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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Retro RPG fans, if Shining Force worth getting into?

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Michael-5 on 23 March 2013
kupomogli said:
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,

Hm... I'll take that into mind. I have the first game on the GBA, I'll play that before I get the others. Maybe this is a series like Lufia, which really only made 1 good game.

Never heard of Bigrandine, it looks okay. Not sure if it's a type of SRPG that iterests me. Tactics Ogre, except for the SNES/PS1 game, I own them all . Wild Arms isn't for me because I don't like Westerns, I plaed WA3, and I'm not too impressed. Arc the Lad I've heard mixed things and Kartia looks cool. The character designs remind me of Front Mission (Which is one of my favorite SRPG franchises, right up there with Fire Emblem).

Can you reccommend me any other SRPG's which don't look like Final Fantasy Tactics? Sorry Bigrandine and Kartia kinda look like that to me lol.

Squint_Eastwood said:
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.

See this is why I want to give the series a chance, I think Camalot is an amazing dev with Golden Sun and Mario Golf/Tennis.

Shining the Holy Ark looks a lot like Golden Sun to me, that's why I want to eventually give it a try. When I have a full career and some money, maybe I'll get a Saturn and play some of these rare gems. I'll start looking for them, maybe I'll be lucky and find them for $5 like I did Super Mario RPG that one day.

I'll read up on Camalot, I know a bit about the Saturn, it was kinda the reason Sega started to fell apart (Sega of Japan developed the Saturn without help from Sega of America which made the 32X, and it never really opened well outside of Japan because of it).



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kain_kusanagi on 23 March 2013
Michael-5 said:
kain_kusanagi said:
If you are into JRPG and don't have a Saturn than you should get one for more than the awsome Shinning Force 3. Panzer Dragoon Saga is the single greatest 32bit era RPG and even though it is rare expensive it is worth the price of entry. Do yourself a favor and discover what all of us Sega fans were talking about during the Saturn's underrated life.

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.


Yes Panzer Dragoon Saga is better than Final Fantasy VII, XenoGears, Grandia and may more. I haven't played Golden Sun or Fire Emblem, but since Panzer Dragoon is so damn good I'd have to say that it probably is better than them too. The only problem is the English version is rare and costs like $250-$500 depending on it's used condition. It's never going to get a port or an HD release because Sega lost the source code in a vault flood of some kind. I preordered it for $50 back in the day and I'd never sell it. There are less than $30,000 US copies of the game. The cheaper option would be to download and burn the ISOs and play them on a moded Sega Saturn. All RPG fans should play it at least once. A lot of RPG fans buy it on Ebay, play it, and then sell it on Ebay.



Michael-5 on 23 March 2013
kain_kusanagi said:
Michael-5 said:
kain_kusanagi said:
If you are into JRPG and don't have a Saturn than you should get one for more than the awsome Shinning Force 3. Panzer Dragoon Saga is the single greatest 32bit era RPG and even though it is rare expensive it is worth the price of entry. Do yourself a favor and discover what all of us Sega fans were talking about during the Saturn's underrated life.

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.


Yes Panzer Dragoon Saga is better than Final Fantasy VII, XenoGears, Grandia and may more. I haven't played Golden Sun or Fire Emblem, but since Panzer Dragoon is so damn good I'd have to say that it probably is better than them too. The only problem is the English version is rare and costs like $250-$500 depending on it's used condition. It's never going to get a port or an HD release because Sega lost the source code in a vault flood of some kind. I preordered it for $50 back in the day and I'd never sell it. There are less than $30,000 US copies of the game. The cheaper option would be to download and burn the ISOs and play them on a moded Sega Saturn. All RPG fans should play it at least once. A lot of RPG fans buy it on Ebay, play it, and then sell it on Ebay.

lol, that's a good idea. I've played Panzer Dragoon on Saturn before, but not Saga. I didn't realize how strongly the fans felt for the Saturn.

I'll look into it, but the makers of Shining Force III are also the makers of Golden Sun, and I think most would agree that Golden Sun was their better game.

Either way, looks like I have a long term goal, make enough money to buy a Saturn and the few gems on it. Maybe I'll be lucky and find it at a garage sale. My buddy picked up Earthbound (a $120 game on ebay) for $5, and I've had similar luck with Super Mario RPG.



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Busted on 23 March 2013
Michael-5 said:

Okay, so I'm a big JRPG fan (...)

 

(...) I haven't beaten any Final Fantasy between 3-9

Are you serious?



darkknightkryta on 23 March 2013

Get the Sega Genesis collection. I think all Genesis Shining Force and that other RPG series that Sega made are on there.



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Squint_Eastwood on 23 March 2013
kain_kusanagi said:
If you are into JRPG and don't have a Saturn than you should get one for more than the awsome Shinning Force 3. Panzer Dragoon Saga is the single greatest 32bit era RPG and even though it is rare expensive it is worth the price of entry. Do yourself a favor and discover what all of us Sega fans were talking about during the Saturn's underrated life.


Goddam... just... goddam. Couldnt have said it better. Saturns themselves are going cheap unlike the games. You can order a modchip for $34 and it'll allow you to play games from all regions as well as more...murkier means. But seriously, Saturn gaming is getting wild expensive and working Saturns wont be available forever. Id recommend anyone to take the dive if only for the two games mentioned above.



Michael-5 on 23 March 2013
Busted said:
Michael-5 said:

Okay, so I'm a big JRPG fan (...)

 

(...) I haven't beaten any Final Fantasy between 3-9

Are you serious?

I didn't like FFVII and that's the one people always rant about. I was playing FFVI on my old cell phone, but it broke. I recently bought it for GBA, so I will play it soon.

Final Fantasy is not the pinicle of JRPG's, I've enjoyed a lot of other RPG's much more. Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, XenoBlade, Lost Odyssey. Fire Emblem, Golden Sun, Drakengard, Tales of Symphonia, Baten Kaitos, etc.



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Michael-5 on 23 March 2013
Squint_Eastwood said:
kain_kusanagi said:
If you are into JRPG and don't have a Saturn than you should get one for more than the awsome Shinning Force 3. Panzer Dragoon Saga is the single greatest 32bit era RPG and even though it is rare expensive it is worth the price of entry. Do yourself a favor and discover what all of us Sega fans were talking about during the Saturn's underrated life.


Goddam... just... goddam. Couldnt have said it better. Saturns themselves are going cheap unlike the games. You can order a modchip for $34 and it'll allow you to play games from all regions as well as more...murkier means. But seriously, Saturn gaming is getting wild expensive and working Saturns wont be available forever. Id recommend anyone to take the dive if only for the two games mentioned above.

Exactly why I made a thread like this, and this is exactly why I'm stockpiling old JRPG's. I have a pretty complete collection for games up to and including PS1. Before that I'm missing a lot, but they are expensive.

So I'm just going to hope I get lucky and find some of this in my ghetto gaming stores, or garage sales, or random ebay deals



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kupomogli on 23 March 2013
Michael-5 said:
kupomogli said:

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,

Hm... I'll take that into mind. I have the first game on the GBA, I'll play that before I get the others. Maybe this is a series like Lufia, which really only made 1 good game.

Never heard of Bigrandine, it looks okay. Not sure if it's a type of SRPG that iterests me. Tactics Ogre, except for the SNES/PS1 game, I own them all . Wild Arms isn't for me because I don't like Westerns, I plaed WA3, and I'm not too impressed. Arc the Lad I've heard mixed things and Kartia looks cool. The character designs remind me of Front Mission (Which is one of my favorite SRPG franchises, right up there with Fire Emblem).

Can you reccommend me any other SRPG's which don't look like Final Fantasy Tactics? Sorry Bigrandine and Kartia kinda look like that to me lol.

You mean don't look like FFTactics as in character art?  Or similar in style to gameplay?  I'll list a few other SRPGs/TRPGs.

Vandal Hearts, Growlanser 2, and Yggdra Union are all great games.  Especially Vandal Hearts which must have slipped my mind as I should have posted it in the last list.

I previoiusly listed Brigandine and Brigandine Grand Edition but I want to mention them again since Brigandine is my favorite game.  The games have literally endless replay value though because they're not your traditional style of TRPG.  Think of Romance of the Three Kingdoms where you have the world map and each of your cities.  On Brigandine you don't go in depth like drafting soldiers, training soldiers, increasing your farms, revenue, people support, etc.  You just set your characters to defend certain locations, send them on quests if you want them to attempt to find special items or new characters.  You can increase characters classes, cross class characters, etc   Your objective is to take over the continent and that's it, but with that also being the main goal of every other country, that's where the replay value comes in because you can just continue to do so.  Whether you want to take it slow and build up your army, cross classing every knight into the best character they can be or try to see how many months you can conquer the continent in.

Grand Edition was only released in Japan and it's a remake on the same system.  Sort of like Legacy of Darkness on the N64.  I own both and while the same, the changes they made also make it fairly different so I have efun playing either.  If you have friends that are interested in it, you can also play multiplayer where each person takes control of their own country and the computer AI controls the rest.  So playing a normal game of Brigandine with humans is a lot of fun.

--

If you're interested in some non TRPGs though, here's some really good ones.   

MS Saga(don't let the Gundam theme fool you, this is a very good game,) Xenosaga 3, Grandia, Wild ARMs(I know you said you didn't like the western theme, but it's less on here than in the third, and if you like this then,) Wild ARMs 2, and Suikoden series.



Squint_Eastwood on 23 March 2013
kain_kusanagi said:
Michael-5 said:
kain_kusanagi said:
If you are into JRPG and don't have a Saturn than you should get one for more than the awsome Shinning Force 3. Panzer Dragoon Saga is the single greatest 32bit era RPG and even though it mentioningexpensive it is worth the price of entry. Do yourself a favor and discover what all of us Sega fans were talking about during the Saturn's underrated life.

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.


Yes Panzer Dragoon Saga is better than Final Fantasy VII, XenoGears, Grandia and may more. I haven't played Golden Sun or Fire Emblem, but since Panzer Dragoon is so damn good I'd have to say that it probably is better than them too. The only problem is the English version is rare and costs like $250-$500 depending on it's used condition. It's never going to get a port or an HD release because Sega lost the source code in a vault flood of some kind. I preordered it for $50 back in the day and I'd never sell it. There are less than $30,000 US copies of the game. The cheaper option would be to download and burn the ISOs and play them on a moded Sega Saturn. All RPG fans should play it at least once. A lot of RPG fans buy it on Ebay, play it, and then sell it on Ebay.

Grandia was originally a Saturn exclusive. It never released outside of Japan until it moved to Playstation. A lot of reviews still place the Saturn version as the best but again, its Japanese only so a bit useless to you.  Other JPRPG's worth mentioning, for both cheapness and quality, are Dragon Force and Blazing Heroes.  I didnt want to mention the whole ISO thing but its my main way of reliving these classics.