Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon

"A Classic, Massacred."

Alrighty. I've been a huge Shining Force fan since Day One. Long time ago. Played SF1, SF2, Sword of Hayja, Shining Force CD, and Shining Force Books 1-3 on the Saturn. Shining Force was supposedly dead, since Camelot stepped away from it.

I sulked. Played the old games. Enjoy them still to this very day. Then, one day, I heard of Shining Force 1 being remade for the Gameboy Advance. I was overjoyed, to say the least. But I kind of stopped and thought to myself: the gameboy advance is full of remakes. The Sword of Mana (Final Fantasy Adventure Remake) was god-awful. It ruined the old version completely. I waited and the PAL version came out of SF1. I tried it out, and...:

Graphics: (1/10)
People have a huge schtick on graphics making a game. I never understood why people would latch onto or bash a game due to how it looks. Well, this game brought me over to the dark side. I loathe its graphics. In-battle looks horrendous. The Genesis' in-battle graphics completely upstage the GBA remake. Overhead graphics? Just doesn't look right... The character sketches all look quite bad. Max might look okay, as well as a few others, but admit it, the old ones are the best. Its what I was first associated with, and they fit them better. A small-headed Guntz just doesn't look right... Recap:
In-Battle - Horrible. Picture Golden Sun sort of in-battle graphics. Now worsen them.
Out-of-Battle - The character's images are stretched and their promotional outfits aren't very nice looking.
Character Portraits - BAD. Plain and simple.
Overall Graphics - Very choppy.

Gameplay: (1/10)
Remake of the original, right? Can't go wrong, right? Wrong. The AI still has its glitches. But the game is even EASIER. Enemies level as you do, making it easy as heck to power level. I promoted Max in the Circus battle. After I promoted him, I found I could work him up to level 10 again for some reason. XP carries you the same distance, promoted or not, to a designated level. A few characters are added in that are... Okay?... Mawlock with his weird card-collecting thing reeks of other GBA games. *Cough*GoldenSun*Cough*. Collect cards. Get Mawlock. Make the game even easier by having a character move twice and fly and increase his range. Some folks say once you beat the game, you can increase the difficulty though! But whats the point? You could play the original and get owned at any point. Games are getting easier and easier these days.

Storyline: (5/10)
One of the few pro's of this game is that it has a storyline developed to a decent depth. SF1 was made in the time of early RPG's. Storyline wasn't meant to be incredible. But instead of not knowing about Max, there's some weird amnesia thing in the mix. I just flat-out don't know. Storyline is good. Depth is good. Cliche'ing is bad. Max speaks, sure. Thats good and all, but... Ugh... So many other draw-backs kill this for me. One nice thing is that you can get character development by frequently talking to people in headquarters. Three new characters are added. Mawlock, Ramladu's Daughter, and some unknown fellow, who looks "interesting" to say the least. Mawlock makes the game too easy, to say the least.

Music & Sounds: (7/10)
Another one of the few pro's. Sounds? Cheezy. Music? Nicely redone. Not fantastically, but its okay. There is a promoted protagonist attack theme, but it isn't very good...

Buy it or not?
Its a Shining Force game. But not an OFFICIAL Shining Force game (Camelot-made). It doesn't feel right at all from the get-go. Crank up your genesis and stick to the old Shining Force is what I say. Not everyone will agree with this review. I'm an old "RPG veteran". Newer games like these recent Final Fantasy's don't even spark my attention. This game did for a bit, but that spark died out. Older games might side with me on this, though. I'm going back to play the original. The sound may be low-quality, the color-count low, the storyline rather lacking, but by God, its the original. And its very good. Rather than a remake, either let the series rest or work on a new one... Camelot in particular should get its keester in gear on this.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/04