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> After checking out Shining Blade and Shining Ark
I have to admit the gameplay isn't the end of the world. Shining
Ark is another Shining game for the PSP with real time tactical
gameplay and anime art. Shining Ark is basically a spiritual
sequel to Shining Blade. The gameplay is more or less the
same but the game has new characters. The game begins with the main character
finding a girl who has one black wing. She is a strange sight to behold,
and stranger still she can summon animals by singing, but as always, darker
things await as you delve deeper into this mystery.
> There's a lot of voice acting which is probably one reason why Sega
would be less willing to translate this game.
> I'll try to be concise because I don't want to bore you with too many
details. The difference between Shining Ark in addition to
Blade and previous Shining Force games is Ark and Blade have
less characters and are played from a third person perspective (behind
and slightly above the characters), and instead of moving on a grid, characters
have an energy bar that shows how much more a character is allowed to move.
The bar will decrease while moving until it runs out and you are forced
to stop. Your movement is limited by how much energy a character has. You
move in real time until you run out of energy then swap to other characters
or the game swaps to enemies. When attacking, combat is paused to aim or
to synchronize attacks with other characters to strike at the same time.
> It's not bad. I can forgive Shining Blade and Shining
Ark for not being traditional Shining Force games
because they aren't. "Shining Force" Neo wasn't a Shining
Force game (it was an action/RPG with anime art) but it used the name as
if it was replacing the older games as if it was the next step in the evolution
of the series. That was bad PR, especially when Neo means new and/or modern
in Greek which implies that the original games are old and outdated. If
Neo hadn't been called Shining Force then fans might have
given it a chance. What was an otherwise good game was destroyed by its
own name.
> Shining Ark isn't pretending to be a Shining Force
game, as in a Force game. Like before, the game has anime characters drawn
by Tony Taka, the famous/infamous Hentai artist. The female characters
he draws easily grab your attention. They are distracting. I'm trying not
to look at the pirate woman's breasts. Shining Ark is clearly
a male fantasy but it's harmless because it's just *a game*. It's not real.
It's a male dominated genre, lest we forget, so what do people expect?
If you don't like it then don't buy it. The main character is male but
I'm not sure. He looks feminine. Mister Taka really needs to fix that. |
