Always great trivia at the beginning of these videos, while the Shining Force series has been familiar to me since 1997 or so with SF III, I can't say I know all details about them, specially their development. Yes, I actually never heard about Shining Force until my brother and I played SF III on the Saturn. Still, Shining Force II is nostalgic for different reasons, a friend of mine had a Pentium III PC and, among PC games and all that stuff, he had a CD with 600~ Mega Drive games, I remember SF II was one of the games he played the most. I finished all classic SF games at some point, and I like a lot the remake for the GBA too. Can't wait for Shining the Holy Ark and Shining Force III coverage on your channel in the future, great stuff!
True, Shining Force III, obviously including all scenarios will be a huge undertaking and I hope the process for that will be more enjoyable than it seems, it indeed is a huge game and its story is really full of nuances and twists with a lot, a LOT of dialog, I wonder if the text alone could fit into a cartridge game from the 16-bit era 😀
Yeah, the amount of text in SFIII is completely insane. I love the game, but I was exhausted from all the reading before I even got into the first battle when I first played it. It's been a few years since I played it now, we'll see if it bothers me more, the same or less 😁
You know what, one thing these RPG developers should have agreed upon since the 8-bit days is the ability to skip cutscenes and dialogs, maybe by holding select or start with another button for a few seconds or something. It seems they never considered that someone replaying the game wouldn't want to go through the bible again and again. Not only that, but this would be useful to showcase the game on stores and things like that so people could go into battles and towns right away. This is something that only recently became accepted, after countless complaints from gamers about all genres. I replayed Far Cry 3 and 4 and the unskippable cutscenes drag it down a lot, I think only 5 onwards feature the skip function. This is not even something new, from the 80's, 8-bit and all those action oriented games allowed you to press start and get into them right away. You want to play Revenge of Shinobi or Streets of Rage but imagine if you had to wait for the intro EVERY time you started the game!
SF2 was my first SF game i played when i was a kid back in the 90s. It holds a special place in my heart and no other SRPG has the same charm and gameplay style as the shining force series. Fire Emblem: Three Houses has a similar style of combat (camera changes when you attack to a more grounded style) and so far thats the only one that ive found like SF.
There are a few other games/series that are relatively close that were "inspired" by SF... stuff like Arc the Lad 1 and 2 on PS1 and Feda: Emblem of Justice on SNES.
@@InglebardGaming I've heard of FEDA before. not sure if I want to go down that path yet lol. I hear the game isn't that great. But definitely worth checking out. Arc is another one that I've been meaning to try.
I also never realized you had to go East before going south. The Kraken was so brutal for me as a 10 year old. Then I DID get stuck forever until I discovered the secret beneath the tree. Holy cow. On the plus, I level ground so much the next 5 or more battles were a breeze. This is definitely my favorite game ever
It's the one part of the game where it's not obvious where you're supposed to go next. They should have figured out a way to block it off until you did the other stuff first. Oh well. I'll never forget again, that's for sure!
@@InglebardGaming Oh no you don't hate on my boy, he is easily one of the best party members, and he's the only one who can use the gisarme which makes him absolutely sick, and unbelievably powerful.
They're what got me into the strategy RPG subgenre entirely. I hadn't liked the ones I tried before SF1 back when it was new and ever since, I've played a ton of these things.
Great review. But you missed the final bonus battle and the special mithril weapons, particularly the one that allows Slade to chop enemies in one hit!
You actually missed the final secret fight after "The End" screen. You fight all the hardest bosses in the game in one fight. Zeon, Oddeye, Red Baron, Zalbard, Geshp, Cameela, King Galam, Dark Smoke, a couple Prism Flowers, Willard and King from the chessboard.
Yes, I talked about this in another comment already. I might include a bit of it in a separate video or talk about it in the next one in the series later this month.
Great breakdown. The difficulty definite did spike from the first game, but it was also very satisfying beating the Kraken and the chess board. I still replay this one every few years.
My favorite shining force game, and probably my favorite SRPG/TRPG. It's the largest influence in making me want to make my own SRPG. I recently played Shining Force 3 Scenario 1, I love that the four mercenaries at the end have the same names and classes as the quartet you can recruit from Creeds Mansion. This video makes me want to do another run of SF2, I think this time I'm going to do a run with no optional recruits; no Kiwi, no May, no Lemon, etc, I think 14 characters are skipable in total. But one question, if SF2 is a 9/10, what the heck is a 10/10?
For 16bit srpgs, there are none I like better, but 10/10 would really need to have pretty much zero flaws. If those little things I talked about had been fixed... the menuing issues, including no wraparound, having to sometimes press A to search to progress, a little more length, maybe some optional story elements, and some more music tracks... All that stuff would have probably this a 10/10 from me.
Thanks, appreciate it! As you've hopefully seen the next part is already out! There won't be as much time between the Shining Force CD and Shining Force Gaiden: The Final Conflict videos either since we're past the holidays and some stuff I had to deal with.
Thanks, as I've said these definitely aren't 100% playthroughs, the videos are mainly about the history and story. Some of them I haven't played in a long time definitely forgot about some things. I wanted to avoid using guides, but I might for future episodes.
@@InglebardGaming I enjoyed the video. It was more a story point. The weapons shop wasn't open due to the devils oppression of the villagers of Ketto,same with no church being open, you guys turning up spurred him on to screw the devils and open the store up.
Waiting for promotion give better stats for Shining Force 2. On Shining Force 1 though that isn't the case and the game will scale so you basically end up the same no matter what which is why I still play Shining Force 1 over 2 sometimes. Just a tip for anyone getting into the series. Unsure if the GBA remake for Shining Force 1 ever "fix" that though so promote at your own risk for that version.
I have played the first three in the Shining series multiple times but have never stuck with it to finish them for some reason or another. Life happens to happen often and gobbles up any spare time. I just started Shining in the Darkness again.
First played this on xbox 360 in 2010 but never finished it tho love the game, I returned back to it in 2018 on switch and on switch alone i've beaten it about 20 times yeah i have an addiciton to it. This game got me really hooked into tactical rpgs and I prefer tactical jrpgs over common jrpgs we mostly see these days now (tho i still love SMT series no matter what) Also personal favourite Unit for me is Slade. I love thief/ninja characters and rats are cool to me
The SF games are definitely fun and different from a lot of other games in the genre. They're so much faster while retaining the strategy elements of deeper games. It's a great mix I'm surprised we didn't see more of from other developers.
@@InglebardGaming There has been attempts from sega recently to revive OG Shining Force most notably the struggling live service mobile game which eh Im not a fan of the announcement but seeing the presentation of some of the more notable OG Shining Members is actually pretty cool. I dont know alot about the first game's devs struggles but im aware of the many struggles of the second game and you even mentioned them in the video. tho the game shines (literally) just perfectly with the flexible cast of recruitable characters and great animation, it's super clear alot of character story was pushed to the side. I do feel adding more story could extend the play time bit too much but I wish at certain events of the game you could talk with your members about their thoughts or even have unique conversations at specific points, or have more conversations when at your base making them more optional scenes. The main game does need few more scenes and have more of the main cast chipping in bit here n there since I've always found it so bizarre that sarah, slade, kazin, chester and some others later in the game just barely ever speak unless you talk to them in base. Once you've reached new granseal, it's like these guys just straight up got forgotten in the story especially Slade since he f'd up and the whole Sarah liking Bowie for better friendship/ship status but nope everyone is just muted until the very end. I brought up alot of these issues during my stream on discord with my friends, they all love this game but they seriously wished these characters had more story.
Yeah, the mobile game I never had much faith in and it turns out I was right since it was cancelled, lol. I'm not just saying that now, I griped on Twitter about it after it was announced. As far as 2's story goes, I think a little of both things would have helped make it even better. A little more story, a few extra scenes and optional sidequests maybe - the things I suggested... and then also hearing more from the other characters in the party like you and your friends suggested. That is something that's missing and I wish I had made that point during the video, but it didn't even occur to me. Oh well. Maybe next time!
You also could have promoted Sarah and/or Karna into a master monk as well. I think Sarah ends up making a much better Master Monk than Karna. But I had Sarah pretty much scrapping enemies left and right and popping up a heal.
Sarah is a awful healer he spells stink. She's a great master monk as she can do an Emergency heal 3 and cast slow 2 on enemies if she can't reach to punch someone she can least lower the enemies defense.
Can I add an amendment? The free space on the cartridge was 2Kb, not 2KB, which is quite incredible how much they packed in. SF II is one of the best games ever made. It improves on the original in every way. I only wish they would pull their finger out and make another pixel SF game. I love exploring the towns, talking to the townsfolk, and finding hidden secrets and Easter eggs all over the place. Also I think I've always done the Kraken battle when you did, I've never know how to do it different. It's a shame you didn't get Sheela, she kicks arse, and Sir Astral acts like a dirty old man again when you meet her.
You know, it wasn't totally clear from the interview I saw (translated) if they meant kilobits or kilobytes, I couldn't find the original to verify. Have you seen the original interview in Japanese by chance? Because yeah, if its only two kilobits free, that's packed amazingly tight. I'd definitely love to see another SF game. I think I'd prefer 3D at this point but wouldn't say no to a high quality 2D version. I talked about this recently in an RPG fortress video (along with several other people) if you want to check it out: ruclips.net/video/zxqKeLLeZHo/видео.html
@@InglebardGaming I haven't seen the original interview, in fact I think I only saw the same one in your video, but as they measure the cartridge size in Megabits it makes sense they would mention the free space as Kb and not KB. I think if they had 2KB free maybe they could have made that chest outside the Matula shrine openable in the Western release :) Thanks for your video, I'll take a look. I'd pick 2D over 3D every time, but if it is 3D and it's like SF III then I'd still enjoy it. Also I recently got a MD mini, and I've got SF CD on it, I've only played Book 1, so now I'll play all of them. Same with SF III, I've only played Book 1, but I've got translated Books 2 and 3 which I'll test. Looking forward to it!
Good job with this video. Made me replaying it. Keep up the good work with Phantasy Star, Landstalker and similar. Will always be there to check that out.🎉
@@InglebardGaming Sure hope you're doing well with the videos. The way you convey stories is easy-going and voice easy on the ears. You give people who haven't got the time anymore to replay these games an opportunity to relive them in this much detail - as if we were playing them. These videos also work perfectly before going to bed, as a sleep aid of sorts (there sure are videogame videos on youtube that are being promoted as such). :P Your effort definitely needs to bear fruit.
I wanted to use some different characters and classes than I had before. I collected a bunch of promotion items, I just ended up leaving them in the caravan.
definitely one of the best in the 16 bit era, I'd rate this up there with Mario RPG or Chrono Trigger, oh btw I'm disappointed you didn't mention the moment Lemon was healed from the fire by the Volcanon's light his first word was groovy, something that sounds totally out of place in a fantasy setting lol, also surprised you didn't mention the secret bosses fight on the map that looks like Sonic
Yeah, "groovy" was pretty funny and of course calls to mind Ash from Evil Dead/Army of Darkness. I knew about that last battle back in the day, but honestly just forgot about it while recording this. Maybe I'll squeeze it into another episode later.
@@InglebardGaming lol well as long as you understand why Groovy is such a cool line because of how out of nowhere it is (and the meta humour of course) plus I DO hope you mention the Sonic map its a really cool bonus fight to test to see how strong your team has gotten and kinda put a ribbon against Zeon's forces if I do say so...plus the map shape I mean come on! You have to mention it! Lol
I like Kiwi but even being promoted he isn't that good since his flamethrower is rare attack for him to do. Anyone that beat SF2 knows the best location to train and its the secret battle field. just farming the pink ghost. I am shock you didn't use the items to change your characters class when promoting. This is the game that got me into gaming and will always be my favorite one.
I was originally going to promote with the items, but then it occurred to me that I hadn't ever played without using them so I figured why not see what everyone was like without them. Well, that and I was goin to use 1 or 2 of them later and kinda forgot, lol. Oh well, I guess I ended up with a pure character run in the end.
@@InglebardGamingdon't you see lol? You have to play the game THEIR way. A game like this, that is frankly not that hard can be played multiple ways. I am finally getting around to beating SF2 after first playing it 28-29 years ago when I was in late middle school, (making some shorts for my channel) and a lot of the promotion items are overrated. For example, I am keeping Kazin as a wizard because he learns blaze level 4 at a relatively low level which hits for a lot of damage at its MP cost. The sorcerer spells are good but they cost a lot and you get a sorcerer anyway which you ended up using. I do use the vigor balls for full on waifus though. It's funny how as a vicar Sarah becomes an obese nun fully clothed and covered like she is Muslim but as a master monk she is less clothed and waifu-ized. Anyhow, you don't have to use the promotion items.
No, I talked about it a bit in the comments and I'll probably mention it at the start of the next video. When I do the big compilation video at the end of this series, it'll have any minor corrections or discuss any such oversights.
The Mythril can make weapons of varying strength. It's random and a bit of a pain to get the best ones but it is how you get some of the best weapons in the game. Oh yeah, I forgot about the racism... and the creepy kiss.... Eeep.
I tried to get a decent mithril weapon, it just wasn't happening, In the end, my guys were so strong it didn't really matter at the end. And yeah, that ending does not hold up very well, lol.
Is it really racism? Well, on surface level it is but maybe there is another explanation. Have you seen any half breeds in Shining Force 1 or 2? Half elfs, half dwarfs or half centaurs? I do not remember any. Maybe the various races are not genetically compatible and considering this is a princess AND kings only child, it is expected that she bears children that will in future become rulers. With a dwarfs, if they are genetically incompatible, that cannot happen. In this case its politics then, not racism.
this was my first jrpg ever, and is one of my games I like to return to from time to time. Even though first time playing it, it was kind of hard to understand the mechanics, since I did speak no englisch at the time (and it never got a german dub), heck, there are still some elments (like what certain items do), I still don't know/understand XD though somehow I still understood the story somehow. The music, the character design, the battle mechanic, freakin love it all. Honestly the only thing I hate is that ending. Cuase even as a kid I kinda shipped Sarah with bowie and the romance with the princess came completly out of nowhere and forced. Other than that, fantastic game.
It must have been tough to really enjoy and get through without understanding the language! Especially this one since the game tells you what to do and where to go in its relatively open map at times. And yeah, the ending is just OK and really conventional for a fairy-tale type story. Oh, well, at least the rest is pretty great.
@@InglebardGaming surprisingly no, again, I was able to understand the story out of context. Like even with these simple pixels and animation, it was somewhat clear to tell what was going on. Probably cause the story was pretty simpicist but ironicly I would count that as one of the games strenght. Just a easy but still big and fun adventure. And I remember at least getting to the point where they have blown the cave open. And again, overall it's still a fun and great game. ^^ Though I only reached the ending after my english skills improved XD
I like watching other people play through games that I play. Usually, I bench Kiwi in favor of the first possible character that wouldn't be in the active battle party. He's extremely weak, especially against magic users and anything after Taros just melt his awful HP stat. I like his design, but he statistics are just no good, Luke Claude, but at least he gets decent HP in trade for poor movement. Shining Force 2 is probably my favorite game in the series, despite the awful translations, at least the characters (foe the most part) are usable start to end, unlike other games, with characters who need an awful amount of babysitting (Arthur and Adam from SF1) until they're Godlike. Peter and Gerhalt have this kind of gains, but they start off really good, and only get better. I like that nobody in SF2 has this "awful=amazing" growth pattern. It makes the game less grind and more strategic fun!
Yeah, you can make everything work with pretty much any character in this, I'm sure if I pulled out my cartridge and checked my saves my parties would have been way different than the ones I used in this playthrough!
Really enjoy this video and I thank you for it as a creator but player to player I am confused by your character picks. How come you didn’t use any of the special promotion items? Kazin is a way better sorcerer than wizard lol. The baron and Pegasus knight classes are also high tier. If you just prefer the regular classes I can understand that too as this is a play through where you are showing an original play of the game as how a newbie would play.
I just wanted to do as plain a run as possible for this one. I picked up the promotion items but just didn't use them this time around. In the end it doesn't matter too much, you can make pretty much anyone powerful enough to win pretty easily. Wait until you see how much I used Penn in SF3 sc 1 😁
I do love this game, but I HATE the ending. I am an adamant Bowie/Sarah shipper, and no one can change my mind. 2 years? 2 YEARS??? Bowie and Sarah would be married with a kid by then. The 'fairy tale' ending is something that HAS to be changed if this game ever gets a remake. Which, it almost doesn't need. But still...
In my headcanon they divorced after 6 months when they noticed they dont know each other that well, and Sarah accepted Bowie back after a huge slap on the face, they lived happily ever after edit: a slap on his face, in case it wasnt clear enough
I actual did reset a few times but I wasn't willing to do more than that because if time constraints. If anyone is interested they can hit up gamefaqs or other walkthrough sites for that, it was beyond the scope of the video.
You should study better what weapons the dwarf can produce out of mythril. The best weapons in the game can be made except for Bowie’s Force Sword. HYou just have to reset a lot when the expected weapon doesn’t show up.
I thought I'd mentioned in the video that I'd reset a few times when having weapons made and didn't feel like doing it any more after getting normal ones time and again, it just wasn't worth it. When I eventually do the "big" video that'll be a compilation of all these, I'm going to update some info in this SF 2 video with a few corrections, though.
Not exactly a perfect setup since several characters didn't get promoted to their special classes & none of them appear to be armed with the custom made Mythril weapons, but I guess this video was for illustrative purposes.
Yeah, as I mention in the videos here none of these are "complete" playthroughs or serious guides, they're just to have some fun, talk about what things were like when they came out, relive the story, and give them a quick review at the end to discuss how playable the games still are today.
This is lazy, inaccurate, inconsistent, and really not informative. As someone who played this nearly upon release I can honestly say I find this retrospective insulting. Total shame because the voice over and editing is great. Swing and a miss for me.
Yeah there are some things he missed like Skreech, Eric, Tyrin, and Randalf, as well as the shop in Ketto and the fact that the mithril weapons are indeed more powerful than the weapons he has, not to mention the fact he didn't use any of the promotional items to promote characters to better classes, and the secret fight after the credits, but these really don't make that much of a difference and I still really enjoyed the video nonetheless.
I remember being annoyed that at the end I couldn't pick Sarah and instead I had to be with this stupid useless princess.
Happy 30th anniversary to the best strategy RPG!!
Beautiful timing! I'm playing through the second sforce for the first time. The first one is already a nostalgic favorite for me.
Definitely great, hope you enjoyed it are still enjoying it!
I rented this game consecutively a bunch of times as a kid and eventually beat it. One of my fav games ever.
Definitely great and it was a joy to play through it again recently for this video, I hadn't played it start to finish in years.
Always great trivia at the beginning of these videos, while the Shining Force series has been familiar to me since 1997 or so with SF III, I can't say I know all details about them, specially their development. Yes, I actually never heard about Shining Force until my brother and I played SF III on the Saturn.
Still, Shining Force II is nostalgic for different reasons, a friend of mine had a Pentium III PC and, among PC games and all that stuff, he had a CD with 600~ Mega Drive games, I remember SF II was one of the games he played the most.
I finished all classic SF games at some point, and I like a lot the remake for the GBA too. Can't wait for Shining the Holy Ark and Shining Force III coverage on your channel in the future, great stuff!
Thanks, glad you liked it! I am both looking forward to and dreading when I get to SF III soon, that'll be tough to cover but I'll handle it!
True, Shining Force III, obviously including all scenarios will be a huge undertaking and I hope the process for that will be more enjoyable than it seems, it indeed is a huge game and its story is really full of nuances and twists with a lot, a LOT of dialog, I wonder if the text alone could fit into a cartridge game from the 16-bit era 😀
Yeah, the amount of text in SFIII is completely insane. I love the game, but I was exhausted from all the reading before I even got into the first battle when I first played it. It's been a few years since I played it now, we'll see if it bothers me more, the same or less 😁
You know what, one thing these RPG developers should have agreed upon since the 8-bit days is the ability to skip cutscenes and dialogs, maybe by holding select or start with another button for a few seconds or something.
It seems they never considered that someone replaying the game wouldn't want to go through the bible again and again. Not only that, but this would be useful to showcase the game on stores and things like that so people could go into battles and towns right away.
This is something that only recently became accepted, after countless complaints from gamers about all genres. I replayed Far Cry 3 and 4 and the unskippable cutscenes drag it down a lot, I think only 5 onwards feature the skip function.
This is not even something new, from the 80's, 8-bit and all those action oriented games allowed you to press start and get into them right away. You want to play Revenge of Shinobi or Streets of Rage but imagine if you had to wait for the intro EVERY time you started the game!
SF2 was my first SF game i played when i was a kid back in the 90s. It holds a special place in my heart and no other SRPG has the same charm and gameplay style as the shining force series. Fire Emblem: Three Houses has a similar style of combat (camera changes when you attack to a more grounded style) and so far thats the only one that ive found like SF.
There are a few other games/series that are relatively close that were "inspired" by SF... stuff like Arc the Lad 1 and 2 on PS1 and Feda: Emblem of Justice on SNES.
@@InglebardGaming I've heard of FEDA before. not sure if I want to go down that path yet lol. I hear the game isn't that great. But definitely worth checking out. Arc is another one that I've been meaning to try.
I also never realized you had to go East before going south. The Kraken was so brutal for me as a 10 year old. Then I DID get stuck forever until I discovered the secret beneath the tree. Holy cow. On the plus, I level ground so much the next 5 or more battles were a breeze.
This is definitely my favorite game ever
It's the one part of the game where it's not obvious where you're supposed to go next. They should have figured out a way to block it off until you did the other stuff first. Oh well. I'll never forget again, that's for sure!
To be fair to Slade... they should really have more security on those jewels. Like, he got into the shrine and removed them so easily.
I won't tolerate anyone being fair to Slade! 😁
@@InglebardGaming Oh no you don't hate on my boy, he is easily one of the best party members, and he's the only one who can use the gisarme which makes him absolutely sick, and unbelievably powerful.
Man, I remember thinking that Mitula was smokin when I first played this
Definitely my favourite game in the series and I'm glad to finally see a quality retrospect of it... Keep up the good work Inglebard!💖
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! There's plenty of more SF to come!
NGL Shining Force 1 and 2 both acted as a gate way to the Fire Emblem series for me xD
They're what got me into the strategy RPG subgenre entirely. I hadn't liked the ones I tried before SF1 back when it was new and ever since, I've played a ton of these things.
Great review. But you missed the final bonus battle and the special mithril weapons, particularly the one that allows Slade to chop enemies in one hit!
Thanks and my excuse for not including that other stuff is... I totally forgot about it, hah. Oh, well. None of these are/will be 100% runs.
You actually missed the final secret fight after "The End" screen.
You fight all the hardest bosses in the game in one fight. Zeon, Oddeye, Red Baron, Zalbard, Geshp, Cameela, King Galam, Dark Smoke, a couple Prism Flowers, Willard and King from the chessboard.
Yes, I talked about this in another comment already. I might include a bit of it in a separate video or talk about it in the next one in the series later this month.
@@Rem694u2 He missed a LOT of things.
Great breakdown. The difficulty definite did spike from the first game, but it was also very satisfying beating the Kraken and the chess board. I still replay this one every few years.
Thanks and yup, this one had parts that were way harder than the first Shining Force, that's for sure!
My favorite shining force game, and probably my favorite SRPG/TRPG. It's the largest influence in making me want to make my own SRPG. I recently played Shining Force 3 Scenario 1, I love that the four mercenaries at the end have the same names and classes as the quartet you can recruit from Creeds Mansion. This video makes me want to do another run of SF2, I think this time I'm going to do a run with no optional recruits; no Kiwi, no May, no Lemon, etc, I think 14 characters are skipable in total.
But one question, if SF2 is a 9/10, what the heck is a 10/10?
For 16bit srpgs, there are none I like better, but 10/10 would really need to have pretty much zero flaws. If those little things I talked about had been fixed... the menuing issues, including no wraparound, having to sometimes press A to search to progress, a little more length, maybe some optional story elements, and some more music tracks... All that stuff would have probably this a 10/10 from me.
I don't collect many gaming things but my mint copy of shining force is produly displayed on my living room
I just re start the game in switch, I feel like the old times, when every day after school...play a little of shining 2
Have fun, it's still great!
Looking forward to you next part of the series and wolud like to say thank you as well as I can only imagine the time you have to put in to them
Thanks, appreciate it! As you've hopefully seen the next part is already out! There won't be as much time between the Shining Force CD and Shining Force Gaiden: The Final Conflict videos either since we're past the holidays and some stuff I had to deal with.
There was a weapons shop in ketto.....the owner was hiding at the back of the shop youve to find him to open the shop
Thanks, as I've said these definitely aren't 100% playthroughs, the videos are mainly about the history and story. Some of them I haven't played in a long time definitely forgot about some things. I wanted to avoid using guides, but I might for future episodes.
@@InglebardGaming I enjoyed the video. It was more a story point. The weapons shop wasn't open due to the devils oppression of the villagers of Ketto,same with no church being open, you guys turning up spurred him on to screw the devils and open the store up.
Waiting for promotion give better stats for Shining Force 2. On Shining Force 1 though that isn't the case and the game will scale so you basically end up the same no matter what which is why I still play Shining Force 1 over 2 sometimes. Just a tip for anyone getting into the series. Unsure if the GBA remake for Shining Force 1 ever "fix" that though so promote at your own risk for that version.
I have played the first three in the Shining series multiple times but have never stuck with it to finish them for some reason or another. Life happens to happen often and gobbles up any spare time.
I just started Shining in the Darkness again.
These games were my childhood, and I'm definitely coming back to agree/disagree with you :D
Ha, anytime, there's plenty more to come!
@@InglebardGaming I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
Kiwi is freaking Gamera, man!
First played this on xbox 360 in 2010 but never finished it tho love the game, I returned back to it in 2018 on switch and on switch alone i've beaten it about 20 times yeah i have an addiciton to it.
This game got me really hooked into tactical rpgs and I prefer tactical jrpgs over common jrpgs we mostly see these days now (tho i still love SMT series no matter what)
Also personal favourite Unit for me is Slade. I love thief/ninja characters and rats are cool to me
The SF games are definitely fun and different from a lot of other games in the genre. They're so much faster while retaining the strategy elements of deeper games. It's a great mix I'm surprised we didn't see more of from other developers.
@@InglebardGaming
There has been attempts from sega recently to revive OG Shining Force most notably the struggling live service mobile game which eh Im not a fan of the announcement but seeing the presentation of some of the more notable OG Shining Members is actually pretty cool.
I dont know alot about the first game's devs struggles but im aware of the many struggles of the second game and you even mentioned them in the video. tho the game shines (literally) just perfectly with the flexible cast of recruitable characters and great animation, it's super clear alot of character story was pushed to the side.
I do feel adding more story could extend the play time bit too much but I wish at certain events of the game you could talk with your members about their thoughts or even have unique conversations at specific points, or have more conversations when at your base making them more optional scenes.
The main game does need few more scenes and have more of the main cast chipping in bit here n there since I've always found it so bizarre that sarah, slade, kazin, chester and some others later in the game just barely ever speak unless you talk to them in base. Once you've reached new granseal, it's like these guys just straight up got forgotten in the story especially Slade since he f'd up and the whole Sarah liking Bowie for better friendship/ship status but nope everyone is just muted until the very end.
I brought up alot of these issues during my stream on discord with my friends, they all love this game but they seriously wished these characters had more story.
Yeah, the mobile game I never had much faith in and it turns out I was right since it was cancelled, lol. I'm not just saying that now, I griped on Twitter about it after it was announced.
As far as 2's story goes, I think a little of both things would have helped make it even better. A little more story, a few extra scenes and optional sidequests maybe - the things I suggested... and then also hearing more from the other characters in the party like you and your friends suggested. That is something that's missing and I wish I had made that point during the video, but it didn't even occur to me. Oh well. Maybe next time!
@@xRocketzFighterx I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
Shining force CD please
I'm doing all of them. SF CD is next on the list!
I remember the secret battle after then credits
Моя первая jrpg. Моя любимая jrpg❤ В России она кстати у многих была первой jrpg.😊
You also could have promoted Sarah and/or Karna into a master monk as well. I think Sarah ends up making a much better Master Monk than Karna. But I had Sarah pretty much scrapping enemies left and right and popping up a heal.
Sarah is a awful healer he spells stink. She's a great master monk as she can do an Emergency heal 3 and cast slow 2 on enemies if she can't reach to punch someone she can least lower the enemies defense.
Can I add an amendment? The free space on the cartridge was 2Kb, not 2KB, which is quite incredible how much they packed in.
SF II is one of the best games ever made. It improves on the original in every way. I only wish they would pull their finger out and make another pixel SF game. I love exploring the towns, talking to the townsfolk, and finding hidden secrets and Easter eggs all over the place.
Also I think I've always done the Kraken battle when you did, I've never know how to do it different.
It's a shame you didn't get Sheela, she kicks arse, and Sir Astral acts like a dirty old man again when you meet her.
You know, it wasn't totally clear from the interview I saw (translated) if they meant kilobits or kilobytes, I couldn't find the original to verify. Have you seen the original interview in Japanese by chance? Because yeah, if its only two kilobits free, that's packed amazingly tight.
I'd definitely love to see another SF game. I think I'd prefer 3D at this point but wouldn't say no to a high quality 2D version. I talked about this recently in an RPG fortress video (along with several other people) if you want to check it out: ruclips.net/video/zxqKeLLeZHo/видео.html
@@InglebardGaming I haven't seen the original interview, in fact I think I only saw the same one in your video, but as they measure the cartridge size in Megabits it makes sense they would mention the free space as Kb and not KB.
I think if they had 2KB free maybe they could have made that chest outside the Matula shrine openable in the Western release :)
Thanks for your video, I'll take a look.
I'd pick 2D over 3D every time, but if it is 3D and it's like SF III then I'd still enjoy it.
Also I recently got a MD mini, and I've got SF CD on it, I've only played Book 1, so now I'll play all of them. Same with SF III, I've only played Book 1, but I've got translated Books 2 and 3 which I'll test. Looking forward to it!
Good job with this video. Made me replaying it. Keep up the good work with Phantasy Star, Landstalker and similar. Will always be there to check that out.🎉
Thanks, glad you liked it!
@@InglebardGaming Are you planning on doing the aforementioned series?
I haven't fully decided yet. I may do more of these for different series or single games if these keep doing pretty well.
@@InglebardGaming Sure hope you're doing well with the videos. The way you convey stories is easy-going and voice easy on the ears.
You give people who haven't got the time anymore to replay these games an opportunity to relive them in this much detail - as if we were playing them.
These videos also work perfectly before going to bed, as a sleep aid of sorts (there sure are videogame videos on youtube that are being promoted as such). :P
Your effort definitely needs to bear fruit.
You have quite an unorthodox party setup. Also you didn't seem to have used any promotion items. That's surprising
I wanted to use some different characters and classes than I had before. I collected a bunch of promotion items, I just ended up leaving them in the caravan.
definitely one of the best in the 16 bit era, I'd rate this up there with Mario RPG or Chrono Trigger, oh btw I'm disappointed you didn't mention the moment Lemon was healed from the fire by the Volcanon's light his first word was groovy, something that sounds totally out of place in a fantasy setting lol, also surprised you didn't mention the secret bosses fight on the map that looks like Sonic
Yeah, "groovy" was pretty funny and of course calls to mind Ash from Evil Dead/Army of Darkness. I knew about that last battle back in the day, but honestly just forgot about it while recording this. Maybe I'll squeeze it into another episode later.
@@InglebardGaming lol well as long as you understand why Groovy is such a cool line because of how out of nowhere it is (and the meta humour of course) plus I DO hope you mention the Sonic map its a really cool bonus fight to test to see how strong your team has gotten and kinda put a ribbon against Zeon's forces if I do say so...plus the map shape I mean come on! You have to mention it! Lol
chess game wasnt hard for me, but crystal flowers - that a pain...
Did you promote your characters before the chess battle?
@@InglebardGaming i.. i actually dont remember, sorry 😅
@@DDRmails I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
@@orangeslash1667 dont know so sudden, but ok... mmm atlus... gonna be good
@@DDRmails Atlus only published the game, the game is made by Vanillaware, the same guys behind Dragon's Crown and Odin Sphere.
I like Kiwi but even being promoted he isn't that good since his flamethrower is rare attack for him to do. Anyone that beat SF2 knows the best location to train and its the secret battle field. just farming the pink ghost. I am shock you didn't use the items to change your characters class when promoting. This is the game that got me into gaming and will always be my favorite one.
I was originally going to promote with the items, but then it occurred to me that I hadn't ever played without using them so I figured why not see what everyone was like without them. Well, that and I was goin to use 1 or 2 of them later and kinda forgot, lol. Oh well, I guess I ended up with a pure character run in the end.
@@InglebardGamingdon't you see lol? You have to play the game THEIR way. A game like this, that is frankly not that hard can be played multiple ways. I am finally getting around to beating SF2 after first playing it 28-29 years ago when I was in late middle school, (making some shorts for my channel) and a lot of the promotion items are overrated. For example, I am keeping Kazin as a wizard because he learns blaze level 4 at a relatively low level which hits for a lot of damage at its MP cost. The sorcerer spells are good but they cost a lot and you get a sorcerer anyway which you ended up using. I do use the vigor balls for full on waifus though. It's funny how as a vicar Sarah becomes an obese nun fully clothed and covered like she is Muslim but as a master monk she is less clothed and waifu-ized. Anyhow, you don't have to use the promotion items.
Great video series
Thanks, glad you're enjoying them!
You didn’t mention the hidden combat with all the major bosses at the same time.
No, I talked about it a bit in the comments and I'll probably mention it at the start of the next video.
When I do the big compilation video at the end of this series, it'll have any minor corrections or discuss any such oversights.
The Mythril can make weapons of varying strength. It's random and a bit of a pain to get the best ones but it is how you get some of the best weapons in the game.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the racism... and the creepy kiss.... Eeep.
I tried to get a decent mithril weapon, it just wasn't happening, In the end, my guys were so strong it didn't really matter at the end.
And yeah, that ending does not hold up very well, lol.
Is it really racism? Well, on surface level it is but maybe there is another explanation. Have you seen any half breeds in Shining Force 1 or 2? Half elfs, half dwarfs or half centaurs? I do not remember any. Maybe the various races are not genetically compatible and considering this is a princess AND kings only child, it is expected that she bears children that will in future become rulers. With a dwarfs, if they are genetically incompatible, that cannot happen. In this case its politics then, not racism.
this was my first jrpg ever, and is one of my games I like to return to from time to time. Even though first time playing it, it was kind of hard to understand the mechanics, since I did speak no englisch at the time (and it never got a german dub), heck, there are still some elments (like what certain items do), I still don't know/understand XD though somehow I still understood the story somehow. The music, the character design, the battle mechanic, freakin love it all. Honestly the only thing I hate is that ending. Cuase even as a kid I kinda shipped Sarah with bowie and the romance with the princess came completly out of nowhere and forced. Other than that, fantastic game.
It must have been tough to really enjoy and get through without understanding the language! Especially this one since the game tells you what to do and where to go in its relatively open map at times.
And yeah, the ending is just OK and really conventional for a fairy-tale type story. Oh, well, at least the rest is pretty great.
@@InglebardGaming surprisingly no, again, I was able to understand the story out of context. Like even with these simple pixels and animation, it was somewhat clear to tell what was going on. Probably cause the story was pretty simpicist but ironicly I would count that as one of the games strenght. Just a easy but still big and fun adventure. And I remember at least getting to the point where they have blown the cave open. And again, overall it's still a fun and great game. ^^ Though I only reached the ending after my english skills improved XD
I'm grossed out by Sarah's Vicar sprite, clearly modeled after Frayja.
love that sexy master monk though lol
You mean you don't love when she puts on 300 pounds going from a normal kid to a morbidly obese person?
Yeah that's one of the worst parts of the game.
@@squidwardtentacles2736 Yeah that's one of the best parts of the game.
@@wooper2654yeah hilarious the difference in physical shape. Haha choose your right path in life.
I like watching other people play through games that I play. Usually, I bench Kiwi in favor of the first possible character that wouldn't be in the active battle party. He's extremely weak, especially against magic users and anything after Taros just melt his awful HP stat. I like his design, but he statistics are just no good, Luke Claude, but at least he gets decent HP in trade for poor movement. Shining Force 2 is probably my favorite game in the series, despite the awful translations, at least the characters (foe the most part) are usable start to end, unlike other games, with characters who need an awful amount of babysitting (Arthur and Adam from SF1) until they're Godlike. Peter and Gerhalt have this kind of gains, but they start off really good, and only get better. I like that nobody in SF2 has this "awful=amazing" growth pattern. It makes the game less grind and more strategic fun!
Yeah, you can make everything work with pretty much any character in this, I'm sure if I pulled out my cartridge and checked my saves my parties would have been way different than the ones I used in this playthrough!
Really enjoy this video and I thank you for it as a creator but player to player I am confused by your character picks. How come you didn’t use any of the special promotion items? Kazin is a way better sorcerer than wizard lol. The baron and Pegasus knight classes are also high tier. If you just prefer the regular classes I can understand that too as this is a play through where you are showing an original play of the game as how a newbie would play.
I just wanted to do as plain a run as possible for this one. I picked up the promotion items but just didn't use them this time around. In the end it doesn't matter too much, you can make pretty much anyone powerful enough to win pretty easily.
Wait until you see how much I used Penn in SF3 sc 1 😁
these videos are amazing!
Thanks, glad you like them. There'll be a new one pretty soon!
I do love this game, but I HATE the ending. I am an adamant Bowie/Sarah shipper, and no one can change my mind. 2 years? 2 YEARS??? Bowie and Sarah would be married with a kid by then. The 'fairy tale' ending is something that HAS to be changed if this game ever gets a remake. Which, it almost doesn't need. But still...
Or in a remake more content towards building a backstory between Bowie and the Princess but yeah not the strongest!
In my headcanon they divorced after 6 months when they noticed they dont know each other that well, and Sarah accepted Bowie back after a huge slap on the face, they lived happily ever after
edit: a slap on his face, in case it wasnt clear enough
@@MRDRK1
It's my headcanon, bro. As in "mine not yours"
I do prefer Sarah over the princess
На самом деле они развелись после того, как Сара родила маленького, кентавра.😢 @@BranBal
@@paulgoughfire I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
You didnt mithril weapon reset for the stronger weapons. Thats a player mistake. The mithril weapons are great and theres guides for them
I actual did reset a few times but I wasn't willing to do more than that because if time constraints. If anyone is interested they can hit up gamefaqs or other walkthrough sites for that, it was beyond the scope of the video.
You should study better what weapons the dwarf can produce out of mythril. The best weapons in the game can be made except for Bowie’s Force Sword. HYou just have to reset a lot when the expected weapon doesn’t show up.
I thought I'd mentioned in the video that I'd reset a few times when having weapons made and didn't feel like doing it any more after getting normal ones time and again, it just wasn't worth it. When I eventually do the "big" video that'll be a compilation of all these, I'm going to update some info in this SF 2 video with a few corrections, though.
This is a playthrough and not a retrospective 🤷🏼♂️
Not exactly a perfect setup since several characters didn't get promoted to their special classes & none of them appear to be armed with the custom made Mythril weapons, but I guess this video was for illustrative purposes.
Yeah, as I mention in the videos here none of these are "complete" playthroughs or serious guides, they're just to have some fun, talk about what things were like when they came out, relive the story, and give them a quick review at the end to discuss how playable the games still are today.
36:00
This is lazy, inaccurate, inconsistent, and really not informative. As someone who played this nearly upon release I can honestly say I find this retrospective insulting. Total shame because the voice over and editing is great. Swing and a miss for me.
OK... What was lazy and inaccurate about it?
Idk man, I kind of really enjoyed it
Yeah there are some things he missed like Skreech, Eric, Tyrin, and Randalf, as well as the shop in Ketto and the fact that the mithril weapons are indeed more powerful than the weapons he has, not to mention the fact he didn't use any of the promotional items to promote characters to better classes, and the secret fight after the credits, but these really don't make that much of a difference and I still really enjoyed the video nonetheless.
It's not a 100% walkthrough you weirdo