Review: Shining Soul (GBA)

Before Sega started imitating Nintendo by tarting up old 16-bit games and re-releasing them on the GBA, they gave us Shining Soul, an entirely new game and take on the Shining series. Set in the world created in Shining Force, it is not entirely apparent where Shining Soul sits in the timeline of Shining games, but the more eagle-eyed amongst you will notice several familiar characters dotted around Prontis (the town from which your adventures begin).

Taking on the role of a warrior, archer, wizard or dragonute it's up to the player to strike forth from Prontis and defeat all the enemies in 8 separate areas and hopefully, by the end of it all, save the land of Rune and defeat the Dark Dragon (sound familiar?). Each area is split up into several levels and each of these must be cleared of enemies, following which, it's back to Prontis to re-equip as required and then head out to the next area. Areas can be selected from a rudimentary map screen, with a new one appearing when the previous one is completed. Viewed from an isometric perspective, Shining Soul is an uneasy cross between an action RPG (think Zelda) and a more traditional turn based RPG (think Shining Force).

Damage is dealt in hit points, and experience can be earned by defeating enemies. When your character levels up, you receive points with which to upgrade stats, and teach your character skills. The menu interface is well designed and easy to navigate and good use is made of the L and R shoulder buttons for equipping weapons and items. However, if an action RPG is to work, it obviously needs the action to be properly implemented and this is where Shining Soul really falls down. Combat involves little more than pressing the A button. A lot. All the enemies (with the exception of the few that can shoot) will charge straight for you. Wait for them to get close enough, then start hitting A; if the enemy gets too close, back off a little and then hammer A again as they close in, until they are defeated. Not only is this ridiculously easy, it is also incredibly dull and repetitive after the first few levels have been cleared. There's no depth or subtlety to the combat at all.

Combat gets even easier still if you play as a character that has ranged attacks, as you don't have to wait for the enemy to come in close before you can start attacking. The collision detection is also suspect with apparently accurate attacks missing and the archer's arrows actually swerving towards their target. The pace of the game is also very slow, with your character sauntering along as if enjoying a stroll in the park rather than having the world to save. As if the repetitive nature of the gameplay is not enough of a problem, Shining Soul is full of other irritations and badly thought out design. Where to begin? You are not told the objective of your mission, be it killing a certain number of enemies, or killing one specific enemy; there is no map, so you can find yourself aimlessly wandering around the levels that all look the same and have no distinguishing features, trying to find the exit; there are woefully few different enemy types; the background scenery can be intrusive and obstruct your view of the action; when you pause the game and enter any of the sub-menus you can still be attacked and killed by the enemy.

Graphically, Shining Soul does a passable job. The backgrounds look fairly good and the characters are all big and colourful; however, there is not much going on in the way of detail and the animations are limited to no more that a couple of frames for each character and enemy. The background music is dire and repeated endlessly and the sound effects are little more than a collection of random beeps and whistles. Shining Soul's worst offence is almost unforgivable for a portable game. Wherever you save the game in a stage, when you restart the game at a later time you have to begin the entire stage again from the very beginning. Given that at each stage consists of as many as 10 levels and can take at least 30 minutes to an hour to play through, this is hardly conducive to the inherent stop/start nature of portable gaming.

A multiplayer mode for up to 4 players is provided, but there are two problems with this: firstly, whilst having multiple players is an entertaining distraction, it cannot disguise the tedium of the gameplay; secondly, it's highly unlikely that you will ever meet anyone else who has actually purchased this game. Beyond completion, there's very little to come back to Shining Soul for. Other than Prontis, there are no towns to explore and no more than a dozen supporting characters all of which get tired quickly. The only reward for finishing the game is the (not very) "advanced mode".

Whilst Shining Soul is a brave attempt a bringing something new to the RPG genre, it fails on too many levels. Shining Soul is too shallow to appeal to the turn-based RPG crowd and the combat is too tedious to appeal to action RPG fans, or indeed anyone not wanting to inflict a repetitive strain injury upon themselves. Steer clear of this repetitive, badly plotted and ultimately short-lived title.

Rating: 4 / 10

Words by Andy Lucas