Ya Know Geoffrey, with your talk of this game series I actually decided to try it out. I have only played a little bit of SF2 right now, the ancient tower actually. and it kinda reminds me of another stragedy series called Fire Emblem (Only one of the this games series was ever released outside of Japan and on the GBA.) It is quite interesting. =)
What you say?
It’s Strategy. You learned something new! +1 in INT.!
If you want my Advice Dont Go back and play the old SF games
Finding them could be hard and well some are very expencive to Buy.
Instead Shining Force Ressurection of the Dark Dragon will be out
in Europe 3rd of May i think it is.
It is a Remade Version of SF1 and its got ALOT of new things
including Updated Graphics sound ect ect
and new Side Quests, Charecters, wepons ect
Its on the GBA so hopefully you have one ;p
I had to buy one but its worth it.
If Shining Force RDD makes good Sales
Shining Force 2 and 3 will Surely get remakes also!
Then there is the Shining Force and Shining Tears to look Forward to on PS2
If you like Diablo Then i Recomend Shining Soul 1 and 2
SS1 is OK but SS2 is great! they tell the Story of the past of
the Shining World.(also on GBA)
I’m not a big fan of Diablo no…
And I dont’ own a GBA.I must say tho that the GBA has a bunch of game I wanna play…
But getting it now would be like getting a Saturn back in 1997 methinks…
Welll if people here have been forced into getting a PS2 to play Shining Force I have also heard good things about a stratgy RPG called Disgaea which might be worth a look…
I’m glad you like the game. Shining Force 2 offers gamers many hours of fun. Strategy/RPGs are among my favourite games, though I regret not playing more in the last few years.
Dark Savior wasn’t the sequel to Landstalker everyone was expecting, but I still found it enjoyable. Another Parrellel as long as the first two could’ve saved this game from its critics.
I learnt about Parrallel 6 at Shining Force Central from a huge fan of the game. In the Japanese version there’s a way to save Garian by breaking the timeloop (I’d quickly lose any grip I had on my sanity if I was caught in a never ending timeloop). I haven’t confirmed this by playing the Japanese version of Dark Savior myself, but to escape the timeloop Garian must first complete Parrallels 1 through 5 and then start Parralell 2 again. When you reach Deadman’s Castle, you must leave Kay to her fate instead of saving her as you normally would. Later, Kay’s sister will confront you about leaving her sister behind in Deadman’s castle, at which point you can either confess to your crime or fight Tracy in vain.
Here’s the interesting part: if you confess to abandoning Kay, Jack will offer to use his powers to send you back in time. Wow Jack, I didn’t know you could warp time and space as if that wasn’t the biggest clue in the game that you’re the one responsible for trapping me in an endless timeloop!
Completing the game involves killing Jack who was evil all along. If you remember the beginning of Parrallel 5, a voice taunts Garian: “Torment yourself over the life you have wasted and regret it until your soul burns to ashes…”. The voice (of Jack obviously) tells Garian to choose his destiny: salvation or the damnation of an inescapable timeloop.
The Garian you fight in Parrallel 4 was the version of you who was captured by Bilan aboard Seabandits, interestingly enough.
I plan to one day confirm the existence of Parrallel 6 with my own two eyes. Sega of America really butchered the English translation if it does indeed exist (it was removed when certain areas of the game were censored out as far as I can tell).
“Forced” into buying a Playstation 2 is a nice way of putting it. Devil May Cry is also a great game. But then, what do you expect from the creator of the Resident Evil series?
Crap actually.
Well actually I liked what I played from RE1…
Thanks a lot, Geoff. So Jack’s evil? Mangey bird! I remember leaving Kay behind and having to either fight Tracey or being sent back in time to get Kay again and I thought that was a rather annoying sidetrip that went nowhere. (I thought that if the designers were going to do that they should had just made it mandatory to hold on to her.) But if there was actually a sixth parallel associated with triggering that event I could see why they’d let the player go so far after leaving Kay behind.
If a sixth parallel was removed it wouldn’t be the first time a major subplot got yanked from a game (Atlus removed almost half of the first Persona game when it came to the US when it took out the alternate Snow Queen storyline). If you do confirm the existence of the sixth parallel, I’d like to hear about it.
You and Chris (who’s also a fan of Dark Savior) will be the first to know. None of Dark Savior’s endings gave the player any sense of closure which I still long for even now.
I have confirmed that Shining Tears will be an Action/RPG! The question is: will it resemble old-school Action/RPGs such as Landstalker and Shining Wisdom, or conform to the definition of “Diablo-clone”?
I’m not sure how a new Shining Force game will fare on the Playstation 2 next to certain mainstream Strategy/RPGs. I know Shining Force has always been a more forgiving Fire Emblem (even if it does have plenty of its own unigue gameplay elements to separate the two), but it has a far richer history.
Shining Tears is set for release in Japan this year, and the new Shining Force game will be released in Japan in 2005.
I read that Amusement Vision - the Panzer Dragoon team - is working on the new Shining Force title. I really enjoyed Panzer Dragoon Orta, so hopefully they’ll prove themselves again with this new Shining Force game.
Geoffrey, do you know if Amusement Vision are making Shining Tears as well? I know that they’re developing the SF1 remake.
Hopefully Shining Tears will be more like Landstalker than Diablo.
Details are sketchy at the moment, so I’ll let you know as soon as more details emerge.
I hope so. How can anyone find non-stop button mashing fun? Landstalker had its fair share of combat but it was balanced with puzzles, platform leaping, huge towns and exploration.
Sega has a good chance of turning the Shining series into a profitable series of games if the new games remain true to their roots.
A few images of the new Playstation 2 Shining Action/RPG, Shining Tears, have emerged:
Shining Tears looks interesting but in a few ways actually looks worse than Shining Wisdom. I always knew the Playstation 2 struggled to cope with the graphical demands of today’s games, but I never thought the Saturn was better equiped to render 2D graphics! I was expecting a fully 3D Action/RPG, but Sega has taken the cheap route with 2D graphics and fixed overhead angles/top down views. I hope the new Shining Force game doesn’t go the same route. A Shining Force game with Grandia 2-esque visuals would be a dream come true for me.
Also, the artwork of Shining Tears looks like it has taken a turn for the worse when compared to the stylish anime-inspired artistry of the Camelot Shining games. The artwork in Shining Tears is very reminiscent of Hundred Swords for the Dreamcast IMO. Of course, there’s a token badass hero with a steadfast gaze and hair of the purest white.
I can’t really say that the Saturn 2d engine is better that the PS2’s but I knwo for sure that the Saturn was supposed to be the 2d king when it was made.
Funny that the 3d age started along with it…
I can live with 2D graphics when they do a good job of representing a game’s gameplay, but I was expecting more from a Playstation 2 game. My liking of Shining Tears will depend on its gameplay, however.
The new Shining Tears website is now online.
For a mere 2D Action/RPG, Shining Tears doesn’t seem too bad. Amusement Vision is busy working on the new Playstation 2 Shining Force game even as we type.
Damn, the artwork resembles the character artwork in Hundred Swords so closely it’s almost frightening. The characters even stand on each side of the screen when talking to one another… just like in Hundred Swords.
In most of the Camelot Shining games, certain characters would have portraits that would appear in the top left hand corner of the screen whenever they engaged in dialogue. Sega has decided to break with tradition…
Why are these strategy RPG’s all alike??
This type of style (the characters) is soo clich?..
Shining Tears is like no Shining game I’ve played. The gameplay mechanics don’t even come close to resembling Shining Wisdom or Landstalker (real Action/RPGs) as far as I can tell.
Here’s an image from the PC version of Hundred Swords (I blatently stole):
http://www.panzerdragoon.net/extra_images/hundred_swords_image_01.jpg
The artist who worked on Hundred Swords and who is now working on Shining Tears must surely be the same person?