Shining Force Gaiden

"An other only released in Japan classic..."

I don't think I'll need to introduce the Shining series to you, because if your reading this review I consider you've played at least one Shining Force game in your life (or you wouldn't even have heard of this game).

This is the first of the three Gamegear games. Being a Shining Force fan I will not compare this one to the two others. Simply because I find that all three of them are wonderful and are some of my favorite games. This game has only been released in Japan.

Gameplay: 8/10

The gameplay is pretty simple, like in the other Shining games you play each character once a turn (you can have up to 12 characters in your force, out of a total of 18 characters in the game). For the rest it's exactly as the other Shining Force games (which is you enter a battle and see an animation of your character attacking the enemy).

The major difference between the gaiden games and the Genesis or Saturn Shining Force games is that in this one you can not visit towns... It may sound weird like this but one quickly gets used to it. Instead you get to enter either your headquarters, a shop or exit town and enter the next battle.
Now the reason why it only gets 8/10 is because it's in japanese. So if you understand Japanese it won't be a problem.

Story line: 8/10

The story line is quite good, you meet some characters from the first Shining Force (they're a little older now of course as 20 years have gone by). The hero is a young prince named Nick who travels from Cypress and decides to help save the queen of Guardiana who gets captured by the ambassador of Cypress (the queen is Anri from Shining Force). So that's how the game starts. You'll meet interesting characters, you won't get to play the original Shining Force characters as they are too old, however their children will join. :) Making the plot a little more interesting.

Graphics: 10/10

The graphics are amazing for a Gamegear game, not many games had such good quality graphics (perhaps Royal Stone and some others have better graphics but I think that's about it).
The animations are good and look a lot like the first Shining Force.

Sound/Music 8/10

The Gamegear was a machine that had low quality sounds and music. However this game offers enjoyable tunes and the sounds aren't that bad. Actually the remade music of this on the Shining Force CD* is great so no wonder even with the low quality it sounds good.

Difficulty: 8/10

They've made the game challenging but not too hard. In fact if your good at the other Shining games you'll find this one pretty easy (it's the easiest of the three Gaidens in my opinion).

Replay value: 8/10

I think you'll want to play it again once you will have finished it, to get the two hidden caracters and try exping with various teams etc... But once again as it's in Japanese you might prefer to play Shining Force CD*. You can also find the script to it if you look on the web.

Final notes:

This game and it's two sequels are very hard to find. The easiest way to play it is to find the rom. If your a collector then I recommend you to buy the first you find as you won't find it easily.

*Shining Force CD for those who don't know about it is a game on Mega CD that combines Shining Force Gaiden and Shining Force Gaiden II in one CD with better graphics and music.

In conclusion this game is good for any Shining fan or rpg player searching for good gamegear rpg's.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/02/02, Updated 11/02/02