In the dungeon crawler titles of the series (Shining in the Darkness and Shining the Holy Ark), the player takes control of an adventuring party. Battles work very similarly to those of Dragon Quest, Mother, Shin Megami Tensei, and the fellow Sega RPG series Phantasy Star, in that they are first person and the player is placed in a position where the hero and team mates would be. Shining in the Darkness is the first game in the Shining series, and is a very simple labyrinth exploration game, with a simplified non explorable town and world map, where choices are made through a cursor system. Shining the Holy Ark was released immediately prior to Shining Force III, and while it is also a dungeon crawler, it features a far more expanded gameplay world over the first title.
On 3 December 2009,[1]Shining Force Cross was released as an arcade game for Sega's RingEdgesystem board. It is a multiplayer role-playing game with support for up to eight players, both online and offline.[2] Within one month, nearly 2,400 Shining Force Cross machines had been sold to arcade operators by December 31, 2009.[3] A sequel has been released for the RingEdge arcade system in 2012, Shining Force Cross Illusion.[2]
Each game in the series has a standalone story, meaning that it is not required to play its predecessors to better understand its storyline. Nevertheless, most installments of the series prior to Shining Soul I often reference each other or have characters carried over. For example, in Shining Wisdom, the elf-cleric Sarah and elf-mage Kazin from Shining Force II make an important appearance. Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict and Shining Force II are two of the most related games, having the largest number of characters and locations in common.
From Shining Soul I onward, installments of the series tend to have less significant connections. For instance, in Shining Tears a character mentions the Klantol Kingdom (the setting for Shining Soul II) and tells its geographic location, but there is no interaction with any of the characters or plot events of Shining Soul II. However, Shining Wind and Shining Tears are some of the most closely connected pair of games in the series, since the former is a direct sequel to the latter and features return appearances by nearly all of the major characters.
Hiroyuki Takahashi's brother, Shugo Takahashi, founded Camelot Software Planning as an independent studio in April 1994 in order to develop games for Sony's PlayStation, but Camelot would also provide development support to Sonic for Shining Wisdom, Shining the Holy Ark, and Shining Force III.[6][7] By 1998, Sonic had ceased operations, and Sega's Shining brand would not be used for any new games until 2002.
Reboot by Sega
After Sega quit the hardware market, it was decided to reboot the Shining franchise. In charge of the so called "Shining Project" was Sega employee Tadashi Takezaki who joined marketing in 1993 and in 2004 was not only in charge of the Shining series, but also the Sakura Wars franchise and the official Japanese Sega website. According to Takezaki, when you think of Sega RPG's, you think of Phantasy Star and Shining. While Phantasy Star never strictly had a V entry, it was rebooted in the form of Phantasy Star Online. The Shining series never had an entry on the Dreamcast, due to various developers being busy with other projects and it being thought that it would be better to launch a new RPG instead, among other reasons. However, looking at the Japanese video game market, RPG's have the largest marketshare, so Sega decided to go ahead and restart the franchise, with a long-term plan, which included providing one game a year. This was new for Sega, people across different departments came together in 2001 to form what was called the "Shining Committee". The Committee included Takezaki himself, but also Youichi Shimosato who produced Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon and Shining Force Neo, and also Tsuyoshi Sawada who produced Shining Tears. While the "Force" games were meant to harken back to the earlier titles, Tears was made from a completely blank slate for a modern audience, and looked at the Shining series from a new angle, much like Phantasy Star Online did.[8][9]
This was the first game developed by Grasshopper Manufacture (all previous ones were developed by Camelot Software); all games from this point onward are not part of the same continuity as the pre-Soul games.
Enhanced port of Shining Resonance; unlike the original PlayStation 3 release, this version was available worldwide. First game in the series for an Xbox console.
Enhanced remake that contains Shining Force I, II, and Shining Force CD that would be developed by HIVE with collaboration by Vespa. The game has been cancelled due to 90% of layoffs from Vespa inc., numerous of delays, and low funding for the game.[14]
Reception
The Shining Force installments of the series were the first tactical role-playing games to have significant success in the U.S.[15]
In 1996, Next Generation listed the Genesis and Sega CD entries of the series (but not Shining Wisdom or any of the Game Gear installments) collectively as number 77 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time". They lauded the series for replacing the then-standard generic RPG encounters with story-based battles, using an exciting character class system, and having brilliant pacing that keeps the games from ever dragging.[16]
