I returned to Shining Force!

I have mixed feelings!

I played Shining Force on the Sega Genesis an inconceivable amount of time ago. I got mad that my MC got ganged up on and died, causing me to restart a battle that lasted almost an hour. But since my recent burn out has let me go all loosey-goosey with this blog, I wanted to do something odd. What really inspired this was a recent Majuular video essay about the Sega Saturn RPGs. He found many of them weird, but one of them was Shining Force III. I thought it looked neat, and Maj praised it for a number of reasons. It made me want to play it, but I've only experienced the Genesis version, which I didn't like. But what if I tried again?

And so I did. But this time, I gave a slightly more updated port a try. The Gameboy Advanced version exists, and the synopsis of it across the internet gave me good vibes with it. There's one thing, in particular, that I dug, but it wasn't my issue with the Genesis one. But we'll get to that soon...

Let's start with the good parts:
The gameplay is balanced. I got frustrated a few times, but rarely did I want to quit again. And once I had my first KO, even that frustration went away. Outside of Mae's terrible accuracy, at least. I even found it fun and went into overtime nearly every night.

Sadly, I think that's it. The graphics do look nice enough, but they're kinda generic. The Genesis version has more charm and aesthetics, and the GBA world textures feel so samey. Every town looked like they were neighbors.

Musically, I hated it. So many songs get reused, and I grew angry and annoyed by them. The town theme, especially. For the first time in four years, I'm giving my first negative score in the standouts category because that awful, repetitive, quick melody haunts me.

And the plot is shockingly barebones. Even with the new GBA feature of giving the thirty three member cast a personality, backstory, or world building, they didn't help out much. Most are still boring, and, because the cast is so giant, you can't experience everyone's story. And "unlocking" new dialogue triggers is a total unknown. I used most of the cast for the entire game, but I didn't hear the end of their stories. What happened to Gort's Land Whale tornado? My displeasure aside, it's still so much better than the original game, where everyone was a blank slate.
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Plot: unrewarding. With simple characters and a story that takes too long to go anywhere, the decent enough villains don't matter to me. 5/10
Gameplay: too basic. I found it fun and addictive, but there's nothing else to do besides repetitive battles. 4/10
Sound: hate. I don't want to hear the town theme ever again. 2/10
Art: generic. The Genesis was prettier. That aside, I have nothing too negative to say. 8/10
Charm: fine. The new character interactions expand the world more than anything else. But the lack of NPCs and the game length kills any cute or exploration bonus. Somehow, I see why people love this game, though. 5/10
The only negative is you can't grind melee characters late game. I wanted to explore some of the other horse boys and bird people halfway through the game, but they only did one damage and died to the enemy counter. -2

So, Shining Force gets a painfully disappointing 24/50. The GBA port adds three characters, only one of whom is relevant, but I don't know if that (and the interactions) make it better than the Genesis. Shining Force should be played only for the gameplay, I think, so maybe stick to the OG.

Do I still want to experience the rest of this franchise? I was having a lot of fun early on, but man did it crumble fast...