Shining Force Neo -- Shining Force Gauntlet.

The Shining series has a long and quite varied history. It starts with Shining in the Darkness on the SEGA Genesis. That game was a first person view dungeon crawler with traditional turn based RPG combat. The next game in the series marked the first of many overhauls the series would see. Shining Force: The Legacy of Great Intention on the Genesis would turn out to be a turn based strategy RPG. The strategy RPG genre would remain for the next entry, but the game moved to the Game Gear with Shining Force Gaiden. Back to the Genesis for Shining Force II. And once again back to the Game Gear with Shining Force II: The Sword of Hajya. There was a third Game Gear game that would stay in Japan called Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict. Then on to the SEGA CD with Shining Force CD which contained graphically and musically updated versions of Shining Force Gaiden and Shining Force II: The Sword of Hajya, as well as Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict hidden away on the disc that took the completed save files from the first two games to unlock. The series moved on to the Saturn in the form of Shining Wisdom, an action RPG. The next Saturn entry saw a return to the series original form with Shining the Holy Ark. It was once again a first person view dungeon crawler and was a loose sequel to Shining in the Darkness as well as being connected to the next Saturn entry in the series. That entry was Shining Force III. Shining Force III was a return to the turn based strategy of the Shining Force games on the Genesis, Game Gear, and SEGA CD. Only this time they were in 3D instead of 2D. Shining Force III was so massive that it spawned three games in and of itself. The game was released in three scenarios. The US only saw scenario one as Shining Force III. Japan saw scenario two and three as well as Shining Force III Premium Disc as a bonus for those who purchased all three. Shining Force III scenario one was an exceptional game and not seeing scenario two and three remains easily the greatest Holy Grail type situation in the whole of gaming, in my opinion. The series moved on again with Shining Soul on the Game Boy Advance. This time turning the game into a Phantasy Star Online style dungeon hack and slash. The GBA saw the release of another entry with Shining Soul II. The GBA got yet another entry with the remake of the original Genesis Shining Force: The Legacy of Great Intention with Shining Force: The Resurrection of the Dark Dragon. It featured new characters and battles. The series moved on to the PlayStation 2 in the form of Shining Tears. Shining Tears took the basic combat of Shining Soul and expanded it out to large scale battles. Took it out of the dungeons and put it on the battlefields. The PlayStation 2 also got Shining Force Neo. Which as the name implies is a new take on the Shining Force part of the series. New is right. Before I get into Shining Force Neo, I'm going to mention the games that aren't directly apart of the Shining series but are in fact connected in some form or another. Going back to the Genesis you have Landstalker, which was an isometric view action RPG. The game takes place on an island off the coast of the continent on which Shining in the Darkness takes place. There is also Dark Savior on the Saturn. Another action RPG taking place within the same world as Landstalker.  Yet another action RPG named Climax Landers on the Dreamcast allows you to play as and interact with characters from Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force, Landstalker, and Dark Savior. After Shining Force Neo, the series will return to the PlayStation 2 with Shining Wind, the sequel to Shining Tears. So that brings us back to Shining Force Neo. What did they do to it this time? They turned it into Gauntlet. Seriously. Shining Force Neo is what would happen if you made an RPG out of Gauntlet. You have a 3D based isometric like view in which you have no control over the camera. You can't rotate or pan or anything. This actually works very well because whatever gets in your way is able to vanish. You can see through trees or rooftops or whatever it might be. Your view is never blocked. Unlike the promise of this same device in Super Mario Sunshine, it actually works here. You progress through the game in the standard RPG fashion of towns, overworld, and dungeons. The overworld and the dungeons are true mazes. You have to find your way by going back and forth and around. You'll never get anywhere in a straight line. The overworld and dungeons are full of enemies to fight with the game's realtime hack and slash and magic engine. And I mean a whole lot of enemies. Just like in Gauntlet, waves of them. Wave after wave. In the game the enemy has the power to create energy spheres that spawn enemies into the world. To stop the flow of the enemies, you need to destroy the spheres. The spheres can't be destroyed while they're being reinforced by the enemies they spawn.They feed off the enemies and heal. You need to kill enough of the enemies to be able to take out the spheres which in turn stop the enemies. The back of the box boasts that you'll be fighting more than ninety enemies on screen at a time and they aren't kidding. You really can find yourself flooded by enemies as in Gauntlet. So much so that I've often lost sight of my own character and all I can see is a mass of enemies and their lifebars as I swipe through them with my big bastard of a sword. It really is a Gauntlet RPG. You have the pure Gauntlet lost in a maze facing hundreds of enemies at once thing mixed in with a full-fledged character driven RPG story complete with towns and items and the like. To connect the Force aspect of the title to the previous games, SEGA has included NPCs that fight alongside you. You're able to build up a Force. Just as in the original strategy RPGs, you're able to go to your headquarters and substitute characters in and out of your active Force. The game controls simply enough. You control the character with the left analog stick. The circle button is your attack. The triangle button allows you to use your currently equipped weapon skill or spell. The square button allows you to use your currently equipped item. The X button allows you to interact with the in-game objects like doors and chests. The D-pad allows you to select your current equipment. Pressing up or down on the D-pad cycles through your weapon skills or spells. Pressing left or right on the D-pad cycles through your items.  Pressing L1 will enlarge the radar display allowing you to see where you've been and where you need to go as the system draws in where you've been on the fly. Pressing R1 will hold your player to his current position allowing you to rotate him so you can fire an arrow or spell in a specific direction. Pressing L2 will bring up the full map screen allowing you to scroll it and see locations and names and the like. Pressing R2 will hold the NPCs to their current locations allowing you to scout ahead with less risk of initiating combat. The game allows for you to play it just like Gauntlet's three class types. You can be a warrior, an archer, or a mage. In the game all Forces wear Force Frames. You level up your character, but you also level up your Force Frame.  It's in the Force Frame that your real power comes. The enemies drop Force Crystals which are traded in for upgrades to the Force Frames. The enemies also occasionally drop Force Arts. The Force Arts are what you upgrade. They range from more HP, to more attack power, to higher MP, higher attack speed, to specific magic resistance to fire and ice and lightning, to far more specific things like dealing greater damage to lizards or great damage to undead. There are a ton of different Force Arts. It's in choosing what to upgrade that you shape your character. If you want to be a mage, you're going to trade Force Crystals in for stronger fire magic and stronger ice magic while also adding to greater MP and faster MP regeneration as well as some better magic resistance for good measure. A warrior is going to increase attack power and speed and strength and the like. It's a very cool system of building your character. On top of this they allow you to find a bunch of drops that you can pull out special skills or destroy them by converting them to Force Crystals. They even offer Phantasy Star Online like drops that you have to identify. You can also upgrade weapons and armor to make them stronger with money. There is a lot going on in Shining Force Neo, and it's not just what's on screen. The combat is pure hack and slash fun. There is a decent level of strategy in having to decide on what creature types are more of a threat and how to deal with the in the best possible way. The computer controlled characters who accompany you are actually much smarter than average. They tend to stay alive and actually will save your ass from time to time. I have put in roughly thirteen hours into Shining Force Neo and I'm finding it quite enjoyable. Let's see if it stays that way.