Just a quick update while I wait for the workman to come fit our catflap…

I’ve added two new pieces of fanart today, one to the Shining Force II section and the other is the first piece of Shining Tears fanart.

On Saturday, I finally received my Shining Tears DX package from Rei – arigatou! 😀

So, today I’ve spent a bit of time prepping some updates here – I’d do more, but unfortunately I have to work this afternoon. Ah well, it pays for the Shining habit I suppose 😉

Head along to the Video Archives for several new Shining Tears movies & even one from Shining Force PS2, ripped from the Shining Tears Bonus DVD. Note that for some reason, no matter what program I used to rip them, the aspect ratio seems a little out. Also, the TGS Stage Event video came out at almost 200MB, as it’s over 20 minutes long – I have therefore chopped this into 8 smaller files for people to download and watch in a row. Hopefully the smaller files will help out dial-up users out there.

I’ve also updated the Shining Tears Collectables section with new pictures and information – more to come!

The Shining Tears artwork/covers page is now getting underway with over a dozen scans, and there’s also one picture now available in the Shining Force PS2 section. I’ll try to add some RotDD artwork soon too.

On an unrelated note, the Shining Force II Fanart section has also been updated – why not take a look and leave some comments?

Before I get started on my initial comments about the game, I’ve got a suggestion – I could do a live demo of the game on YIM! if people are interested, with my webcam & mic, so you can see a bit more of the game. Whaddya think?

Right, now for what you want to hear…

I’d like to start by saying that I’ve made no attempt to cover my excitement about Shining Tears, since I first saw pictures of it. As time passed, I continued to look forward to the release, and started to notice many similarities to the Shining Soul series, from what was written on the Sega Japan website. I’ve not let that put me off, as although Shining Soul was a dreadful game for the most part, Shining Soul II offered vast improvements and was quite an enjoyable little game 🙂

So, what does this have to do with Shining Tears? Anyone who’s played Shining Soul II (and, to a degree, Shining Soul) will find this game quite familiar. Just as Shining Soul II made improvements and changes over the original, so Shining Tears makes improvements and changes over Shining Soul II. The fact that Nextech developed the games does seem to support my theory that Shining Tears is, in essence, Shining Soul III.

From the map with marked locations to jump to, to the shop systems, smithy and gameplay style, this game says Shining Soul III all over it! Go up a level, and you’re rewarded with points to apply to your statistics and to increase your skills – sound familiar? Kill monsters and win their information cards – getting the idea?

Okay, I don’t need to go on and on about that similarity now, when you play it, you’ll see what I mean if you don’t already.

What? You want to know more? …

The loading times seem to have been exaggerated by other sites, claiming loads of up to 15 seconds – I’ve yet to experience anything over 10 seconds, and for the most part it’s far less. A little annoying when occasionally the loading time is longer than the scene which follows (perhaps due to my skipping most of the text quickly, I can’t read most of it anyway ;)). No real complaints in the loading department though, and it’s not as if the loading screens are dull to look at either.

Speaking of looking, the game really does look gorgeous. My other half is insisting that the landscapes aren’t really 3D, but I’m convinced they are – SFIII style, with 3D maps and 2D sprites made to look 3D. It’s quite stunning IMHO, and feels very Shiny indeed. The characters do not seem to have such oversized heads as was originally thought, they look almost Shining Force III style to me too. Other graphical effects so far such as spells have been nothing short of impressive (though remember, I’ve not played many ‘modern’ games in the last few years, so I don’t have much comparison there), and the display of full character portraits during conversations really adds to the feel of the game – where sprites are unable to convey much emotion, the animated portraits give us an idea of how the characters are feeling even if we can’t understand most of the text.

As if that wasn’t enough, many of the cut-scenes feature full spoken dialogue, giving us more of an indication of the mood and a feel for the characters themselves. Aurally, the game is enjoyable and maintains that Shining feeling – the music always fits the mood, and is of a good quality IMHO. Kudos to the composer!

In terms of gameplay, as I previously noted, it is mostly Shining Soul style – areas to battle hordes of monsters, cards and items to collect & identify. The story though seemingly quite lengthy, given the cut-scenes, does seem to be fairly basic, as with the Soul games. Obviously without being able to understand more of it, I can’t really comment further on that. Playing the game itself is quite simple once one gets to grips with the controls – I did find the first hour quite tough as I strived to determine which button performed what action, and tried to remember them! So far I’ve yet to find much of a challenge beyond mastering the controls – the enemies are not very smart (they seem IMHO to have taken a leaf out of Shining Soul’s book, rather than Soul II), and quite easy to defeat, and the areas I’ve fought in so far take less than 5 minutes each to complete. Presumably as I progress through the game, the areas will become more expansive and be in close succession rather than a 5-minute cutscene & exploration apart.

Having gathered my allies and fought with each of them in turn, I seem to now be able to choose my fighting partner for each area. I must say it’s really quite novel controlling two characters at once (I’ve yet to try the 2 player mode with Lee) – takes some getting used to, and makes the game far easier than it already seems to be, but is very good fun 🙂 Start charging your partner up to do a link attack, run Xion behind enemy lines to acquire a target and then let it rip – kerrrrpowww! Top stuff 🙂 Or, if you prefer to leave your partner running around and attacking by his or herself, you can do that instead, but I do feel they provide a little too much support in this role, stealing kills & experience… but failing to pick up the items and coins dropped by the enemies.

After playing for a couple of hours today I found it hard to put the game down long enough to write this introduction! I guess that’s not a bad sign 😉

I feel I should be writing far far more, but I think it will have to wait until I’ve played more of the game. If you have any specific questions, feel free to send them via the SFC Mailbag, or post at the forums and I’ll do my best to answer.

Those of you wanting a new Force style game may find yourselves disappointed by Shining Tears, those who enjoyed the Soul games will likely enjoy this no end.

To whomever it is at the University of Manchester (user we056a at the Halls of Residence) that decided to waste 5 minutes of his or her life trying to throw the results of the most recent poll about half an hour ago – get a life :p Really, I mean – you’re at least 18, have you really not outgrown this kind of behaviour?

38 results all from the same IP within a few minutes of each other – and all for the negatice option which had so far had no votes? Gimme a break, I ain’t that stupid. I’ve now counted your vote as 1, as it rightly should be. I suggest you don’t try it again, I don’t want to have to block the entire of Manchester Uni from SFC 😉

…

Now, in Shining News – thanks go to SFCer Lindsay for posting the Shining Tears launch day sales figures, as posted originally at Gamefront. It seems Shining Tears did really quite well, with sales figures comparable to the latest GBA Zelda game and beating the new Dead or Alive title. As you can see from the figures below, it was almost a total sell-out!

Great news indeed! …and with a little luck, my copy will be arriving in the next couple of days.

This morning I receiced a rather nice parcel from Japan 🙂

No, not my Shining Tears DX set, but a selection of other items my friend Rei helped me to acquire from Japan 🙂 I’ve updated my collection and also added a couple of new items to the Shining Tears collectables section.

As you can see from the picture to the right, it was a good selection of items – amongst which is a DVD from TGS. The DVD contains the two promo movies shown at TGS in September, in lovely high quality 🙂 I have of course ripped and uploaded these for you to enjoy – check out the Shining Tears Videos section!

I was hoping to add a few more scans and the like today, but my father dropped by earlier with my newly-modded PS2 🙂 Unfortunately I’m not sure it’s working properly and without a PS2 import to check it with, I can’t be sure for a while without trying a backup to test it – so that’s what I’ll be toying with for the next hour. If it doesn’t work, I’m going to need to find somewhere in the UK which can fix it or re-chip it – if any of you know where such a place might be, please do contact me!

I’ve just added several new Shining Tears items to the collectables section of the site. There certainly are a lot of them now!

Within the last half hour, I received an email from the current manager of the Shining Force Webring (which was originally mine around 8 years ago, but ownership was transferred by Webring to another user when I was unable to log-in for about a year), offering to return full management abilities to me. Within 24 hours the Shining Force Webring will be back with its true owner, and I’ll be able to sort out that distorted navigation graphic. So, if you have a Shining site and want a bit more exposure while also creating a sense of community, feel free to join up – I promise the button will look a lot better when it’s back to 88×33 😀

Finally, on a more Shining-related note, I’ve babelfished the Sega Voice Tony Taka interview, and it’s quite an interesting read… if a little garbled by the babelfish 😉 Nonetheless, it gives enough of a gist of the meaning to be able to enter the contest.

I particularly enjoyed reading about the expression on Dark Xion’s face, and was quite surprised to learn that Tony’s favourite character design is that of Blanc Neige… I’d’ve expected Elwing, since he seems to draw a lot of pictures of her. An interesting point too about the difficulty of designing characters that would work in the chibi style, given all the special effects which would be applied to the sprites, such as glows etc.

Go see if you can make some sense of it too, and enjoy 🙂

That’s right folks, at last another big contest here at SFC – lots of great prizes to be won, so check it out and start pondering on that riddle!

On another note, today I’ve emailed all of the gaming shops in Japan that were involved with the Shining Tears promotional items, in the hope that one of them will be willing and able to contribute a telephone card or suchlike as a future contest prize. Hopefully with 9 shops contacted, plus Lik-Sang, Sega Japan, Sega USA & Sega Europe, someone will come through for us 😉

Speaking of promotional items, SFCer Aspartate posted some news at the forums today, regarding a new collection of Sega toy capsules in Japan. Apparently, the new set of Sega Gals figurines will include one of Elwing! Have a look at the pic here. Looks good, ne? I know Lik-Sang stocks prize capsule toys, so I’ve asked my contact there whether they’re likely to get these in, when they’re launched in Feburary next year. If so, we should all be able to get some and hope for an Elwing figure or two 😀

Now, go have fun with the contest 😉