Shining Soul

"No! You killed my baby!"

For a very long time, I've been a huge fan of the Shining Force games. It's a tragically small canon, with just two Sega Genesis titles and a couple of obscure duds scattered about on other systems, but what little I've been given is absolutely blessed. Many people share my sentiment; SF1 and 2 were easily the most successful, critically and financially, of any of the Shining titles. Over the years, Sega has attempted to give the series several facelifts, but none have proven nearly as popular or as good.

Shining Soul is a prime example of this. Not only is it a huge departure from the smart, simple and fantastic grid-based SRPG gameplay of the Force games, but it is also a downright tedious dungeon-crawler with absolutely zero charisma. This game lacks any of the hallmark traits that made other games in the Shining lineage as popular as they were, instead opting to become a shallow and pedantic one-note action game. To liken this game to another better-known title, think of this as an anime version of Diablo, except stripped of any complexity or freedom that the other title may have offered.

After starting the game, you'll first be asked to create a character. There are four races, each with different skills and talents at their disposal, and for each of those races there are four outfits. After you've selected your character (I picked a Dragonute!) the game immediately thrusts you into the action. You're shown some brief, boring plot exposition, which is all Shining Soul has to offer you in terms of development, and then placed in a dinky little town and instructed to go fight for reasons you don't really understand.

Shining Soul is so devoid of life, defining characteristics or even basic plot structure that the game is a bummer to play. The NPCs never have anything interesting or informative to say, the bosses are acting on completely groundless motives and the settings are random and strung together with absolutely no care. If there's one thing that games like Arcana have proven to us, it's that an RPG is a genre that demands extreme attention to detail. Without those details, the game falls completely apart. You may not notice all the subtleties that bring vivacity to the world of a role playing game, but without them, there's obviously something missing.

The game's sole charm comes from its great graphics, full of color and brilliance. The animations are simple but effective, and sprites are large and distinct. The bosses look especially great. The music and sound, unfortunately, suck unbelievable amounts. Shining Soul's tunes are easily the worst I've ever heard on the Game Boy Advance; they sound like they were imported straight from Bokosuka Wars. They're 10 seconds long, ear-bleedingly bad, and loop incessantly. You'll have the music off before you know it. Sound effects, which are normally a nonregister in my book, manage to be outstandingly annoying as well. When you're changing your weapon, for instance? "BEEP BIP BOOP." Reading an item's description? A different tone of "BEEP BIP BOOP." Jeez, way to go.

A really excellent dungeon crawler can usually overcome its lack of writing prowess with fun gameplay, but unfortunately Shining Soul drops the ball there too. Fighting is an embarrassingly elementary affair. It's carried out with just one button: A. The combat in Shining Soul amounts to pressing A, pressing A for slightly longer, or pressing and holding A for various amounts of time. If you're hurt, you can press B in order to use an item set previously in a slot for quick and easy healing. And...that's it. Every single enemy you encounter is dealt with in the exact same way. Press A a whole lot at them, or B once or twice if they're particularly challenging. The battles in Shining Soul have all the depth and complexity of a slice of watermelon. And as the enemies get stronger, the dungeons get longer, and your excruciating walking speed grows all the more obvious, you'll wonder why you're even playing the game in the first place.

Shining Soul is not completely without merit, however. The game features some pretty good (if not unoriginal) ideas that keep it from being an utterly barren waste of microchips. Each character has a unique set of techniques and proficiencies that can be advanced with each level you gain, which allows for surprising amounts of customization. If you want that Wizard to cast fire spells instead of ice, go for it; if you think a lance is a better fit for your Warrior than axes, bulk them up. Likewise there is great diversity in the equipment selections that your characters are allowed, with each weapon having different styles of attacking. You can even perform charge attacks if you increase your proficiency in a weapon. Unfortunately, when the combat has less depth than the process of setting up for the combat, then you know something is wrong.

As it stands, Shining Soul is just a tragic revamp of a series I myself had come to known and love. I knew that the gameplay style wasn't the same, and I would not have been nearly so upset at the metamorphosis if this game had been adeptly handled. Sadly, the ball was dropped somewhere along the line and Shining Soul became a repetitive, pointless dungeon crawler bereft of personality. I hear the multiplayer mode makes up for some of the deficiencies of the game, but why even bother wasting money on this in the first place?

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/10/06