Shining Resonance Refrain Demo: I'll pass, thanks

Demos are short by nature, and so will be my posts about them. Let's kickstart these Demo Runs with the 30-minute-long Shining Resonance Refrain demo, which I'll sum up as such: that game is just not good enough to be on the Switch, let alone with a 50 bucks price tag.

Granted, it may seem a bit unfair to judge a whole game after playing it for a mere 30 minutes. However, those 30 minutes were more than enough to realize that we're dealing with one of those mediocre, cookie-cutter JRPGs that try to lure the player in with a whole posse of scantily clad female characters and a crap ton of flashy, stylish cutscenes. Peel away all that eye-candy, though, and you're left with crappy dungeon design and a mediocre fighting system.

I'll pass on the crappy dungeon design, which consists mostly of empty corridors bigger than they should reasonably be, and focus on the mediocre fighting system. I honestly fail to fathom how a 2014 PS3 game could be (dis)graced with such poor, half-baked real-time combat. (Heck, Avalon Code on the DS has better real-time combat than SRR, and it was released six years prior on a much weaker system.) The crux of the problem with SRR's fighting system is how stiff and unintuitive it is. It's supposed to be real-time action; and yet, the game pauses for two seconds every time you engage a foe in order to change the music and create some kind of 'fighting dimension', just like any good old turn-based RPG. Not only is that pause totally useless, but it also completely breaks the flow of combat. Then, there's the issue of combos: like any ARPG worth its salt, SRR lets your character perform a combo after delivering several hits in a row. That would be all nice and fine if the combos weren't so stupidly long, which allows foes to hit your character before the combo animation is over. And don't get me started on the stupid action gauge, which depletes as you hit foes and leaves you unable to strike when empty, forcing you to retreat while it refills. I mean, why? Why won't you let me hack and slash to my heart's content, game? Are you an ARPG or not? Last but certainly not least, long-range weapons are horribly handled: the character that wields them doesn't shoot fast enough and cannot shoot while moving, which means that you have to back down constantly to avoid being hit and have enough room to shoot. Horrible.

That being said, I kinda liked SRR's combat nonetheless, and I could probably have gotten used to it under other circumstances. As it is, SRR is too loaded with cutscenes and dialogues for my taste: the demo features roughly ten minutes of fighting for twenty minutes of cutscenes, and that's with me going out of my way to kill all the available enemies. But most importantly, my decision to pass on SRR is mostly a matter of expectations vs. reality. See, Shining Resonance was initially part of that long line of outlandish Shining games with highly recognizable character designs by Tony Naka — Shining Hearts, Shining Ark, Shining Blade and the like. Most of these games were released on the PSP around 2010, and that's how I came to view that particular part of the Shining series: PSP-ish games, with the graphics and gameplay to match. Had I played SRR on the PSP, I would probably have enjoyed it and deemed it perfectly decent; however, it simply doesn't hold up as a 2018 Switch game. Ten years have passed since the PSP's heydays; and things that were totally acceptable on Sony's first handheld, such as a clunky fighting system or bland dungeons, just don't cut it on Nintendo's latest hybrid console.

And so I'll pass on SRR. I was actually a hairbreadth away from purchasing it when I played the demo; and needless to say, I'm immensely glad that I gave said demo a try. 50 bucks saved! Geez, all games with price tags above 40 bucks should have demos. With that said, see you soon for my next demo report, dear fellow gamers! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!