A look back at: Shining in the Darkness

Yeah, should've started here.

Well, it's a Genesis dungeon crawler mixed in with RPG stuff. Pretty standard. You'd wonder why I would still be playing these kinds of games if they're so typical. Gotta give credit as usual though, they take Phantasy Star's first-person dungeon mechanic and apply it to the whole game. Whether it's the dungeon, the town, or the castle, everything seems to be first-person. And the dungeon, excuse me, labyrinth, is quite the labyrinthian trek. I decided to do some grinding here like I would other games.

And let me say one thing, Shining in the Darkness shares a lot in common with Dragon Warrior 2. Three characters, your main cannot use magic, the other two can, and one is a female. You can ambush or be ambushed, fight off several kinds of enemy groups. But Shining in the Darkness is substantially easier. The level curve isn't incredulous, you get both your party members really quickly, and the overall experience doesn't feel like a complete crapshoot. They try multiple things for this game, including special monster encounters, chest monsters, and the damn MP draining moss, plus having to exit the labyrinth just to see if the town or castle has anything new in store when that actually means having to go back to the first floor of the labyrinth in the game. And yet I soldiered on quite well when I played it, so not all is bad.

No real sidequests to speak of, just a medieval setting, a medieval plot, save that princess, take four trials to prove you can keep going, you're the son of a hero. Well, they try some old tricks though. Having Melvyl actually be Dark Sol was a good attempt, and they don't make it too obvious he's a traitor. A brainwashed father that you have to kill ends up being a tad more predictable, but not so much. And of course, Dark Sol having that final form. You know, I give a lot of flak for RPG cliches, maybe I should start making blog posts about that.