungeons are far from visceral, and you will really need to have your thinking cap on to piece the puzzles together to get to your desired goal. The game has an auto map feature, but there are many stipulations in Shining the Holy Ark that make the map only a small piece of the puzzle, such as being able to walk on the ceiling, or throwing you an area with an ice floor that must be traversed just right or you will fall into a pit and have to start over.

The enemy encounters really are the highlight of the game, and almost every enemy has some factor that makes them formidable. Breath attacks that hit your entire party are commonplace, and a mere two of these will almost completely emaciate your entire party. You will be doing a lot of healing in this game, during and in between battles.

The gameplay in Shining the Holy Ark is pretty basic, but Sega has thrown in enough factors to make the battles and dungeon crawling a bit more interesting than your average RPG. However, the game is often unforgiving and provides little salvation for you.

Longevity and Re-Playability 6/10

After you play through the game, there is little reason to go back and do it again. Some frustrating gameplay may deter you from doing so. You do have the option of finding all of the Pixies and leveling up your characters even more, but I guess its all dependant on how much you like long, unforgiving dungeon crawlers.

Conclusion

Shining the Holy Ark really is a unique game, and I'm glad I played it again, but it's not a game for everyone. Some people will be turned off with the high difficulty and the long and complicated dungeons. Sega has done a fine job of breathing some life into the desolate 3D RPG library on the Saturn. This is a great game for any hardcore dungeon crawler fan.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/04/08

Game Release: Shining the Holy Ark (US, 06/30/97)