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| Source // Emuparadise / Baffou |
The Sega Saturn has a kinda-3D turn-based tactics fantasy RPG, along the lines of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, so large in scale that it was split into three parts, only one of which made it outside of Japan and onto the 1001 list.
Its name is Shining Force III, and specifically Scenario 1, aka 'God Warrior of the Kingdom'.
I have a good history with the Saturn, aka 'not a chance in hell of being able to play this game'.
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| Source // Emuparadise / Baffou |
Frustrations
The Emulation Gods do not smile upon me whenever I dare to approach them with a Sega Saturn title, and Shining Force III is no exception - the best I got was a black screen, which was an improvement over the instant 'nope' with the first attempt, but certainly not playable.
So, what follows is based on a couple of YouTube reviews and a playthrough whose music appears to be ramping up to something... nope. It's just grand and dramatic music, okay then. Let's begin.
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| Source // Emuparadise / Baffou |
Fun Times
The Tactical RPG is a genre that does appeal to me, though me having the patience to play one is perhaps another story entirely. Shining Force III takes the format and frees it up a little. It's played with 2D sprites in a 3D map, and even though you have your usual grid-based combat movement, you have full control over the swing of the camera. No longer are you stuck with four choices of what wall to look at instead of your character, but you can actually see around the wall and make decisions of where to move accordingly.
If you elect to fight someone, your screen switches over to a 3D arena of sorts, where those combatants duke it out as fully fleshed out models, even with some (sometimes poor) voice acting. Whether constantly switching views every thirty seconds or whatever is good or taxing I don't really know, but a chance of scenery from a combat grid to a battle screen at least makes Shining Force III stand out from other games.
Also neat, if you're into systems which seem like a good idea but a probably annoying to manage is the buddy system, where your ever-growing party can form bonds with each other, should they move together or fight the same enemy. Keep those characters together and they'll work as an effective team. Split them up and they're not so good. Sounds interesting on paper, but in practice, I have no idea what it's like.
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| Source // Emuparadise / Baffou |
Further Frustrations
Listening to a playthrough as I write, there isn't a whole lot of variety in the music so far. Perhaps I'm asking for too much, and the technology probably isn't capable of vast amounts of music, but it's getting to the point where it's annoyingly repetitive already.
Is it bad music? No, I wouldn't say so. Memorable? I'm not really into music enough to know that for sure. It's not stuck in my head. Give it another few battles and we'll see if that changes.
Not paying full attention to this playthrough also means I have no idea what the plot entails, but I've done enough research to know that we're not getting all of Shining Force III. Having been split into three games, this might be a great set up, but where's the payoff? Do we get one at the end of however many hours of play this scenario gives us? I'll likely never know.
Final Word
I say that because, unless fortunes change and time becomes much, much more readily available to me, I'm not likely to play Shining Force III, and even watching it hasn't gone too well. It seems bright and bubbly, but not overly so. Fans of the genre and the fantasy setting will get something out of it, I'm sure, but for me, it doesn't seem like it's worth the effort.
Now, I'm basing that on failed emulation and watching the top of the iceberg's worth of video, which is not enough to declare it to be one to play or not. It seems to be trying something different and adventurous, but it happens to have been released in parts, on a console that few owned and fewer still are capable of emulating. Most of that is not Shining Force III's fault, of course, but that's the world we live in twenty years later.
Another unplayed game - the first in a while, I believe. We'll see what the future brings.
Fun Facts
A trial version of Shining Force III was released in Japan to test the waters and included different monsters, areas and voicework. This demo is itself sought-after by collectors for these reasons.
Shining Force III, developed by Camelot Software Planning, first released in 1997.
Version watched: Sega Saturn, 1998 (TheInnocentSinful, CGRundertow, Project COE)