Weight has nothing to do with it.

 As mentioned in the previous posts, I'm on a bit of a retro kick. By a bit, I mean that I'm gorging myself in it these days to make sure that I've significantly played some games I may want to bash in the future. Today's adventure was on the Sega CD with a title you may have heard of: Shining Force CD. I couldn't actually play it on the Sega CD itself because getting myself prepped to see where in the complete storyline the game took place gave me an immediate finger.

 Apparently, in order to fully experience the game, you need one of those Sega CD Backup RAM carts which go for about $60-80, and I wasn't about to shell out the cash to play it and Road Rash. I may be wrong about this, and if I read it all right there's a workaround for Shining Force CD, but those two games apparently use up a little too much system-save RAM and may not actually save at a certain point because of it. Instead of testing the workaround of deleting save games before you start a Book (in a way, there's 4 games on one disc) but after completing an earlier Book without resetting, I said "screw it" and went for the trusted and always awesome Kega Fusion emulator.

 To set the stage, Shining Force CD is one of the agreed "gems" on the Sega CD, and fans of the series and system constantly hope for it to be released again, whether it be on the DS or as a Virtual Console download (I just can't see this game making it to XBLA or PSN, sorry). The Fire Emblem inspired tactical RPG works exactly the same as Nintendo's offering with a few minor changes in how the system works. Promotions can be given out at the users discretion rather than automatically achieved at a certain level, weapon types are already predetermined for each character and cannot be chosen between, and one character's death will NOT have you throwing your controller and angrily mashing the reset button.

 Seeing as how America didn't get the Fire Emblem series, or even a character from it, until over a decade after its release, Shining Force on the Genesis was the series that most Westerners grew up loving. Yet, it's a straight up clone of everything Nintendo did. The major differences are, of course, in the aesthetics. Sticking with the 16-bit era, a player would find that the Sega offering had that cheap arcade style crossed with a little bit of anime from the time with a music track filled with that Genesis synth-sound. Nintendo would of course stick with its SNES music style that's prevalent in Mario, Zelda, and Metroid on the system with tighter graphics. That's about it.

 Playing Shining Force CD was actually fun for a while. The game doesn't bog you down with a zillion choices and the controls are easily memorized for those who just wanted to get on with playing the game rather than to sift through menu's and waste a lot of time. In fact, battle preparations never took me but 5 minutes at the most in between fights. The entirety of the game is based around the simplicity of things, which may have something to do with the game being a port of two gaiden Shining Force titles on the Game Gear. If you love the style of the game and absolutely hate the verboseness of Fire Emblem, then you'll be pleased to know that the "talk" button in your camp just gives you a sentence rather than a drawn out speech expressing how they feel after every single fight you get into...

 ...which leads right into the game's failures. Unlike Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Battle, or almost any TRPG out there, Shining Force CD is pretty much devoid of any depth whatsoever. There is no story. The game has a few plot-twists that are so lamely executed that they can hardly be considered twists at all. The game is split into four Books, with the first two being the Game Gear games and the second two being original to the Sega CD, and the final "twist" of the first Book was so bad that it stopped me from even wanting to pick up the second game. In order to play the final two Books, I have to beat the second Book. What I should have done was skipped to the second, but I'm a completist and I didn't think it would be that bad.

 Now, if this were on the Genesis like the first two Shining Force games or on its original Game Gear hardware, I wouldn't hate it nearly as much. Yet, they were dealing with the Sega CD, and apart from the elaborate three musical scores and two voiceovers beginning and ending Book 1, there was nothing done to this game to give it any extra oomph.

 Though it's not necessarily the game's fault, the system in place is too easy. If you fail a mission or choose to leave it, you can simply restart the mission while keeping all of your gold, items, and experience gained from the original battle. This means that every battle has a purpose (no random or "travel" battles). Pair that with the lack of perma-death and you have yourself an easy-mode game immediately. I found myself loaded with cash and easily 25% more leveled than I'm sure I was supposed to be because I was pretty sure the infamous "reality check" battle would come to remind me how weak I was, but it never came. I ended the game with 8 bona-fida superheroes, and the final bosses were barely denting me. As I said, it's not so much the game's fault, because it made the game a lot less annoying than Fire Emblem. If a character died, I could at least finish the battle at hand.

 A few tips before I conclude:

 - For those wondering when you should promote characters, don't promote them immediately, but don't wait until level 20 regardless of what FAQ you read. Supposedly, the later Books are a little tougher, but 14-16 is fine. I promoted at 17 and 18 only to find that I turned into an army of marching overkill.

 - Stats are randomly assigned as far as I can tell, so if you see that a unit of a particular type isn't matching up well with a similar unit and you're running out of room, just leave him behind and don't think twice. Don't even bother wasting your time leveling up someone who's already in the dust.

 - If your original hero, archer, warrior, and knight get beefy early in the game, then you're pretty much invincible for the rest of Book 1.

 - If you want something, buy it. You'll rarely run out of money. The most expensive item in the game still leaves you with tons of leftover money if you only did one mission replay, and while I never used it, I pretty much gather that if I did, the final battles would have been a joke.

 People have told me to go play Shining Force, and one day I just might. I may even continue to play this game, because for all I can say about it, it's addictive. There's zero depth in Book 1 anyway, and I imagine that it's not going to get any more complicated. If you like simple TRPGs, this can waste hours of your free time and it won't be such a bad thing. I personally just hate the fact that this game was so highly recommended that I dove into it, and the lack of depth and story just made me wonder if I should even bother with the rest of the series. I'm not looking forward to playing through Books 2 and 3 just to unlock Book 4 for the sole privilege of determining whether it gets any better, so I won't. It does make me wonder if the other games have anything more to offer, so I'm not writing this series off yet. Should anyone wish to explain to me how Shining Force CD does get better if I were to persist, then feel free to leave me an e-mail or comment explaining why I shouldn't write this title off.

 For its time, this may have been good, but there's little holding this game up to time. It's a time waster, and so far, it's not what I expected one of the "few Sega CD classics" to be. Digg It Stumble it ! Reddit