I just realized, why do so many JRPGs have the letter X in them?

You're not a big JRPG fan lol. What are you doing asking about Shining Force? Finish all those great games first!

Aren't the PS1 and GBA also 32 bit consoles? That's a bold statement to say that Shing Force III and Panzer Dragoon Saga are better then Final Fantasy VII, XenoGears, Grandia, Golden Sun, Fire Emblem, etc.

Yea, but I've beaten every localized Fire Emblem (except the Wii and 3DS versions, but I don't own a 3DS yet), and I've even beaten a Japanese one (Heros of Light and Shadow). I'm going to work backwards and beat the older Fire Emblems too, but it's nice to have something different once in a while.

Plus, it's by the makers of Golden Sun, it has to be decent at the very least.

Yea, but I own all those games mentioned and they are on my TDL, probably before Shining Force (except I might play the GBA remake fairly soon). I have quite a collection, and just want to make sure I have everything I want before the games get too old, too rare, and too expensive.

The reason I made this thread is because I get most of my games from ghetto used game stores, and the prices are usually much cheaper then ebay. However specific games don't come that frequently, so I want to know what to put on my radar. E.g. I recently bought Ogre Battle 64, Complete in Box with everything in amazing condition for $40 no tax.

I have a lot of games to catch up on, I know, but I just don't play games that often. Last year I beat....3 games, I think. XenoBlade, Last Story and Mass Effect 2. This year I have more free time, so I'm aiming for 10, but there are a lot of JRPG's the catch up on. I just like having options, you're not always in the mood for a retro Final Fantasy, or Tactics Ogre, or Tales of ___.

BTW, my goal is 10, I have 3 RPG's down (Mass Effect 3, Fire Emblem: Heros of Light and Shadow and Nier), plus Halo 4. 3 in 3 months, I'm on track for my goal.

I'm afraid I've only played Shining in the Darkness and Shining Force, but I recommend them both. Shining Force is one of the best strategy RPGs I've played.

If you can get your hands on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, you'll get both those games plus Shining Force II.

Thanks for the tip, and in HD too.

That saves me money, I have Shing Force Remake for GBA, but I can probably find Genesis Collection for $15 bucks or so, where SF2 and Shining in the Darkness would probably cost me $30-$40....

but then, playing it with the genesis controller, on a cathode ray tube tv, getting radiation.....seeing the original cartridge in the system and the box on the bookshelf.... I think I'll probably stick to that.

However I have a friend who loved Golden Sun and has the Genesis Collection, and probably doesn't know that the makers of Shining Force and Golden Sun are the same people.

In my opinion, no. There are so many other RPGs out there worth getting than the Shining Force games and there are very very few tactical RPGs I'd recommend getting Shining Force over. Shining Force isn't as bad as Eternal Eyes, but it's not much better.

I've only played the first game in the series, so it's my opinion of the entire series, but according to fans, the first series is a great game as well and I just don't see this. The game is painfully slow paced, both in battle and out. It's fairly grindy as if you don't grind then you're going to quickly become overpowered and be forced to grind. If you die in battle you retain your EXP or if you use a spell your main character has you also retain your EXP. Attempting to set it up so you're able to get a certain character a kill so they get the most exp and can actually level up drags the game on even more.

The battles are usually set up in a way where enemies won't come towards you until you reach a certain point in the ridiculously large maps. So a large group of characters have to progress through these maps, forests killing your movement happens a large portion of the time, etc. Sometimes you'll be in dungeons where your characters just have to follow a long path to where enemies are at in order to kill them. Why do you make me take 50 character turns just to reach the enemy?

It's nice to hear people mention tactical RPGs that aren't FFTactics and such, but Shining Force isn't one I like to hear as the best ever. People have their own opinions, but my personal opinion is it's far from it and rather the game is the tactical RPG version of boredom personified.

I'd recommend looking into these games, maybe they'll interest you. Brigandine Legend of Foresna, Brigandine Grand Edition, Tactics Ogre, Dark Wizard, Wild ARMs XF, Wild ARMs 4/5(sort of TRPG,) Arc the Lad series, and Kartia. If you've played all these then look around for others, but these are some of the better TRPGs in my opinion,

I playes SF1 and 2 on my Mega Drive and liked both a lot! But I just watched a gameplay video of them and think the sound-effects are horrible ;) But overall the games were really fun with a nice story.

The only Saturn Shining game that is a SRPG is Shining Force III. Shining Wisdom is an action-RPG and Shining the Holy Ark looks like a dungeon-crawling RPG.

Level up bonuses in the Mega Drive games (I don't know about the Saturn one) are extremely random, and they are very important because there isn't much equipment.

I was also playing a SF from the Sonic's UGC but I can't remember which one. I think I started with the second one for whatever reason. I loved the gameplay and was really into it by leveling up and stuff. Somehow I stopped playing it because of the so many games I was playing at the same time: Valkyria C, Bioshock 2, GTA4, New Vegas, Sacred 2, so many games. 　

The shining force series, before Camelot left, was the reason I bought a Saturn and a Dreamcast (although it never released on DC I lived in hope).

Defo start with Resurection of the Dark Dragon. You could play Shining in the Darkness but id give it a miss. It was to repetitive for me and I dont think its aged well. Shining Force 2 was a series highlight for me. Shining Wisdom was... good. Different but good. Shining the Holy ark was fantastic - it took all that was good about Darkness and made it more open with a belting story which tied in directly with Shining Force 3 and the Vandals story ark.

Im playing Shining CD for the first time at the moment. Its good enough but there are no towns and villiages so its just battle after battle with story expo in between.

Theres a very good story behind the Shining series deveopment and Camelots relationship with Sega. Its worth reading just to see how turbulant things became with Saturn. Makes you really appreciate the games when you realise how close they each came to getting canned.