Shining Force -Sega Genesis- 9

November 29, 2022

I finally ran through the original Shining Force for Sega Genesis! Admittedly, I beat it on the Genesis Mini instead of the authentic cart I bought a few months ago. But for a methodically paced game like this, save states do not matter much, so it still counts in my book. Anyway, this game was excellent. I’ve been meaning to play it for over 20 years since I beat SF2. The addicting battle system that encourages dying and grinding all started here. I much prefer this style to the Fire Emblem games that have permanent death. The Shining Force series is way less stress. The story here was good, too, and I could see similarities between this and SF3 (which I completed last year). Darksol takes over Runefaust to awaken the Dark Dragon, and it’s up to you and your team to stop him. This theme of stopping a bad guy from awakening a demon was developed much more in the SF3 scenario saga, but it was very cool to see its beginnings here. Anyway, I rate the original Shining Force at least a 9. (SF2 would get a 9.5 from what I remember playing twenty years ago, and the SF3 scenario saga definitely gets a 10.) I’m so happy to have finally played through this classic and take it off my backlog.