Publisher: Sega
Developer: Media Vision, O-Two
Platform: PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC

Am quite confused about who published this title, because usually a game like this would come from Sega's subsidiary: Atlus Co. Sega mostly publishes western games, maybe they knew this wasn't Atlus type and I sort understood why that is. It's a little underwhelming. Oh wait, this series was published by Sega for a long time, guess they should have handed it to Atlus for its own good.

This will be my first Shining game played in the series that has spanned around decades. Shining Resonance Refrain, a remaster of the PS3 released game in Japan of the same name (without the Refrain subtitle) was released earlier in multiple ports to sell overseas and domestically.

After playing 6hrs into the game, I did find its charm and substance around both story and character. However, that doesn't contemplate at best for enduring the most outdated JRPG game I've played in 2018, you know you've done something wrong when a game like this is surpassed fully by Ni no Kuni 2. So let's into the nitty gritty of this Shining title.

Story

The game starts off with two special ladies; A princess in shining armor (Sonia) and a Dragoneer/Elf (Kirika) whose power is imbued from dragons based on the weapons they use. Two comes to rescue a human boy named Yuma Irvin who possess a necklace to become of one of the greatest dragons of legends, the Shining Dragon. (As if the word Shining wasn't redundant enough)

From that point on, you help the king and people of Astoria restore peace amidst an empire's opposition and quest to acquire knowledge about who the dragons are.

If you're well acquainted with Norse mythology, a lot of words like Ragnarok or Alfheim gets thrown around here and there; but in a more whimsy, Japan-esque depicted characteristics of its world. While on paper the story seems serviceable, the characters do a good job helping you feel for what's at stake. Each of them has their own unique and individual traits, making it tolerable enough to find and inquire each of them as you straddle along. Though few key plot elements are similar to say like Tales of Vesperia, Final Fantasy and Last Remnant, at least they weren't thrown in convoluted fashion.

Also the lore says Yumi is human, but his ears being pointy on the upper-end is leaving a few questions in my head. At least I can draw out the distinction by looking at Kirika's ears.

While the story is good, you won't get any big surprises or plot-twists that breaks its conventional norms.

Gameplay

The dialogue system is no different from the casual stuff you see in visual novel games sold in Steam. There aren't more broader complexity added to it other than just you clicking the button to proceed through each paragraph. Either you decide to hear the dialogues or just fast track through by reading and skipping voicework. During exploration, below you get pop-in single-line dialogues or conversation, some aspects lets you say yes or no leading to different outcomes only apparent during dialogue but yeah that's pretty much the gist of it.

As for combat, Shining Resonance is a third-person based hack'n'slash RPG. Playing this on the Xbox One, you basically have one button for normal attacks(B) and one for special attacks(Y) both of which drain stamina. You choose between 4 of your slotted force attacks to use during combat which drains your mana and that regenerates only by your physical attacks or you drinking potions.

While you progress through the game, you eventually get to access Yuri's dragon form which gives you access to some powerful combinations of attacks but only for limited use since he can go berserk and attack your teammates at some point.

Other aspects of the game include B.O.N.D diagrams which illustrates your relationship with your party members. As you engage more with them during camping or staying over inns, you create new type of bonds and it helps provide stat bonuses.

Then there's B.A.N.D, where you select which character will be leading the orchestra during combat to double one specific stat like physical damage or magical depending on which songs are selected. This type of action also has its own bar which fills after regenerating or everytime you fight oppositions in combat.

This game will takes somewhere between 20hrs or over to complete provided you do at least a good abundance of side quests. Though these quests aren't noteworthy as they're mostly chores done to the point of Ad Nauseam. But they do provide items like potions, aspects and help rank up your weapons. Which is interesting because even with all these stats to manage, it doesn't prepare you well enough for the boss fights that come along, especially thanks to the pacing issues on your main quest lineup.

Though it has interesting features and mechanics for a JRPG, these feel little undercooked and provide a minimalist experience to the point of little satisfaction. Also basic combat is outdated, like a decade old.

Of course these kind of criticisms don't seem fair to a game that's a remaster of a 2014 PS3 title, my issue with this title is the 50 USD price tag marginalize itself as a AAA title release; which it isn't.

Graphics/Technical

The character design and animation is impeccable, especially during combat. So nice fair amount of polish went into the both of them in order to represent each characters better. Though the environment is wholly different story, they lack depth, little coarse and they are cheap. It dampens the immersion factor to almost a crawl.

The level designs of each map further proves my case of how god awful it is. They're small in size compare to how other games gracefully have gotten theirs to be open world. You'll have to pass through entrances to go towards another map and so on, it gets tedious. Not to mention, there's fast travel option that lets you go anywhere or close to pinpoint locations. Except just only for one spot; Marga.

The game runs smooth as butter, then again there were instances were I faced stuttering but only for half a second. Your mileage might vary. And yes it runs on 1080p on the Xbox One as well the PS4.

Sound Design/Music

It has come to my attention that the sound quality in this game is subpar not because of how the audio sounds but the lack of finesse from it. I think the studio that produced these even though they were basic as can go, didn't give it proper high quality treatment. Otherwise it would have fit into this niche title nice.

The one notable plus side from the sound is the voicework, well the Japanese dub that is. English unfortunately falls under the category of terrible dubs much akin to few popular animes out there.

Also, yeah am not going to bring up the soundtrack. Opinions might vary for a full 5hr soundtrack, me am not upto snuff to judge it wholly. But surprising even for a niche title or that I don't have a clue how JRPGs soundtrack work.

Summation

What Shining needed was sort of a revamp, I mean it was locked away from overseas release for 4 years. Put together with couple of interesting mechanics in an RPG game, a good bevy of characters and other intricacies then just left to saddle with underwhelming (or should I say Mediocre!) basic combat, terrible graphics and sound design.

What Sega should have done is released the title for 30 USD at best, that way people can at least appreciate with ease of purchase for what this title tried to accomplish. It doesn't tick all the marks of a good JRPG but it's somewhere there.

6/10