Shining Force III Translation Project

You’re more of an SF fan than I, but I’ve been following the translation project for years and as far as I’m aware they’re nowhere near finished. Have you played it at all?

#threadhijack

You can watch longplays on Youtube where the whole game is translated. It’s not perfect of course, but I don’t expect perfection from a fan translation where people don’t do this for a living.

You can either mod a Saturn and play a hacked burned CD (I believe), or play it via an emulator, but the sound and graphics are still imperfect in that.

This is why I really doubt we will ever see an official version of all three parts in English. It’s too hard to emulate the Saturn and it’s costly to translate properly. The game didn’t age well unfortunately.

#threadhijackhijacked

I enjoyed the game so much that I wanted to wait until the project had completed the translation properly before playing through them. At this rate I’m not sure it’s ever going to happen but rather that it not that me ruin my enjoyment by not understand sc.ii&iii properly.

IF they were ever going to translate them officially, I think they would’ve done it by now. Same with a PDS remake - Sega just doesn’t care about these franchises. I guess they’ve not made enough money.

I still haven’t played (or watched) SFIII parts 2 and 3 either. Maybe I should just watch them on YouTube. Shining Force was largely abut the gameplay (as well as the story) though, so I’d still like to play them. I remember SSF emulated Panzer Saga quite well - how does it handle SFIII?

The graphics look worse than when running on the Saturn in many respects, and the music stutters a lot. If you can stand that then you can emulate the game.

Personally, I played SF3 for the complete experience, meaning both the gameplay and journey. Gameplay-wise SF2 is better IMO. SF2’s higher difficulty settings give it a lot of replayability. I just wish that someone could translate that gameplay into 3D properly.

Now we could wait a decade for someone to perfect Saturn emulation. I’m sure it will happen… eventually.

Either way, we have better games to play. I still need to complete VC. That game really is a work of art if you enjoy the gameplay (of course, I prefer medieval fantasy for a number of reasons).

This series isn’t financially viable I imagine. I wish that Camelot had made SF3 for the Dreamcast instead. It would have been vastly superior in every way imaginable (not to mention compatible with PC software).

I think I’m right in saying Grandia (II?) was released on the DC, right? I never played it but was it any better than SF3, as far as 3D gameplay was concerned?

My experience with Saturn emulation is solely SSF and PDS, but it was near-flawless. Hopefully by the time the translation is finished there have been enough updates to SSF that it handles SF3 fine too. I doubt very much I’ll ever be bothered to mod the Saturn.

You’re right about there being other games we have to play. I’m almost finished going through my back catalogue of games, but there are still some I want to replay or complete 100%.

Grandia 2 was great. The DC has the best version but there’s a good PC port. I underrated it when it was released because I was still angry about the Saturn dying before its time. Grandia 2 has a great battle system, great 3D graphics, beautiful art and a memorable soundtrack. I highly recommend it to RPG fans (assuming you like Japanese RPGs).

SFIII could have looked like that, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe one day.

Hopefully someone will perfect Saturn emulation. That would solve everything. The problem is the Saturn was needlessly complex. I wonder how many games actually used the full power of the Saturn. If you compare SFIII Scenario 1 to Scenario 2, the graphics in Scenario 2 were dramatically improved. It’s one of the best looking games on the Saturn.