Collection essentials #327: Shining Force III: Scenario 2 (Saturn)

Here we have part two of Shining Force III, tragically stuck in Japan. Speaking of that, I want to start this post by mentioning that this game (the very copy shown in the photo) was the very first game I ever imported from Japan, in December of 2004, which as of this writing is coincidentally just a month shy of 20 years ago. The possibility of importing Japanese games was first planted into my head by my late friend Brian Castleberry who I saw posting on the warppipe.com forums. I had previously been aware from sources such as Nintendo Power magazine that there existed cool games that only came out in Japan. And then I saw Brian talking about how the Saturn has a lot of cool Japanese games worth importing. And then I found out that two thirds of Shining Force III is games that have to be imported, and being a big fan, that was enough to get me to pull the trigger. Twenty years and well over 300 acquired Japanese games later, the rest is history. 

While this is part two of the story, it doesn’t pick up where the first game left off. Instead, you play as a different character in their journey which took place at the same time as the events of the first game. This time, you’re playing as Prince Medion of the empire, son of Emperor Domaric, who gets kidnapped early in the story. In the first game you met Medion at a few different points in the story. Playing from his point of view is really cool because you get to see more of what was going on in the world during the first game.

When you beat Scenario 1, you are prompted to save your game. And when you start a new game in Scenario 2, you may load this data if you wish. This is very cool because a lot of things you do in the first game affect stuff in the second game. For example, there are characters you can recruit in Scenario 2 only if you find and help them in Scenario 1. If you didn’t open a treasure chest in Scenario 1 and get to the same place in Scenario 2, you’ll have a chance to open it then instead. It’s very cool!

One odd thing about these games is the silent protagonists. When you met Medion in the first game, he talked like any other normal character. But when you actually play as him, suddenly he’s silent. And when you meet the main character of the first game, Synbios, he speaks as normal. For some reason the developers felt that whoever you’re presently controlling should be mute, but I don’t think it works very well for this sort of game. There’s a place for silent protagonists, but this isn’t it.

The basic gameplay is the same as Scenario 1, so I won’t recap how it works. I have to say that they did an excellent job of making the battles of this game totally distinct from those of Scenario 1, so the game doesn’t feel like a repetitive rehash in the slightest. Like in the first game, I think the early part of the game is a weakness here. Last time I played these games, I didn’t feel like Scenario 2’s early stages felt as “sloggish” as the previous game’s did at times, but I did think that they were FAR too easy. For a while in Scenario 2, if you have any idea what you’re doing, you shouldn’t feel like you’re in any real danger at any point. But that does change later in the game, thankfully. Also, when you beat the game and start a new playthrough, you do unlock a difficulty option with several harder difficulties available. It’s just too bad you can’t access that from the start. Last time I played these games, I came away thinking that Scenario 2 is a little better than Scenario 1. This makes sense, too, when you consider that this is when the story gets especially interesting thanks to the depth provided by seeing events unfold at the same time from a second point of view.

When I first played Shining Force III in 2004 going into 2005, thankfully most of the scripts of the Japanese entries had been translated and posted online at shiningforcecentral.com, so the language barrier was surmountable. I didn’t have a laptop at that time, so I actually had to print all the pages off of the computer and bring them up to my room for when I played the game. Thanks to my parents for allowing me to use so much paper and ink!! In modern times, there are full-on English translation patches that you can apply to the Japanese games, which is even better. That’s how I played the games last time.

Stay tuned for next time when I cover the conclusion to the trilogy!