Shining in the Darkness
playing on: Genesis
Year: 1991
Well after Fable III I wanted to go back to something old school yet not to involved. So I was thinking console since I am in the midst of Daggerfall. In the end I decided on Shining in the Darkness for the Sega Genesis. One reason is because I have the game and another is because I’ve already attempted to play it about 4 years ago but for whatever reason lost interest and gave up which is kinda odd cause I’m very much enjoying the game this time around. Shining is very much a “dungeon crawler” style game with really only 3 locals, the giant dungeon that opens up into new areas as the game progresses, the castle where the king is and the single town with your usual spots, the Inn, weapons and armor shops, potion store and church. This was an early RPG for the Genesis from 1991 and I like how its a pretty straight forward and simple dungeon crawler without being to hardcore. its nice if you want to experience the RPG sub-genre but arn’t ready for something along the lines of Wizardry.
The game starts out fairly standard with the king asking you to delve into the local dungeon after the princess is captured by the games baddy Dark Sol. So your asked by the king to fetch the princess from the dungeon and given 200 gold to equip yourself.
why he doesn’t send his royal army instead of one lone young knight to save his daughter who knows, perhaps he doesn’t really love her? at least give me all the money I need to prepare rather then a measly 200 gold.
To be honest upon entering the dungeon I’m a little impressed by the smooth 3d dungeon crawling. A pretty large part of the screen is a black border but I still feel the effect is done pretty well. As with all RPG’s I’m a level grinder. I tend to spend copious amounts of time leveling up and getting good equipment before preceding and that’s what I did here. I just stayed relatively close to the exit killing monsters for gold and xp and returning to town to save, rest and buy better equipment.
This isn’t a action first person dungeon crawler as the likes of dungeon master or eye of the beholder. Monster encounters are random and turn based which makes sense for a console game of this time. There’s not to much animation of the monster sprites, most of them just kinda shake when they attack but some have better animations to go with attacks. palette swapped monsters also begin to appear relatively early in this game. combat is simple with your standard attack, defend, run, use item options. There seems to be a random chance to surprise monsters and get first attack or be surprised as well as critical hits that do extra damage and critical fumbles which do no damage and waste an attack.
An early encounter with the redundantly named “Slimy Ooze”
The game can be a little challenging at first but once you’ve gained a few levels and bought some moderately decent weapons and armor the difficulty of the games seems to take a nose dive and you can wonder around the dungeon at will with little chance of being killed if your half careful. Theres not much of a auto mapping feature in this game and I hate drawing maps so I just sort of used memory and wandering to navigate my way deeper into the dungeon. It seems puddles on the floor and torch sconces on the wall are indications your going the right way. New and stronger monsters are also a marker though I had no trouble with any of them. Eventually I came to what appeared to be a boss monster Kaiserkrab.
because the word king in other languages is just more awesome, also spelling C words with a K
At level nine he wasn’t much of a challenge for me and after defeating him I got a beret or tiara or something like that. Its mostly a dead end at this point so I went back to the castle and the king comments that the tiara is his daughters and that it is proof she is deep in the dungeon but there’s a problem. To advance deeper into the dungeon and save the princess you have to complete the four trials of knightliness or some crap to open the door to the true labyrinth. This is typical RPG BS. Now at least your given two more party members in town A witch whose more an offensive spell caster and a priest whose more of a healer though in this games there spell selection does overlap to a degree with both being able to cast heal and some other stuff. They start off at Level one but with some level grinding its insanely easy to get them up to your current level.
So your given the Dwarven Key by a guy at the castle that opens a door that’s relatively close to the dungeon entrance that you could not open before. Eventually I found stairs leading down to the “trial of strength” and after about a half hour of random wondering I found a guy that had entered the dungeon and needed help to get out. you get the option to take or leave him, I being a nice guy took him. He doesnt show up and you cant see his states but every once in awhile during combat he will randomly attack for decent damage which I thought was nice. A little after that I came to this.
No boss or anything, I guess the trial is just navigating the maze and getting to the end. Next I will be tackling the trial of courage so will have to see how that goes but as of now its not very challenging yet I find the game vibrant in colors and sort of a refreshing and unique experience. I cant put my finger on it since at first it seems very derivative but I have to say it does seem to have its own style that I enjoy.
Random Battles: my life long level grind 