Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya

"Problematic. A watered down tactical RPG with a few glitches."

The first RPG I played on the Game Gear was Crystal Warriors. Then I played Defenders Of Oasis. By the time Shining Force: The Sword Of Hajya arrived on the scene, I'd already arrived at the conclusion that I'd started out with the best. In many ways, this game was a big disappointment. It's nowhere near as good as Crystal Warriors.

Having not had the opportunity to play the Shining Force games on the Sega Genesis, I'm not sure where this game fits into the Shining Force chronology. Prince Nick's hand has been turned to stone (presumably during a previous battle with one of his enemies). The kingdom of Cypress is on the verge of going to war with the evil Iom. Prince Nick leads his army of Cypress in a preemptive strike against Iom. While the army is away from Cypress castle, the castle defenders find themselves under assault by some of Iom's troops. A thief breaks into the castle and steals the Sword Of Hajya during the battle.

Thus begins a story-driven quest on the part of the castle defenders to chase down the thief and retrieve the magical Sword Of Hajya. While this game is similar to Crystal Warriors in some ways, it's also very different. And these differences are what set the two games apart.

Much like Crystal Warriors, the battlefield is an overhead view chessboard style layout with colorful terrain graphics. We start out with a party of six characters and can eventually acquire a total of eighteen, with twelve on the battlefield at a time. The game spans five chapters and twenty-four levels. Each level represents a battle that takes place as our party of heroes journey toward their destination. The combat here is played out much differently than Crystal Warriors, mostly thanks to a Speed attribute given to the characters. Instead of allowing us to choose the order in which we'll move our characters, the order in which they move is predetermined. Fast characters move first, slower ones move later on. Some enemy characters may get a chance to move before all of your characters have moved. This makes for a very watered down tactical environment where our characters are at the whim of a predetermined movement order. It can also get frustrating when your healers don't get a chance to move when you need them the most.

As if this weren't enough, there's no elemental bias here (or anything else that might sharpen the strategy). Aside from a few healers and mages (who are weak melee fighters), all of our melee combatants here are pretty much the same. The only thing that sets them apart is how much damage they can do. A very watered down approach to the tactical dynamic going on here. After Crystal Warriors, much of this is a disappointing step backward. The tactical strategy here isn't half of what it could've been.

To play out a battle, we move our characters as they become available to move. When a melee fighter steps next to an enemy character, he can attack him. Characters with a ranged attack (spear, bow and arrow) can hit an opponent from up to three squares away. Mages can cast damaging magic attacks, such as a firestorm, blizzard, or lightning bolt. Healers can magically heal wounded allies. There are also items your characters can carry that heal wounds or bestow a small benefit.

The magic spells in this game are mostly area-affect spells. The firestorm, blizzard, or lightning bolt affects a radius of squares around the target, damaging opponents who happen to be within the radius. Late in the game, an area-affect healing spell becomes available.

Each battle has a boss character who must be defeated. After he's toast, we see a story sequence or two, then we're off to the next battle. Occasionally, the party stops at a town between encounters with the enemy. The only shopping that can be done here is for new weapons, most of which are readily affordable, given the gold acquired from defeated foes. We can sell our old equipment here and buy a few healing items and an item that cures poison. All of this is affordable. There's no strategy in spending here. Just buy what you need.

In the event that our party of heroes finds themselves overwhelmed in battle, the two main characters can egress the party from battle. There's also an item that will retreat the party from battle when used. After retreating, we go to camp, where we can resurrect defeated allies for a price. When we return to battle, we replay the battle we were working on from the beginning. Just so that we can't do this endlessly to gain oodles of experience, there's an experience cap in place here. An experienced character will gain very little from defeated foes.

The battles here leave much to be desired. While there are a few enemy characters who will actively come after our heroes and try to beat them down, most of the enemy characters here will wait until one of the heroes steps into his movement range. For the most part, the opposition is not proactive. They sit there, waiting for someone to get in striking distance. Most of the time, I don't feel all that threatened by these guys. I can take my time, rally my forces, and go after them at my leisure.

As already mentioned, this game is very watered down in comparison to Crystal Warriors. Watered down tactical dynamics, no elemental bias to spice things up, movement order is predetermined, and so on. All of this would be at least acceptable if not for a glaring weakness that puts a huge dent in the game's playability. There are two spells here that suffer from glitches that cause them to do way more damage than the manual says they should do. Both of these spells are wide area-affect spells, and the enemy mages who wield them can cut down the entire party of heroes with one hit if they all happen to be conveniently grouped together. Sometimes the only way to get rid of these mages is to sacrifice members of your party to their overwhelming spells, one at a time. When the guy has used up all of his magic power, the remaining heroes can then rush in and get rid of him. This really hurts the game, especially when I see a nameless underling with a spell that does twice as much damage as the spell wielded by the main bad guy. By the time we confront the main bad guy, we've already gone through the worst (several underlings with spells that are much more powerful than they should be).

Sadly, it's these two glitched spells that do the most damage to the game's playability. I have a feeling that this game was rushed to meet a deadline. The glitches fly in the face of an otherwise streamlined game. Setting the two glitched spells aside, we can observe that the game is well streamlined, from beginning to end. We confront enemy characters who are often more powerful than our heroes, but at no point do they become as overwhelming as the two enemy mages who wield the glitched spells.

Visually, this game is decent at best. The battlefields tend to look more cartoony than those seen in Crystal Warriors, and they tend not to look as good. The environments are well presented; they're just not as good as they could be. On the battlefield, characters look about as good as can be expected on the Game Gear (small, cartoony characters). On the battle screen that appears when one character attacks another, they're perhaps too detailed for their own good. They're detailed but not sharply drawn, and their animations don't look fluent at all. Crystal Warriors characters look like they're in fluent motion when they walk over to the other guy and attack him. Our characters here just sort of pop between two or three still frames that are meant to give the impression that they're moving.

The sound department is a different story. Background music is excellent, a vast improvement over that heard in Crystal Warriors. This is some great RPG music that expertly sets the mood for each scene, from bouncy adventure themes to moody compositions that play while our heroes are traversing dark underground tunnels. Battle screen music is appropriately heroic for the good guys and dangerous for the bad guys. What few effects there are here aren't all that great. The spell effects could definitely be much better. This game is badly lacking in the effects department.

Shining Force: The Sword Of Hajya has a compelling story with numerous twists and turns, but that's not enough to save it from being a mediocre game. The tactical battles aren't as interesting as they could've been, and those glitches during mid- to late-game really drag things down. All said and done, Crystal Warriors easily outshines the Shining Force.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/05