Shining in the Darkness for Sega Genesis - A Review | hungrygoriya 

That's awesome! It's cool that you had a place to consolidate all those things. I had a childhood map I made of King's Quest V's desert on NES tucked away in an old PC box, and I found it again a few years ago. I'm glad you haven't lost your love of map-making!

Yeah I noticed that! Those little jerks that steal from you in the night while you sleep, right?

@@hungrygoriya Yep that's them.

I am just extremely late to the party here... but yeah! I hope you enjoyed the video. I still have yet to play any other Shining games so I still have a ton to look forward to.

It’s a shame that Camelot Software Planning is no longer developing for this series. Haven’t been since Shining Force III over 24 years ago. They were best developers since they had the heart and soul of the Shining series.

It's not really still going on though lol All the games now are completely different and bad

@@jedite7503 It's crazy to me that Camelot have been exclusively making games for Nintendo for far longer than when they were Sega devs. Sega really screwed them over with Shining Force 3 so bad that ran off to Nintendo & never looked back. Shining Force is so much better than Fire Emblem though.

😂 you dawgie

I agree with you... the setting and the characters were incredibly charming.

100%

It's a wonderful game. It was my first dungeon crawler experience if you don't count the dungeons in Phantasy Star 1, and it hooked me!

Oh right on! I'm glad it lit your interest so early on and that you're enjoying the opportunity to revisit it now. It's honestly so much fun and it's great to hear you're enjoying it so much. The save state feature sounds divine. I think I got overlevelled from all the times I'd warp out and need to walk back to where I was. I'm curious to know how the rest of your game goes without so many walk of shames to speak of, haha

@@hungrygoriya Yeah, it's definitely a great game to go back to. It helps that I had and loved the first Shining Force as a kid, so it's great to see the origins of the series. I love Shining Force more, but this is a close second. if Shining Force 2 is even better than the first game like almost everybody says it si, then I may have to rank the Shining Trilogy as #1 on my list of favorite Genesis games. Well this morning I managed to conquer the Trial of Strength with relative ease and I still have enough HP left that I not only managed to go into the new area and get both of the treasure chests past the slime I just left off there and next time I will grind some more until one of my party gets down to less than 20 HP just to be safe. Or until I max out my items, which is honestly the biggest flaw of this game for me but honestly it helps keep things challenging. Yes, the save state feature is a godsend and enhances any game. As much as I loved wandering around aimlessly like I did when I first played it, I was glad to have a save state so that if I ran into an enemy too tough for me I could just reset to an earlier point. I feel spoiled for when I play Chrono Trigger on the Playstation, I really wish that had made it onto the SNES Classic Mini. Well maybe I'm over-levelled now but I've heard about a difficulty spike to come so I hope that when it hits it won't be as bad thanks to me getting my grinding in early. I'll leave a comment when I finish it. BTW I just discovered your Channel recently and I love it! I am going to do what I always do for RU-vidrs I love, make a playlist with all your videos and watch them in order.

I'm pretty sure I had one of the box items you mentioned but its effect was random? And I believe sometimes it could hurt your party as well so I rarely used it. Either way, those differences are always interesting to read about. Thanks for sharing!

Those guides with maps were life and death for this game

Hey thank you! Glad you're enjoying the channel :)

I grew up playing other stuff, but this was my introduction to the Shining series. I'm really excited to try out Shining Force one of these days. Graph paper is essential for a lot of these old games. I keep a book of it handy at all times while I'm playing through this sort of stuff. I love making my own maps!

Yeah totally! I love maps for some reason, probably more than most people should/would, but hey. It's fun to sit down and create something, you know? I can't wait to try out the Shining Force games. I haven't played any strategy RPGs before so that will be another "first time experience" for me.

@@hungrygoriya I got Shining Force II for my 18th birthday, it's so much fun. I look forward to knowing your thoughts on it eventually.

Thanks to this game (I think), I’m GREAT at directions. I always seem to know which way I’m facing… of course three lefts = one right! It wasn’t my favourite game but it had a massive effect on me.

This is definitely worth playing without guides the first time, though there's lots of replay value once you know the ropes. I've read lots of comments here over the years about special weapons and other mechanics that really make replaying worthwhile. I'm a big fan of no guides/spoilers for a first-time playthrough though!

It was a really slow start... I find so many RPGs are like that, where you're just barely clinging to how things work and trying not to die in the first 10 hours or so. I think streaming this one really helped me to see it through... like so many other long-winded titles I've played, they're so much better with company versus playing them on my own. Hand-drawn maps 4lyfe indeed! I can't see myself ever hating map-making, unless the dimensions don't fit the graph paper I have... :(

It's pretty special! I appreciated it being my first experience with a dungeon crawler just because of how much flair it had, and how approachable it felt. I wish I'd had a chance to play this sooner.

@@hungrygoriya As they say, better late than never right? ;) At least you got the chance to try it and even better, you actually enjoyed it! Even years later the classics still have a way of catching us off guard. Happened to me with Phantasy Star 1&4! BTW I adore your intro. That little jingle at the start of all your reviews is always so cute! :)

@@jaycenteno8385 It's good to come out of a game I've put almost 60 hours into with a positive feeling... it's rare that I don't. And thanks about the jingle. It's the beginning of one of my favourite NES tunes from Faxanadu: the password theme!

I always felt the same: how could I enjoy wandering around aimlessly? It's surprisingly engaging and there's a real sense of progression in these kinds of games. I like them a lot more than I thought I would as well.

What a convenient coincidence about the video length, haha

Persona 1 eh? I've heard of the Persona series but haven't touched it myself. I'm very curious to give it a whirl, and it's even more enticing because of the dungeons. Thanks for letting me know! And yeah, I completely agree about the tavern and the music getting louder... I thought that was a super nice touch too! I didn't have the luxury of listening to it with headphones, but I'd be curious to try that too!

@@hungrygoriya On original Genesis hardware, it only outputs mono audio (all games do, it outputs the same mono through both speakers) but you can get stereo with the Model 1 Genesis' headphone jack. It seems they have stereo audio enabled on modern compilations. As for Persona, the first two games (technically three, Persona 2 is in two parts) are wildly different in both tone and style to 3, 4 and 5. I like both styles, all five games have a lot to offer. I actually played Persona 3 and 4 first, and was surprised how different Persona 1 was xD

I love grinding! It's very relaxing sometimes, especially on streams when I have company.

I might've actually enjoyed it had this been the case.

It was a shame that they never went through with the first person dungeons planned for PSIV.

@@TSDT I really liked the dungeons in PSIV for what it's worth. They weren't too long or too confusing like I felt the ones in Phantasy Star II were. I could've gone with some more first person perspective stuff all the same though!

Phantasy Star IV had a nice balance of dungeons not being too long but still a somewhat higher encounter rate. The only huge dungeon I can think of in PSIV is the Air Castle but because the game is a lot more forgiving than other PS games in that you have a lot of resources for healing (thank god they gave characters good TP) so I even enjoy going through that. Plus that PS1 dungeon arrangement is a bop! But it would've been cool to see what the first person dungeons could've been like in PSIV because there is potential. Though I really have to agree, I would've much preferred the dungeons in PSII if they had been first person rather than the gargantuan dungeons in that game.

Very nice! That's too funny :D If we're three for three, then it'll be extra spooky!

I did like how the dungeons were done in Phantasy Star... not too much backtracking, not too much meanness, etc. I thought the size of those dungeons were a lot more approachable too. I was really intimidated by how huge the ones in Shining in the Darkness were.

Camalot? say what

@@hyakugame Camelot Software Planning (formerly Sonic! Software Planning) was one of the teams involved in the development of this game, the other being Climax Entertainment (the makers of Landstalker).

I appreciate your kindness! I hope you enjoy the game, and good luck to you.

It's definitely packed with lots of details that I really enjoyed like the music and visuals. The end game ramped up the weirdness a lot, especially with the statuses and powerful enemies. I enjoyed that risk factor very much! Congratulations on going through it again and really seeing how far you could take it.

Thanks for sharing your childhood experiences with this one. I'm glad you managed to overcome all of its challenges and also had the same bad luck with Milo. I genuinely thought that I just had the worst luck ever in my playthrough, but it turns out that the bad luck belongs to him entirely, haha! I can't wait to get into Shining Force eventually. There are still a few games I'd like to track down someday. I almost bought a copy of Shining the Holy Ark the other day, but it had a rip in the game foil and I didn't want to pay the asking price if it was going to potentially not even work past a certain part. And I guess I owe a big thank you to our dear friend Renesance! Better late than never! I appreciate seeing you in the streams and in my comments here. Thank you for taking the time to be everywhere all at once :)

That was only one of them! I had pages and pages but tried not to spoil too much. Thank you very much by the way... I can't wait for more dungeon crawler adventures in the future.

It's still got a pretty big adventure to experience! I enjoyed it quite a bit even these days, especially as a first-time experience with dungeon crawling (other than the dungeons in Phantasy Star 1).

You must've played it a lot if you can still remember where to go. That place is huge!

@@hungrygoriya Yeah, I played the whole Shining series + Landstalker excessivly, back in the 90s. Probably lost quite a bit of my brain capacity mapping those games. Just in this moment I replay shining force 1 on my smartphone.

This is good to know! I'm always curious to see what kinds of things people patch so I'll have to check them out.

@@hungrygoriya The spiritual sequel Shining the Holy Ark for the Saturn takes the formula to the next level. Overall a better experience, but definitely holds true to the roots of Darkness.

Whyyyy would they hide the most powerful weapon behind something that obscure? I don't think I ever used muddle once the entire game! I wonder how folks even found that to begin with...

@@hungrygoriya Most likely trial and error also alot of gamers when they beat a game so many times they tend to do troll tactics to see various results so for a 30 year old game it's no surprise that even a niche game like this will have cryptic secrets like this shown off in guides.

I had no idea it did until you mentioned it just now! I usually play games through without guides or hints and then delve into spoiler territory, and I didn't come close to the levels needed for some of these special items. That's really cool though!

It's cool that you got to play this one when you were little. I think I would've really enjoyed it back then too!

Thanks for the continued support!

I was very excited to see the ending of this one. I'm also excited to play Shining the Holy Ark!

Lots of folks reminded me that Etrian Odyssey is a fantastic game just like this one, as well as Shining in the Holy Ark. It would be cool to play either of those someday! I can also understand why these games would not be for everyone. I apparently enjoy the tedium of mapping way more than someone probably should, so that's a big draw for me. Pun intended! And thank you... I've got my sights set on Arcana for someday down the line. I've heard that's a great game in the same vein for SNES!

I could definitely see save states being a great way to play this one, especially with some of the crafting conundrums if you wanted to try again to get something better. And all the dying... and getting paralyzed and poisoned at the worst times... yep. Save states

I really need to get into Golden Sun and their other stuff, as well as eventually play Shining Force. I'm very late to the Camelot games! I'm not familiar with Valkyria Chronicles first hand, but I'll take your word on this. It sounds like it'd be really neat!

I'm glad so many people are getting the opportunity to try it out. It's definitely got some addictive qualities to its gameplay.

I got completely wrecked by the Kaiserkrab... I was also pretty shocked! I had no idea what to expect for boss fights and I also didn't expect to immediately get destroyed with no chance!

@@hungrygoriya I always grind past recommended levels in RPGs so when I played this recently I managed to get my character to level 10 and bought the best equipment available minus a helmet, but I was strong enough to beat the Kaiserkrab in 4 rounds and I didn't even need to heal! After Pyra and Milo joined, I found that by walking back and forth through this one corridor around the entrance to the Cave of Strength I can trigger a battle with another one but after catching up my new party members it's a great way to get 40 experience points and 50 gold for minimal damage as long as it doesn't attack Pyra but even then she's still strong enough to only lose 10 or less hit points.

@@Dinobolt1 It sounds like a very sound strategy for sure! Congrats on the kaisercrab win. I got wrecked my first time!

@@hungrygoriya I got wrecked too when I played it as a child. It really startled me when it first showed up, and I went down easily. Never got past it back then, so it was very satisfying to finally beat it now that I had time to properly prepare for it.

Oh yeah? That must be cool to revisit after so long! Right on!

No time like the present! And thanks for watching :)

Samey is a great way to describe them actually... there are are only a handful of songs too, so it can start to feel repetitive quickly. That's why I was so surprised by how much I came out liking it! I expected to get bored or feel annoyed with a lack of diversity here, but nope! I haven't tried any on PC but I wonder if they would've been as forgiving... I kept hearing from a lot of people during my streams of this game that they were surprised Shining in the Darkness had a map view. I don't think I could play a game that didn't have some form of map access.

Inventory restrictions also give me anxiety... it was so frustrating that items don't stack either, so you could fill your inventory with 8 herbs and there goes all that space. It's just terrible! I've played Crusader of Centy before and it was a lot of fun! Beyond Oasis and Landstalker are still games I'm hoping to track down someday. I've heard great things about them both. Thanks for the suggestions!

Sad to say Camelot never learned anything from this as even Golden Sun has a terrible inventory system. I've played the games for so long that I don't struggle but it's very limited... The best shining game inventory was probably the gba remake, seperate inventory for equips and a stash.

Adulting is pretty time consuming eh? I make time each week to sit down and game, and I'm grateful for that bit of fun in my schedule. The music in this game is especially good, and I also really liked the visuals.

Nope, it's a reference to the first Legend of Zelda game for NES. You meet up with a hungry goriya along the way!

I thought it was pretty well-designed. I wasn't a huge fan of how much backtracking you eventually need to do, but other than that, I really had a blast! I have so many pages of maps!

I hope you enjoy your time with it. It's a fantastic game, even with its rougher aspects.

I hope you do too... it was so much more fun than I was expecting!

Yeah, I think it's got some replay value if you give yourself enough time to forget it. Most of my intrigue with a second playthrough lies with the crafting aspects, since I didn't really understand those mechanics based on what was told in the manual. It's cool that you can get some really powerful weapons and items that way.

I hope you do get back to it sometime. It's worth it!

Yeah, they're pretty great games! I'm still very new to the genre but I'm looking forward to more for sure.

@@hungrygoriya Well I definitely suggest the Etrian Odyssey series. You get to make your own team, but the "Untold" remakes give you a narrative driven team if you prefer. And my fav part was how you can use the lower screen to draw your own map that is stored in the save file.

@@--i-am-root This all sounds like something I'd enjoy. People did suggest Etrian Odyssey but I haven't looked into it much yet. This is all very promising, especially the mapping parts!

Hahaha thanks :) I try to keep it real, you know? I'm glad folks tend to mostly agree as well. That crafting was such bologna! It felt like a total waste of time and money, but at that point in the game where I started fiddling I had so much cash that it was okay to gamble. I wish the one whip I'd made for Pyra had been better than what I got... that was the biggest burn. The Hex Whip just tangles her up every few turns and leaves her incapacitated but deals slightly more damage than the normal whip that behaves... booooo!

I actually have a copy of Holy Ark to try out sometime and I'm really excited about it. I've heard as much about Holy Ark being the better big brother of this game so you can imagine how much fun I'll have discovering that one when the time comes.

That inventory management though :(

@@PragmatikReviews There are some really great things about this game and some not-so-great ones... I did love the visuals though. They made the game for me. And the maps... I have a mapping addiction I guess.

I don't plan to quit any time soon, so stay tuned! And yes, I always go with Hun, hahaha... the first time I was able to put four letters in, I did, said, "nope" and Hun became my staple name for my playthroughs.

I haven't tried Persona and Mind Zero before, but Arcana was a great time. I have a review of it as well and absolutely needed to experience after playing Shining in the Darkness. This is the game that made me fall in love with first person perspective dungeon crawlers. And thanks for taking a chance on the channel here, as well as leaving a thoughtful comment.

Agreed about this being a great game that was approachable. I think it had all of the things I like about RPGs minus a few of the quality of life things I mentioned I felt were missing, but for a dungeon crawler, I'm very glad I started with this one. It did feel like I could manage without a guide and I mostly did except to clarify with people about what some of the items did. I was too scared to waste limited use items by accident.

@@hungrygoriya Yeah, I can understand that. That's probably also one advantage I had playing some of the Shining Forces (and Golden Suns) before this. Since I had some knowledge of the naming conventions, the UI, how curses work, and the rules of how items can break, I was comfortable taking risks and having a rough idea of what to expect. If I had never played any of those games beforehand, I may have been more cautious with certain late game items.

Enjoy it if you do! Bring plenty of graph paper!

The music was something that never got old! I was glad there were a couple of tracks at least, but it wasn't until I went to go and put this review together that I realized how little there actually is for exploration. Two songs! They're both very good at least! I wonder if I would've liked something like this as a kid. I definitely enjoyed it now because I like making maps and things, but I wonder if I would've had the patience for that when I was younger. I'd like to play Sword of Vermillion sometime too. It looks like a cool experience as well.

@@hungrygoriya back then games were quite expensive and there weren't many budget options, so as a kid you really had to make the most of what you bought! That really did force me into grinding this game, and it was the same scenario for Lord of the Sword! As I said it wasn't quite my type of game but the draw of getting to meet new characters in the village after every dungeon excursion kept me going. Actually it's the village music that I enjoyed the most!

Oh yeah, nothing wrong with save states if that's the way you want to play. I loved making my own maps but it was quite tedious too!

That's why i have gone my whole life avoiding dungeon crawlers lol.. But now i guess I could always just look up a map. That's how I got through Quest For Glory 2.

Hooray! And yes, I don't want to spoil how many maps I made because that would spoil how many floors there are, but there were a lot! I used up the end of my graph paper book on this game and had to buy a new pad! And yes, most of the BG music is from this game. Truth be told there aren't too many tracks so I did borrow a few tunes from Shining Force, but they have lots of the same motifs. I thought they blended in just fine!

@@hungrygoriya Dang. I haven't had a map pad since I was a kid. Modern games make it so easy to navigate (too easy, imo) I thought I recognized some of the tunes, but I couldn't make sense why since I haven't played this game. This makes way more sense haha

This was a really interesting read for me. There's so much more to this game than what meets the eye in a first playthrough, and I think all of the things you've mentioned here lend themselves really well to increasing the replay value and making this into something worth experimenting with. I will admit that I was worried about selling anything and needing it half an hour deep into a dungeon, so I tended to hoard all my items and keys until very late in the game. It's good to know that later keys you find do actually replace the older ones. I wish the game would've mentioned something about that! My favourite thing about games like this is just how unknown all of these mechanics are, but if you're not willing to experiment, it's sad knowing that it's a wasted effort on the parts of the developers. I think if I ever did replay this down the line, I'd definitely look some of these things up and try to take advantage of some of it just to see how far I could push my party. Thanks so much for sharing!

@@hungrygoriya Believe me I double checked if the keys really did replace the next one before I was sure I'd sell it. Though I knew deals always keeps important items, as the same holds true in the shining force games too. Long as you don't destroy the item from overuse, it will end up on deals. Even if an enemy drops an important item, it ends up on deals. (In shining force 2, you can control the AI and make them drop stuff with a cheat. It saves you some chunks of mithril at the end game.) In shining force , periodically there's bad guys that had special weapons, they will drop it when defeated. If your character has full items, it goes to deals instead. In the first game, bad guys will repeatedly drop stuff(If same all other lizard men have hand axes, and one has a heat axe..he probably drops it. So it's good check who holds what.), so you can replay the battle and score them again. This even worked in Shining force CD/Gaiden, the first chapter your team loses all their gear when the shipgets wrecked. If you drop the protect ring before the battle ends, you can buy them back later off deals. Otherwise they're just got forever. Inventory always been an issue in the shining games. In the force games, each character only holds 4 slots, which one of them is your weapon.(two in case of knights, it's handy keep a spear for ranged attacks.) They don't need buy or upgrade armor making it very steamlined. Only thing character equip otherwise is rings. So you want to recruit everyone you can, just for more inventory slots (Jogurt is worth 4 slots even if he's a joke character otherwise.) In 2 you run into chinks of mithril, so you will be struggling hold them. I just end up selling them to the shops since I could use the extra cash early on. Thankfully there's a caravan that let's you stash items and swap party members about half way through the game. Anyways thanks for the reply and reading my rant. It's good know atleast one person read it. Keep up the good work. Later.

@@Lastjustice It's a pity something like item storage only comes halfway through SF2! Goodness... how frustrating! Good to know I have more inventory woes ahead on most fronts for the series. And you're welcome! I try to keep up with comments here the best I can. Thank you for taking the time to write something here :)

@@hungrygoriya Well Shining force 1 isn't terrible in that regard. You get a fairly large number of characters pretty quickly. Some of them like Gong, who is a barehanded monk don't use any equipment, so you basically get 4 free slots when he joins. There's only 1 key item you need haul around for bulk of the game(Orb of light).The only items you might want to save are stat raising items like attack potions. In Shining force 1, when you promote a character, they actually drop stats are first. So you don't want to use the stat raising items till after you promote them. So don't be in rush to promote all your characters as fast as possible, this just makes the game harder. (Something I did when I first played it. You can promote characters early as chapter 2 with alittle grinding, but you will struggle gain a single lvl till chapter 4 when enemies are worth fair amounts of exp to promoted characters.) The normal lvl you promote at is lvl 10, but you can actually go all the way to lvl 20 before promoting for extra stats. I'd recommend waiting till you start seeing weapons you need promote characters in order to equipment, which like chapter 4. Characters when you promote them will get explosive lvl ups, as you might see a character get 30 stats in a single lvl but you need be fighting enemies worth enough exp to earn lvls.(Your character will be viewed lvl 20 exp wise whether you promoted at lvl 10 or anywhere after.) Which is the issue with promoting super early. You take a massive stat drop, but you can't earn lvls fast enough to regain your footing. So it's good to spread them out so your entire team isn't weakened all at once. Lvl ups are really random and characters tend favor certain stats so each playthru can be very different. They eventually even out later one way or another. (Mages and healers spells trigger after X number of lvls, so if you promote them later they get their spells sooner.) I think the inventory situation in shining force 2 worse despite eventually getting unlimited space, since you get fewer characters early on.(The first game you will have multiple healers and mages by chapter 2, while you won't get a second mage or healer till much later.) You start finding chunks of mithril early on, and just don't have room to store it. So selling it probably the best option to keep your space open since you won't need till very late in the game. There's also secret promotion items so you'll need hang on to those too. (Which if they are in the caravan you will not get the option to use them. It has be in your inventory somewhere to trigger. I missed the chance to use one of them first time I played since I didn't realize that was the item's purpose.) The secret promotions generally are better choice, but not always, depends what you like in some cases and who you use them on. It adds replay value check out characters on different paths, so you can find what you like. You don't need hold on to the majority of the stat raising items atleast. You can use them right away in most cases. (MP and movement are ones you might want to save till post promotion. Some characters like Slade need the mp, but don't start gaining the stat till he's promoted. Some classes reset their movement upon promotion.) Characters don't drop stats when Promoted, so it's all gains the whole way. Promotions are at lvl 20, and you can raise your character to 40 before promoting, but tends make the game really easy if you do that. (Healers can lvl up super fast since they get exp whether they actually heal hps or not. Aura 1 gives 25 exp just for 7 mp, and hitting 3 allies. You actually have heal damage to gain exp in the first game. Always burn all your mp every fight either way.) I like both games, just the inventory system was something could stood be overhauled.(The gaiden games or shining CD are very stripped down, so not alot of items to worry about. There's no towns to explore, just goes from battle to battle.) I feel like they could have atleast made a key inventory bag. I guess that's something for them to do if they ever do a HD remaster of the shining games. I'd love for the 3rd game get released in the west, as there was 3 chapters to it, but only the first chapter got released in the US. It was on saturn so most of us didn't get to play it. We can hope Sega will do that some day.

Oh wonderful! Good luck with your playthrough! I'd love to play Shining the Holy Ark one of these days.

Thanks so much! I can definitely understand how this could be a favourite!

If you like long walks, you'll enjoy this one. Good luck!

I counted out loud with all of you for almost 60 hours and I still messed my maps up! Thanks for hanging out with me. I swear these games wouldn't be half as fun without having all of you to talk to.

There are definitely way too many RPGs to play. Shining in the Darkness is a fantastic adventure. I hope it's enjoyable for you! Don't forget the graph paper!

Thank you!

Very interesting! I can definitely see that being fun for a future playthrough.

@@hungrygoriya Great content, btw!!!! Looking forward to viewing more of your videos. : )

@@whatareyoulookingat908 Thank you! I have a little surprise video coming out tomorrow that's not anything I've ever done before, but regular content should resume in a week or two. Whenever I get something together here.

Right on! It's a pretty lovely game and I also loved the art and music.

Ah yes, the resetting would've worked well too... I could've done that, but it would've been better for the game to just explain it a little more in my opinion! And I haven't tried Landstalker yet... I'm waiting for a copy to come my way at a good price!

@@hungrygoriya I don't have the discipline for original hardware. I played through those two (and the shining forces) on the collection sega put out on the PS4/Xbox1/Switch a few years back. The isometric controls took me several sessions to get used to. After a couple of towns and dungeons, it did become second nature. However, that first dungeon was a hair-puller and I probably would have given up entirely if it wasn't for the charm of the characters and the writing.

@@josefkrenshaw179 Good to know. I'll keep that in mind when I play through it eventually. I'm glad you stuck it out in the end!

Oooo I haven't played any Wizardry yet, but I'm always looking for an excuse to start! That sounds like something I'd really enjoy. Thank you for the suggestion! I have endless patience when it comes to games... most of the time. There are only a few of them that really pushed my buttons! I appreciate you looking around the channel too. Thanks for that!

I'm happy to hear that you eventually came back around and finished it. This was my first true dungeon crawling experience and between the mapping and all of the little surprises and twists in this story, I adored the game quite a bit. I've knocked a few childhood games off my list over the past few years, and I can certainly appreciate how wonderful it feels to finally put something like that to rest. Congratulations!

I really enjoyed this one and am glad I discovered a new kind of game I like. I'll have to try Wizardry one of these days. I've played Arcana and have a review up somewhere in the channel. Other than a funny translation, it's pretty good too!

Add to that the terrible button input delays, overheating after prolonged gameplay, and constant ads (in the free version), and you have the makings of really bad gaming emulation on mobile devices. It's not just with the Shining Force pack, either. All of the re-releases in Sega Forever are like that. I tried Revenge of Shinobi on there, and it crashed. Avoid the whole Sega Forever series! Sega really fell asleep on these.

Were the Sega Forever games the free mobile ones that they started releasing over the past few years? I had no idea this was one of the games made available. I wonder how the experience would be on a phone despite what you've mentioned here. I'd be curious to see how a turn-based game translates to that mode.

@@hungrygoriya You can do a review video of that experience, but just be prepared for problems. Lots and lots of problems. I remember that, when I first played Shining Force 2 on there in 2018, some of the magic spells didn't even work. Looking at the customer reviews from March and April 2021 on Google Play, though, it is possible that Sega may have listened to previous complaints and fixed the errors.

@@MoltoRubato88 Oh I won't be reviewing the game again in that form, but I was just curious to see what it's like. RPGs for me have always meant a controller so I just thought it'd be neat to see a different medium.

Awww thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed the review here.

So I've heard! I've been looking for a copy for a long time to no avail.

@@hungrygoriya Yeah, prices are pretty crazy for Saturn games. Saturn emulation is pretty good now

Very nice to hear... I hope I can track down a copy someday.

I have a copy of that now and I'm looking forward to playing it.

@@hungrygoriya awesome! Looking forward to some content of that game if it is a future possibility! (BTW, I love the town graphics personally!)

Oh nice! That's fantastic to hear! I keep hoping to find a copy of Shining the Holy Ark one of these days, but at the price it's going for, I don't know that I'll ever own it. Enjoy!

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't have a ton of DS games so I'll check into this one for sure!

That would be really cool! I think I would've liked Phantasy Star 2 way more if it'd had these kinds of dungeons.

I noticed the time after I rendered it... so funny! And thanks :) I was surprised at how much this game kept my attention and how positive I felt coming out of it!

I didn't get to level 99 with anyone in my playthrough, but that's a funny prompt! And good to know about Boost! There are so many things that I'm sure I missed/didn't understand completely on a first playthrough. Thanks for sharing!

@@hungrygoriya You can farm levels against the Crystal Oozes on the same floor as Darksol. They give tons of experience but are the Metal Slime equivalent of that game : high defense and run away a lot. However, once you get high levels, the item store will start to sell special items. One of them is the Ogre Flute and it's an instant kill item. If it cracks, go get it repaired at the trader, rinse and repeat. You can also bombard spells (Blast seems to somewhat work). To make things better, they roam around the area where the Spirit of Light can heal you so you don't have to think about conserving MPs.

Thank you very much! I'm curious about what you didn't like about it. I found a lot of enjoyment out of playing it on a livestream versus alone so that's always a big plus for me. And I have heard of Shining in the Holy Ark, but I don't currently have a copy. If I ever come across one that's not at an astronomical price, I'd love to try it someday. I heard it took what this game established and improved virtually every aspect.

There's a lot of good stuff for sure, I just wish it occupied more of the screen! Someone pointed out that the floor doesn't rotate when you turn and I can't unsee that now... boooo! I've heard great things about the Etrian Odyssey games! Hopefully I can dive in one of these days!

Hey thanks so much for watching! I didn't look into the development much, so that's good to know about the environment/same-y enemies. It's still a great game regardless!

I still have yet to play Shining Force, but I can't wait to give it a go! And you're very welcome. I've been enjoying talking about games that are not necessarily everyone's very favourite or super popular.

@@hungrygoriya I enjoy doing that, too (which is what I do with my videos)! I really appreciate you taking the time and patience to do it with RPGs - that is a definite commitment! Thank you!

It's a really great game. I was surprised at how in depth it was, especially later in the game with some of the backtracking you could do.

I've been keeping an eye out for a copy of Shining the Holy Ark for a long while and almost bought one recently, but it had broken foil on the disc :(

I will add it to my list of things to look into! Thanks!

I am excited to try out Arcana! I've had it for a long time now but just haven't had the chance to play through it yet.

My pleasure!