Shining Force

Shining Force is easily one of my favourite RPG's. It's a turn based RPG originally released on the Sega Megadrive. I remember paying £59.99 for it's sequel that was nearly a month's wages for a Saturday worker. Sega have used the Megadrive back catalogue very lazily in my opinion by just coping and pasting the games to release on any gaming system they can find, instead of updating the release's.

Back to Shining Force on the Ipod Touch, the controls work fine apart from occasionally obscuring your movement. The continue function seemed broken on my 2nd gen but with the 4th gen & multi-tasking it works perfectly. So if you are using a non multi-tasking machine make sure you use the in game save option.

For those of you that have not played this gem on many of the re-releases then you have the usual rpg story in that you the hero must save the world from total destruction (Yawn!). You can then control a team of up to 12 characters to battle the evil forces in a turn based style. The characters vary from your usual Warrior class to healers, magic types & even a werewolf?? Yep and some more strange creatures that join you along the way. Some are hidden & are difficult to find so I would say find a guide to help you get the characters. They can basically only perform a few function like Attack, Magic, Use an Item or Defend. You then get experience points from these actions & eventually level up to increase your stats. It's simple but then again this is a 17 year old RPG & back in 1993 JAP RPG's needed to be simple to appeal to western audiences apparently?

You can visit towns & shops to upgrade weapons/armour. Talk to various residents & a few treasure chests to open. When fighting you have the option to warp your team back to the nearest town if you are getting beat or you just what to grind the maps to get stronger. Normal usual 90's RPG but easily one of the best turn based RPG's I have played.

I just wished Sega would put in a bit of effort on re-released games, spruce up the graphics, throw in a few more characters. Anyhow looking forward to Shining Force 2 next please Sega.

Whilst I am also on my wish list can you not use the Shining name is crap adventure rpg's. Yes I'm looking at you Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force Neo & all you other lame action rpg attempts. Stick to the tried and much liked formula of turn based. Also a re-release of Shining Force 3 (All 3 Parts) on XBLA/PSN or Disc based would be nice please.