Shining Soul: Greatness averted

Until not so long ago, one of my biggest gaming regrets was to have missed out on the Gameboy Advance era entirely. This glaring omission in my gaming career can be blamed both on the fact that the system was poorly advertised in Europe and sold mostly as a kiddie console and on the fact that I was pouring all my gaming hours into emulation at that time, revisiting 16-bit era classics with a fervour matched only by my lack of interest in new gaming consoles. When I finally became aware of the GBA’s existence, the system was not produced anymore and the DS was soaring, so I chose to focus on the latter. However, I could never get rid of the saddening thought that I had let potentially great games pass me by while I was soaked into replaying games that I already knew like the back of my hand; and a couple of years later, aided by internet, I decided to revisit history and mend my oversight by purchasing a GBA, along with all the games that could possibly interest me. This move certainly helped me get rid of my regret of not having played the system in its heyday—albeit not always in the expected way, as we’ll see in this post.

Indeed, we are now tackling one of these GBA games that passed me by in its time. Shining Soul, developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and released in 2002(jp) and 2003(na/eu), is part of the long-running Shining series. Created by Sega in 1991, the Shining series encompasses a variety of games borrowing liberally from different RPG subgenres, from first-person dungeon crawler to S-RPG. Shining Soul was actually supposed to be a reboot of the series; and while it may well be so on the narrative side, since Shining Soul introduces a new story arc, it is much harder to believe that this game had such grand ambitions as far as gameplay is concerned. Or it may have had such grand ambitions, but they failed to materialize properly. Shining Soul’s gameplay is average at best, patchy at worst, and as a whole shockingly rudimentary for a game that presented itself as a new departure. The worst part is that this gameplay, and the game as a whole, could have been much better with the right amount of care and gusto. There was some potential in Shining Soul, that much is undeniable; unfortunately, it was not exploited to the fullest, as we’ll see right now.  

Presentation at its barest

Indeed, Shining Soul is so dry and unpolished that it is quite hard to believe it was developed for the GBA. Graphics aside, it could definitely have passed for a NES game, and it is in many ways inferior to handheld games that are a good ten years older, such as Link’s Awakening or Final Fantasy Legend II. Either the developers didn’t know how to handle the GBA or they didn’t care about crafting a respectable game, for Shining Soul doesn’t shine in the slightest indeed.

The first example of dullness lies in the narrative, which is as bare and unexciting as it can be. A couple of lines in an exposition sequence, followed by a short dialogue with a bunch of unknown characters who order you to go slaughter the Dark Dragon and its five generals, and off to the dungeons you go! Add to this meagre introduction a couple of unclear lines spurt out by the bosses before they fight you, and you’ll have the whole narrative content of Shining Soul. Now, I repeated often enough that I prefer my RPG narrative to be on the light side, and Shining Soul makes no mystery of being a pure dungeon crawler, which automatically gives it a pass to dispense with a convoluted storyline; so this bare-bones story shouldn’t be an issue, right? Well, it would not be an issue, if not for two blatant flaws:

—The narrative doesn’t make the slightest attempt to create a connection between you and the game world: you don’t know how the people you interact with are, you don’t know if the village in which you rest is your home village or just some random place, and you don’t even know the name of the game world. The NPCs have absolutely nothing to say and actually don’t seem to know you—heck, even you do not know who you are supposed to be, for that matter. This is simply the most alienating and disconnected narrative I’ve ever seen in an RPG, and I am still baffled by the emptiness and vapidity of the whole thing. Even FFI was way better than this: at least, it had several villages, a roamable world map and more than five NPCs, all things painfully absent from Shining Soul.

—The very few dialogues present in the game give off the persistent feeling that Shining Soul is actually the sequel to something, with everybody talking like they know you from before and referring to past events like they are common knowledge. Given that the game is supposed to be a reboot, this is a very embarrassing failure. And since I am mentioning this, shouldn’t a reboot strive a little more to offer a decent new narrative departure to its series in the first place? That makes this narrative fiasco a double failure that is all but impossible to ignore. Heck, I am as lenient as a gamer can be when it comes to mediocre storytelling, but this is simply unacceptable, no matter how you look at it. 

The coarseness of Shining Soul doesn’t stop here, unfortunately, with the game’s visuals being just as crude as its storyline. Their overall quality is decent enough, mind you, and on par with most early GBA games; unfortunately, these satisfactory graphics are sapped by an atrocious lack of coherence. For one thing, the visualization is uneven, with the viewing angle changing between levels: some dungeons sport a top-down view while others sport an isometric view. This is quite bizarre, and goes against that implicit level design rule stipulating that similar gameplay phases should stick to the same type of visualization. But there is worse: scales also vary dramatically from one level to the next. Egual Dungeon is supposed to be a volcanic mountainous chain, yet features volcanos that are hardly higher than your sprite; on the other hand, Deol Waterway features docks and levees that dwarf your character and could easily accommodate hundreds of sprites. The result is jarring and utterly messy, and one could seriously wonder why such a design was adopted—or even if it was the result of a well thought-out decision. One could seriously doubt it: these dungeons clash so vividly with one another that they look like they’ve been handled by entirely different teams—and maybe that was actually the case, for all we know.

To dull the game even more, the equipment, inventory and forging management is absolutely pitiful. It is tedious, highly unpractical and completely unrewarding, and it is doubtful whether the developers even tried to make it good, let alone put any effort into designing the whole thing. Once again, I am usually very forgiving when it comes to poor inventory ergonomy and the like, especially with older games; but Shining Soul’s resource management system has no redeeming quality whatsoever, no matter how kindly you examine it. Here are my three main gripes with said system, the ones that had me rolling my eyes and grinding my teeth more than once:

—There are four classes to choose when you start a run, and each class can equip three exclusive weapons that cannot be used by other classes. However, once you start roaming the dungeons, you are bound to find all the weapons available in the game, regardless of whether or not you can actually equip them. This will lead to either having your inventory completely cluttered in a matter of minutes or being forced to leave a good chunk of the safes’ content and monster drops behind, which is anything but fulfilling. I wish the developers had programmed the game so that any item not usable by your chosen character would have been wiped off from the ensuing run, at least in the single player mode.

—This mishap actually also ruins the already pitiful forging system present in Shining Soul, making it all but useless. Here’s the gist of it: if you bring three fragments of any ore to some guy lounging in the village’s green, he will forge a powerful weapon for you. Good, right? Wrong. The problem is, you cannot choose what kind of weapon you want him to forge, which means that you only have a one-in-four chance to get a weapon usable by your character; and if you happen to have a favourite type of weapon out of the three available, then it’s only a one-in-twelve chance to get that precise type. This is more than just unpractical; this is downright idiotic, especially considering how rare ores are. I only found three in the course of my whole run, and—you guessed it—that amateur blacksmith crafted a weapon that I couldn’t use. Talk about a completely useless, pathetic excuse for a forging system.

—Last but not least is the miserable selection of equipment available in the village’s two shops. They hardly update their selection throughout the whole game, and it’s not exaggerated to say that you can find much better equipment lying around in dungeons. As a matter of fact, I did not buy a single piece of equipment from these pathetic traders during the course of my run because what they offered was inferior to my latest monster drops. As you’d expect, this makes any money you manage to collect virtually useless, which is just disheartening.

The deal-breaker

All these flaws I just mentioned are quite annoying, but Shining Soul still had a chance to redeem itself by treating us to a stellar fighting system. Bad presentation would have been all but forgotten if this game, which was branded from the get-go as an Action-RPG, had offered us some polished and intoxicating hacking-and-slashing. How hard could that be? Well, a lot more than you’d think, if Shining Soul’s actual wretched excuse for a fighting system is to be believed. It could have been the game’s saving grace, but it turns out to be the stone sinking it to the bottom instead. This foul fighting system has two horrendous flaws that ruin absolutely all the fun, exposed here in all their calamitous glory:

—The Missed Hits of Doom: All the time. With nearly all weapons. Sometimes affecting half of your hits, sometimes even more. Present from the first second of the game to the last, no matter how much you level up your dexterity stat. And trampling on your fun, ripping it apart. Seriously, I nearly ragequit a couple of times because it pissed me off to see half of my blows go down the drain. To add insult to injury, the sound effect for missed hits is a horrendous hollow wooden clunk; hearing it repeatedly was like pouring oil on fire, so much so that I actually played the whole game with the sound off. I abhor missed hits in A-RPGs, and this game is afflicted with the worst case of it I’ve ever seen. Compared to Shining Soul’s fighting system, Sword of Mana’s one is a pure gem.

—The Slowness of Abomination: I don’t know about you, but I expect a modicum of swiftness in my A-RPGs; some nervous, adrenaline-laden action that will contrast pleasantly with the slower fighting typical of Turn-based RPGs. And, well, I certainly did not get it in Shining Soul. It’s already bad enough that your character moves sluggishly, crawling around rather than running, but they also hit sluggishly, no matter how frantically you hammer the A-button. You may think this is due to hardware limitations, but it is not: occasional power-ups will let you deliver blows faster for a short period of time, as well as certain weapons, and the GBA has no problem handling these phases. Indeed, this is very much a design choice, and one that further ruins Shining Soul’s already miserable fighting system.

Compared to this terrible duo, the other flaws of the fighting system become hardly noticeable. Really, who cares about the fact that foes have no density whatsoever and that you can walk through them as though they were made of thin air, or about the fact that the hit box can be a bit wobbly, when moving around and delivering blows are such massive chores to begin with? Shining Soul’s physics are loathsome through and through, and there is not the slightest shred of enjoyment to be wringed out of this hot mess of a fighting system. Had I not found a slightly faster sword that let me hit faster in the fourth dungeon, I would probably have given up on my run before the end, despite my undying love for A-RPGs.

Epilogue

Indeed, and surprisingly enough given the scathing harangue I just wrote, I did finish the game. There are two reasons for that: the first is that I’m always reluctant to give up on a game that I physically imported, with shipping and toll fees involved—I want to recoup my investment somehow, especially when the involved game is an RPG. The second and most important reason is that I could actually see glimpses of goodness in the middle of all the mediocrity, glimpses that hinted at a vast potential that was sadly left unexploited.

Take the last four dungeons, for instance: they are truly gorgeous, with their isometric view and high level of details, and more pleasantly intricate than the first four ones. They could, and should, have been the template for all the dungeons in the game. Likewise, the fighting system was genuinely enjoyable the rare times I managed to get that speed power-up, and took a turn for the better after I found that faster sword at the halfway mark. Once again, the pleasant speed displayed at those times should not have been something exceptional, but rather the default speed of the fighting system. The truth is that Shining Soul could have been a great game: none of its flaws were due to technical limitations, and every single one of them could have been overcome with the right amount of care, dedication and hard work. Make the available weapons fit the chosen character. Put more items in the shops. Introduce a modicum of backstory. Choose a top-down or isometric view and a scale, and stick to them. Ramp up the walking speed, the hitting speed, and wipe these cursed missed hits from the face of that GBA cartridge. And so on. Indeed, Shining Soul could have been subtitled “Missed Opportunity”: for a game that was supposed to be a reboot, this stings hard. What a pity, and what a shame.

Still, I am actually glad to have played that game, not matter how disappointing it turned out to be. In fact, I am glad precisely because it was disappointing, in a twisted sort of way. This brings us back to the beginning of that post and to my persistent regret of having missed the GBA era. Between the moment I discovered the GBA’s existence and the moment I purchased one, I somehow glorified the system and its game library, elevating the latter to nearly mythical proportions. I pictured cult classics donning the gorgeous bright colours so typical of the GBA era and the retro pixelated art I’m so fond of, games that would nearly shine brighter than their DS counterparts. Absence makes the heart grows fonder, indeed, and the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. However, after having played Shining Soul, I suddenly realized that the GBA pastures are not nearly as fertile and greener-than-green as I had imagined. In my mind, the system was near-perfect and could do no wrong, and the idea that I missed such perfection pained me and ultimately prompted to purchase a GBA; but I see now that there was really not that much to miss in the first place. The GBA is not a monument of gaming perfection, but rather a mere console similar to any other console under the gaming sun, with strengths and weaknesses and a library containing both sparkling gems and stinky turds. Ironically, I have yet to uncover and play a true GBA cult classic; Sword of Mana certainly didn’t qualify for that accolade, and Shining Soul even less. Riviera could pass with flying colours, but I played it on the PSP, so I have a hard time considering it a GBA game… That being said, I’m not done with my GBA collection, and I’m sure that I will unearth some gems sooner or later—maybe starting with Shining Soul’s sequel, which is deemed much better than its elder and which I’m definitely planning to play. Until then, thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!