Shining in the Darkness



Shining Tears in neither as great as all the online previews would have lead you to believe nor as awful as the recent slate of reviews have portrayed it. I hate to editorialize in the beginning of a review, but perhaps fans wouldn't have had such high expectations of this game if the people playing it in advance of its release hadn't claimed it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Can you guess what they're saying about the game now? Here's a thumb in someone's eye!

Anyway all of that ultimately doesn't matter. The game is out and now it's time to take the kid gloves off and give it a serious evaluation. Despite the title, Shining Tears is not a new title in the ultra popular Shining Force series - it's an all new action role-playing game franchise set in the same universe and featuring many of the races and locations that Shining fans will recognize. While Shining Tears is not a perfect experience by any stretch of the imagination, we've certainly played worse games on the PlayStation 2. Onto the details!

Oops, I Did it Again

Amusement Vision broke out the "big box of Japanese RPG storyline clich?s" for Shining Tears and gave the game a name so obscure that may have you pondering just makes a grown man's tears shiny? We don't have the answer to that question even after playing through the game, but we can tell you that the story is riddled with clich? and familiar story and character elements that you can find in countless RPGs on the market already.

The story features a young man (Xion, pronounced Shy-on) washed up on the shores of Shildia, fished from the waters, nursed back to health by a pretty but sassy young girl and then thrown head-long into an impending war facilitated by an evil and invading army (Rune Geist, who changed their name just for the occasion). As is usually the case in these kinds of games, the young protagonist is an amazing warrior who has a special power that makes him an avatar and ultimately the driving force in defeating the evildoers of the land wherever they may operate. A lot of the story is pretty silly but at least it's delivered in a fun way. Half of it is mind numbing and the other half is cute, corny and fun. The familiar characters, settings and art style also do a lot to keep the story from hitting rock bottom, thankfully.

But that's not all the cliche's. No, there's the case of amnesia and several artifacts in this young man's possession that can save the world and make sunshine out of tears (okay we're grasping at straws about the Tears thing at this point). And of course there's the scholarly leader who believes these artifacts are so very dangerous that no one should use them even though through most of the game his objections seem a little too half-hearted to ever be taken seriously. So there you have it. Boy takes savage head trauma, boy gets saved, boy helps save the world. That's Shining Tears' backstory in a nutshell. Thankfully there's a lot of action to fill in the plot holes...

Yin and Yang

So the grand and wonderful hero returns from his sabbatical and dives right in to an impending invasion. And of course, there's the rings. Xion has two rings with fantastic powers called the Twin Dragon Rings that afford the wearers immeasurable powers and have some interesting side affects based on alignment. When Xion teams up with a character that has a dark soul he becomes Goodly and kind; but when he teams up with a kind hearted light soul, he'll turn a little darker.

The crux of the gameplay is the control of two characters, Xion and his partner of the moment, as they make their way through thousand of enemies interspersed throughout the landscape. Xion has a basic sword attack and several chain attacks that can be utilized by holding down the attack button. The player will also be able to use a more powerful link attack by tapping the right shoulder button once to lock the second character in place and then tapping it again to unleash the attack. The second player can be useful in some cases but it's not difficult to just melee through an entire army of bad guys by yourself while your partner does his or her own thing. Players can do a few minor things with the second character like select their link attacks, move them around with R3 and make them run. The second character can be a lot more useful when two players play through the game cooperatively, but as a single-player affair the second player is only useful for activating those nifty link attacks and for minor cover fire in the few tough fights of the game.

Each map consists of a number of grouped enemies, usually being commanded by a leader with a handful of useful secondary skills. Most of these fights are pretty easy to win alone. The enemies don't actually roam around the map or do anything unless you either get close enough to them to trigger an attack or attack them first on your own. We're not sure if this was an intentional design feature, but since the game isn't turn-based it just doesn't make any sense...



Despite these small gripes about the gameplay, it's still fun to play. It is surprising to me that someone would condemn an action role-playing game for giving the player lots of.. action. We're obviously not going to do that. Nor did we hate it when we were able to play some of the same missions over and over again in an alternate mirror world that we'll talk about a little later. The action is the center of the game, and while it isn't always challenging it is fun to play through.

Kills, Skills and Frills

Obviously an overabundance of killing leads to collecting treasure, getting item drops and gaining buckets of experience. That experience allows each of your characters to add points to your key attributes and put points towards a set number of active, passive and link skills. Reaching certain levels is also important when wanting to put on a special piece of armor, headgear or accessory that requires a specific level to use.



Players will find boatloads of loot, both dropped by slain enemies and discovered in a limited amount of treasure chests in each map. These treasures will include new armor, accessories, headgear, gold, materials, consumables of varying types and unidentified items that must be taken to an appraiser.



Players can spend a lot of time shopping to find the perfect balance of armor and weapons and use the material they've collected to upgrade both armor and weapons at the blacksmith shop. Upgrading can be a bit complicated and fun; using the various materials in the game players can simply add a damage bonus (or defensive bonus) or figure out the correct formula to create special attacks - like lightning, fire etc. Since there are 8 characters that players can use there's a lot of opportunities to tinker and create special items that give all your characters an edge in combat. The upgrade system is really fun to toy around with, and with the overabundance of materials that you can collect, players will wile away many hours trying to find the perfect combination that can create an ultra powerful weapon.

Old School Charm

Despite what some might tell you Shining Tears' 2D graphics and character art is not tired, uninspired or dated - it's old school charm that has permeated through every nook and cranny of the game's presentation. Amusement Vision deserves a little credit for creating a game that uses 2D art completely and manages to create an overall presentation that looks pretty darn spiffy. I've heard some reviewers even claim that the graphics in this game are barely better than the Shining Soul series on the Game Boy Advance, which is a pretty ridiculous comparison to begin with (check out these Shining Soul 2 screenshots and make the comparison for yourselves).



That old school charm touches every aspect of the game; pop up portraits appear when characters are talking, decision prompts feature the signature Shining head yes and no "heads", the game world is populated with bright and sunny backgrounds, cute characters are found at every turn and the usual assortment of wolf-men, cat-people, bird-men, dwarves, pretty girls, wizards, monsters and knights are animated and presented in a way that is pleasing to the eye. Sure, it's not as flashy as a lot of console RPG's currently on the market but it does deliver a familiar style that Shining series fans will enjoy immensely.