The Legacy of Great
Intention? Now that sounds like a
cautionary tale, oddest game subtitle ever contender, anyone?
I find iPhone conversions of vintage games really hard to
steer with my fat thumb fumbling against the glass of the onscreen substitute
d-pad, it’s like my little hero is coming back from the tavern drunk as he
staggers off to save the kingdom. Still, it doesn’t matter too much if he takes
a few attempts to get through a door since he is just wandering around the
villages and castles in-between battles; and those are turn-based so the bad
guys will wait patiently for him to sober up enough to lamp them one.
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| "Thanks, but no thanks, 'your holiness'; as an atheist I shan’t be resurrecting by fallen comrades.” |
You start off with a ramshackle band of followers, and you
can make do with them; but the special characters that join your party along
the journey are way, way better: Your standard warrior replaced with a mystical
dragon, your steadfast dwarf by a monster in a steam-powered robo-suit, and
your elfin archer by a centaur with a bazooka.
Now, a steam-powered robo-suit, that I can get behind; but
towards the end of the game there are full-on robots. Electric-powered robots! They
jar with the quasi-medieval fantasy setting; but at least this differentiates Shining Force from all the other
quasi-medieval fantasy settings, so prevalent in RPGs of this ilk. It is like
this game is set in the bridge that leads from medieval zone to future zone in The Crystal Maze.
Anyway, your poor team; earnest, willing, and replaceable as
you come across über-powered new recruits. I suppose you could stick with your
original crew, like a sentimental masochist, certainly if you appreciate a
challenge you should; as soon as Werewolf, Ninja and
Priest-who-heals-everybody-at-once join, your team of ringers will be
unstoppable. I can’t really comment; I played like a billionaire sheik ruining
the grass-roots ethos of the baddie team from Space Jam.
As per old-school RPG tradition there is no post-game; once
you see the credits you are done. You can play the last battle over and over if
you really want to max your guys, but you soon feel like you’re bullying poor
Dark Dragon. The Game Boy Advance remake (Resurrection
of the Dark Dragon) does start you back at the beginning with tougher
baddies, but at 99¢ on the app store for the Genesis port you couldn’t really
argue the GBA cart represents better value for money.
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| Yay 90s box art! Yay mini-skirts for men! |
The script is pretty funny, and some of the locations are quite
memorable; there is a dramatic battle on a rope bridge, and a town of caravans that
have driven off by the time you finish your battle.
Random encounter haters take heart: the game is split into 30
set battles and does a better job than most of its genre descendants at linking
village exploration to battle-time; using the same engine, and even the same
locations – enemy encounter in a village? Gasp! I love Disgaea, but it’s easy to be abstract; teleporting from one
floating grid to the next. Shining Force
has a good sense of continuity to the adventure, without juddering from map
screen, to battle screen, to cut scene.
I wish the game was really bad, then I could end the review:
‘The road to hell is paved with Great Intentions’. But Shining Force is good;
if you are in the mood for an early 16-bit RPG then this is a cute one and it
is noteworthy in history as one of the progenitors of the tactical RPG scene,
yet it has aged well. You could even say... the road to heaven is paved with great intentions. I wouldn’t say that, because
it’s not as good as Fire Emblem, but
you could say that.
7/10
The road to seven
is paved with great intentions. I’ll stop now.
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| Spoiler warning! |
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