Shining Force III Scenario 1 Review (No Spoilers) on the Sega Saturn

Yesterday night, I finished Shining Force III on the US Sega Saturn. I played a patched version of the North American release by The Shining Force III Translation Project. Apparently, Sega changed the game knowing that they wouldn't release the other two scenarios. This patched version, apparently, undoes those changes.

I really dig the PS1/Saturn/N64 era of games. It's when hardware-accelerated 3D became mainstream, and sprite-based graphics really started to look gorgeous. Shining Force III, like many games of its time, combined 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds to great effect. You kept the aesthetic appeal and detail of 2D sprites with the immersive effect of rotatable 3D backgrounds. The credits of the game credit Camelot and Sonic Co. Ltd. for developing the game. Camelot began using prerendered sprites around that time (think Donkey Kong Country). A more well-known example - Golden Sun on Game Boy Advance, used the same method we saw in SFIII. It looks good, especially on 3D backgrounds.

This was one of the initial reasons I was interested in playing this game. I loved the way Final Fantasy Tactics looked on PS1, and I just wanted to play more games that looked like it. Admittedly, FFT's sprites are cleaner and sharper, but SFIII offers more sprites on-screen, which brings me to one of the pros of the game.

I never played much of the other Shining Force games, but one of the biggest features of SFIII is the ability to have a 12-person army. In FFT, you had a max of 5. On one hand, it's awesome to have so many characters to command, but it can also be daunting. Fortunately, the amount of complexity and customization is not at the level of FFT's. You only need to worry about one weapon, one accessory, and four item-slots per character; and no abilities/spells to customize - these are mostly automatically assigned, with the exception of piggybacked abilities on items.

Although in appearance, SFIII looks more like FFT; in gameplay, it plays more like Fire Emblem. There is a weapon-triangle system, much like in FE - the SAL System, I like to remember it by. Swords beat axes, axes beat lances, and lances beat swords; bows beat flying enemies. You move one by one in a turn-based fashion on a 3D rotatable grid-based map. There are different elevations and areas like forests that grant the user extra defensive bonuses. The biggest difference between this and FE is that during an attack, only one of the two combatants can attack, although random counters are possible.

Tactical positioning and movement are very important in this game. If you run off into the enemy with your fastest characters first without backup nearby, you will probably die, although death is not as punishing as in FE; there is no permadeath. You can revive all characters at the church, and if your main character dies, you will respawn at the church, with all your EXP intact. The only downside to dying is that your relationships between characters will decrease.

Like in FE, you can build relationships in battle. By attacking the same enemy, healing a friend, or standing next to each other, your bond becomes stronger, and you gain special bonuses like increased chance to crit, etc. Although there is no permadeath in SFIII, I actually tried to keep my characters alive, and even reset the game if one died. You can save during any one of your turns in battle, as well as in churches, and at the beginning of chapters. You can also warp back to the last church you saved at, during battle, so you don't have to wait to die to respawn. Utilizing this, you can grind infinitely.

SFIII is a challenging game, but all of these things combined make it approachable, beatable, and enjoyable. You can make the game as hard or as easy as you want it to be, and that's one of the best things about the game.

The story is filled with proper nouns and you will be lost, but eventually you'll kind of understand what's going on. I wouldn't say it's on the level of FFT's story, but the pacing of the game is very good. Usually you fight a battle, get some story, explore a town, and the cycle repeats.

So for all the great things this game does, it does get repetitive, and the long, drawn-out battles do drain your mental energy. You won't want to marathon this game by any stretch of the imagination. Take it little by little, one day at a time, and you will have experienced, a well-crafted strategy-RPG.