So Shining Force 1 went up on the Wii Virtual Console in the US on Monday. It seems like a good time to take a look back at what really was a great, classic game.
Shining Force may not have been the first Shining game (that honor goes to the first-person dungeon crawl Shining in the Darkness), but it was the most influential in the series -- it was the one that set down the SRPG gameplay that the series is best remembered for, and which Shining Force II, Shining Force CD, and Shining Force III followed.
The series is modeled after Fire Emblem: for one, instead of generic characters to be min/maxed by the player, your army is strictly made up of unique, story-based characters; for another, it uses similar battle cutscenes when two units engage one another. Shining Force, however, is much easier than Fire Emblem, as it features no permadeath and no item breaks.
The real difference, and the thing that makes Shining Force so notable in the SRPG field, is how well the game melds SRPG battles (moving a large number of units across a gridded battlefield) with traditional RPG conventions: the game places a much heavier emphasis on leveling up your characters (you can retreat from and return to story battles to gain more exp); there's more focus on story and more RPG-like cutscenes; you can wander around a world map and (and here's the cool part) large towns, talking to NPCs and buying stuff in shops.
The game begins when the King of Guardiana notes suspicious activity by rival kingdom Runefaust near the Gate of the Ancients. He wants to investigate, but without raising the fears of the populace, so he sends a team of young, untested warriors to find out what's going on. After defeating the Runefaust soldiers there, though, they return to find Guardiana overun and destroyed by an invasion by the full Runefaust Army. The king and the leader of the knights are both killed, and it's up to Max and his force to travel north to confront Runefaust and stop them from using the power of the Ancients.
Simple enough story, but it's fun and charming, full of amusing characters and a light-hearted sense of humor even when bad stuff is happening. And that's part of what's made Shining Force so popular: the game, pure and simply, focuses on fun.
It utilizes a simple & intuitive cross-shaped menu system that's so well implemented it's been carried down virtually unchanged through just about every other Shining game made since. It offers fun without frustration. The cast of colorful villains (like the dark witch Mikaela and the mysterious knight Kain) make for great adversaries, and the game is full of memorable battles. Its accessibility is what's made it so enduring -- for many, it was the first SRPG they'd ever played and it's a great introduction to the genre even now.
Shining Force offers a huge roster of characters. Each of them has a fixed class, but when you level the character up enough, they can promote to an even better cast. The game established familiar classes that have gone on to see use throughout the series: centaur knights, elven archers, dwarven warriors, raging werewolves, sword-wielding birdman... and it even offered more unique, odder allies like Adam the Robot and Domingo, the freeze-casting flying jellyfish-thing.
The subtitle of Shining Force was "Legacy of Great Intention." It's talking about the events in the game, of course, but now, 14 years later, we can look back and see something special in that name: Shining Force itself really did leave a great legacy.
Hopefully its Virtual Console release will give folks who never played it a chance to experience a classic, or people who loved it when they were younger an opportunity to revisit a great game.
Shining Force may not have been the first Shining game (that honor goes to the first-person dungeon crawl Shining in the Darkness), but it was the most influential in the series -- it was the one that set down the SRPG gameplay that the series is best remembered for, and which Shining Force II, Shining Force CD, and Shining Force III followed.
The series is modeled after Fire Emblem: for one, instead of generic characters to be min/maxed by the player, your army is strictly made up of unique, story-based characters; for another, it uses similar battle cutscenes when two units engage one another. Shining Force, however, is much easier than Fire Emblem, as it features no permadeath and no item breaks.
The real difference, and the thing that makes Shining Force so notable in the SRPG field, is how well the game melds SRPG battles (moving a large number of units across a gridded battlefield) with traditional RPG conventions: the game places a much heavier emphasis on leveling up your characters (you can retreat from and return to story battles to gain more exp); there's more focus on story and more RPG-like cutscenes; you can wander around a world map and (and here's the cool part) large towns, talking to NPCs and buying stuff in shops.
The game begins when the King of Guardiana notes suspicious activity by rival kingdom Runefaust near the Gate of the Ancients. He wants to investigate, but without raising the fears of the populace, so he sends a team of young, untested warriors to find out what's going on. After defeating the Runefaust soldiers there, though, they return to find Guardiana overun and destroyed by an invasion by the full Runefaust Army. The king and the leader of the knights are both killed, and it's up to Max and his force to travel north to confront Runefaust and stop them from using the power of the Ancients.
Simple enough story, but it's fun and charming, full of amusing characters and a light-hearted sense of humor even when bad stuff is happening. And that's part of what's made Shining Force so popular: the game, pure and simply, focuses on fun.
It utilizes a simple & intuitive cross-shaped menu system that's so well implemented it's been carried down virtually unchanged through just about every other Shining game made since. It offers fun without frustration. The cast of colorful villains (like the dark witch Mikaela and the mysterious knight Kain) make for great adversaries, and the game is full of memorable battles. Its accessibility is what's made it so enduring -- for many, it was the first SRPG they'd ever played and it's a great introduction to the genre even now.
Shining Force offers a huge roster of characters. Each of them has a fixed class, but when you level the character up enough, they can promote to an even better cast. The game established familiar classes that have gone on to see use throughout the series: centaur knights, elven archers, dwarven warriors, raging werewolves, sword-wielding birdman... and it even offered more unique, odder allies like Adam the Robot and Domingo, the freeze-casting flying jellyfish-thing.
The subtitle of Shining Force was "Legacy of Great Intention." It's talking about the events in the game, of course, but now, 14 years later, we can look back and see something special in that name: Shining Force itself really did leave a great legacy.
Hopefully its Virtual Console release will give folks who never played it a chance to experience a classic, or people who loved it when they were younger an opportunity to revisit a great game.
