“Having inherited the title of Knight of the Realm from your dead father, you must now prove your worth and liberate the Princess from the clutches of Pazort. This dynamic action adventure delivers hours of hand-on combat on a huge playing field packed with weapons, power-ups and secrets.”
  – from the Shining Wisdom box.

I’d class Shining Wisdom as an Action RPG, nothing like the other games in the series – in as much as it’s not turn based. Many people consider it to be a Zelda clone, and to be honest I never had the desire to play through it. However, in the last year or so I’ve given this game a chance and have thouroughly enjoyed it. So, it’s not the same style as the rest of the games – it’s still fun to play, has nice sound and graphics and fits into the Shining world and storyline.

Kazin and Sarah show up together (called Sara and Parn in the US translation), and there are mentions of Stormsong (Thornwood, “Shining in the Darkness”). I’ve heard that Working Designs have a habit of butchering translations, and it looks like they’ve done the same to Shining Wisdom. The Japanese version clearly says that the game is set in Parmecia (the same land as Shining Force II, III and Final Conflict)… WD translated this to Palacia. How Parumekia can be translated to Palacia is beyond me, it would seem would they did no background work on the other games before working on this one. However, this isn’t the case – as it turns out, Sega themselves have the rights to the real names used in the games, and as such WD were forced to use their own variations. Thus, the European release is more accurate in translation when compared with the Japanese version… but the US version is still very enjoyable.

It’s often considered the “black sheep” of the series, but if you give it a chance I’m sure you’ll agree that such a judgement is far from fair. A most enjoyable game and I’d recommend you try it if you have the opportunity.