RPG 142 beaten: Shining in the Darkness

Sounds like a personnel problem.

OK, well last time we left off on Shining in the Darkness I had finally made it to the final dungeon tower place and was making tentative expeditions and doing some basic level grinding. If you read my last post you would of read at one point I was getting confused because I kept ending up on level 1 from level 2 but I finally realized it was all level 1. apparently that scene I thought was so cool of the spiraling walkway going up was really just going around on the same level taking me to a different section of the same level and the door I was going through was just leading me back the the first section. Finally on floor 3 I came across chest that had the “light helm” which is part of a set of the main characters ultimate armor I kept hearing about. also I started finding a lot of mithral chunks here and there which I used to start making nice weapons/armor for everyone. On floor 3 the difficulty really starts to ramp up with some tougher enemies and some fairly long levels that seem to go on and on. Thankfully the leveling becomes extreme on these floors of the tower since the monsters start giving out ridiculous amounts of XP and gold. I was seriously leveling my characters like mad and the floors become increasingly less frustrating to navigate because of this.

Also at this point I found out rather randomly that you should keep checking up at the castle since new events develop such as the arrival of….Gandolf?

Mervyl or whatever his name was is actually Dark Sol in disguise and he was formally Gandolf the Greys, oh excuse me “XERN’s” apprentice who now wishes to revive a long sealed evil in the dungeon tower. Also your given a rather handy medallion that you need to use at any gold fountains in the dungeon and it acts as a kind of teleport to the fountain which saves A LOT of time and energy.

I did finally make my way back to the skeleton guy that was blocking my progress earlier and after being leveled nicely and reequipped I was able to defeat him with a little effort.

After that its not to far to the next level of the dungeon which is not really anywhere near as long as the former level. Difficulty also seemed to be actually dropping off with the extremely high leveling rate from the massive XP amounts from defeated monsters.There’s really not a whole lot to say about this section as it really just involved pushing forward as far as I could, looking for chests, leveling and specifically looking for light weapons. The sword of light is behind a Grim Wall on level4 which I kind of randomly stumbled across. thankfully there weren’t a whole lot of those holes in the ceiling that I had to use the rope to investigate. Its a cool thing and I did like that but I don’t make maps or anything so I’m always concerned about being sidetracked and getting lost. Eventually you come across the princess which I found interesting because I assumed you wouldn’t be rescuing her till after the final boss is defeated and she explained that the “Dark Knight” has the key to release her. After pressing forward a bit more I was confronted by said knight as I was moving down the hall near the cell.

Its actually kind of a cool part as he walks toward you and then delivers his obligatory monolog. The battle music even changes for the fight which is a nice touch. The fight wasn’t to hard for me and after inflicting a certain amount of damage the helmet falls away revealing….

M. Night Shyamalan? WHAT A TWIST!!!

No, actually its your father who was possessed by an evil sword given to him by Dark Sol and your forced to kill him……but seriously. I mean look, maybe its the TV but I’m playing this on a fairly decent CRT tube with a S-video modded Genesis and that character looks obviously of Indian or African decent. Now since your his son that would make you one of the only Indian or African main characters in an RPG I can think of. Could Shining in the Darkness be the first game to feature an Indian main character? well I don’t know cause I did absolutely no research on this.

After this startling revelation your given the “cell key” which not only opens the Princesses cell but also can be used to open all those cells I’ve come across over the course of the game. massive backtracking YAY! I will admit at this point I used a map online to remember where the cells were since I was in no mood to spend the next several hours combing through the entire previous dungeon looking for cells. Only one really holds a vital item, the gloves of light or gauntlet or something for your hands and i think it was on level 3 of the tower. Though some powerful things like Mithral ore can be gotten in those chests.

Pressing on I came to stairs and ascended to the final top level. The final level looks a little different with a eyeball motif wall paper but its pretty straight forward. The enemies here were pretty tough at first but again, with the insane leveling taking place its just a matter of time before they become more of an annoyance. Eventually I did find the final light armor piece the armor of light and at this point your supposed to go back to the castle and get the tears of the water elemental or something from the princess. The guy at the inn also tells you to put the vial in the multi colored fountain on the final level to become the “hero of light” and get a power boost. I don’t know if this is necessary to beat the final guy. It seems like something that can be fairly easy to miss and I only knew about it cause as I was looking up the whole “places to use the cell key” I accidentally read that little spinet so whether I would of discovered that on my own is anyone’s guess. At least its not to insanely obtuse to figure out like the actions in many other games and as long as you regularly talk to everyone I don’t think its to tricky.

These are Crystal Oozes, the obligatory slime enemies that are immune to physical damage but take small amounts of damage from magic and lucky only have 4 or 5 HP. As you can see I am all most wiped out but this is where I discovered something. At this level you can pretty much run from any encounter. I try in these games to never run since I covet all the gold and XP I can get but from this I learned that at least at my current level (52-55) you can run from every encounter. This made going back to town, healing and then making the speed run to fight the final boss really easy since needless random encounters weren’t chipping away at my health/magic points except for the rare surprise encounters.

Finally I encountered the final boss the dreaded Dark Sol

No, not really strange at all.

At first hes not to hard at all, mostly using magic attacks untill…

The also obligatory second final boss crazy ass monster form.

Here he gets buff and sprouts monsters for arms. Hes actually pretty tough and tends to spam a mass “demon breath” attack that hurts everyone for a lot of damage. I actually died fighting him the first time and had to trek all the way back for a second battle. Keeping everyone healed with heal 4 was vital and I had the mage pound away with Bolt when I could.

My second battle with Dark Sol lasted maybe 15 minutes and he was soundly defeated. This was a simpler time when end bosses only has two forms as opposed to 5 and the last battle was 15 minutes as opposed to an hour. I will admit the ending was a bit anticlimactic but this was expected. You just kind of go back to the castle and made a Knight via some text and then.

Shining in the Darkness was a really fun game that I think hit a sweet spot and I really enjoyed it. I was expecting a straight up old school plain jane dungeon crawler and that is what I got in a way but they game did surprise me many times with its on unique touch. The world is pretty limited but it didn’t have to be expansive and I enjoyed how it kind of fell into an aria that it was challenging but not TO challenging…it was old school and archaic but not TO archietc. I will say on the challenge part I think I would of enjoyed a little bit more of a challenge, this may of been achieved by toning down the huge XP amounts granted in the later section of the game. I like how it offered short cuts via things like the medallion to get back to sections of the dungeon you have already slogged through but at the same time hated the backtracking you had to endure with the mystic rope and cell key. All in all it was a fun game and I really enjoyed playing it.

 Year: 1991

Platform: Genesis

Length: (2/3)

Difficulty: (2/3)

The Grade

B

Game World – Shining in the darkness is a first person dungeon crawler and as such only features one town and a castle area. that said what little game world it does have it does very well. The monsters are interesting., the dungeon/tower is well done and not overly confusing But the game world is very confined. Grade: C

Controls – the menu system is easy to navigate and easy to understand. Grade: B

Game Play – I think this game gets it about right with both the difficulty curve also the game does not overstay its welcome which being a pure dungeon crawler that can be a tricky thing to pull off. Grade: B+

Plot – The plot is a little over simplistic which some generic not so memorable bad guy kidnapping the princess with only you, the unlikely hero able to delve the dungeon depths to save her and vanquish evil. pretty typical and forgettable Grade: C-

Graphics/Sound – sound is pretty good. the graphics are a little primitive for the genesis but the colors are all very vibrant. Grade: B

Protagonist (Main Characters) – You and your party of three are pre made as standard for console RPG’s. The main character is a silent protagonist but your two companions though not given much development are given a bit of development. It doesn’t seem like much but I think it works for this game world. Grade: C

NPC’s, Antagonist (main villain) – being a dungeon crawler there’s not a lot of character development but for the scope of this game I think the characters work well. there some good NPC interaction in the castle and town and everyone has their own personality’s. Grade: B-

Weapons/Armor/Items/Magic – The number and type of items and equipment in Shining are very standard for this type of game from this period. You have swords and axes, cure potions and cure spells. overall it would be C but I think the limited crafting mechanic from finding pieces of mithral and other materials helps as well as the idea that every once in awhile special items pop up for sale at the various shops making buying items a nice surprise at times. Grade: B

Enemies – The dungeon is populated with a host of interesting and unique monsters. Its breaks up the usual rat, goblin ect ect with new and sometimes bizarre creatures. Some of the new monsters are a bit humorous but it become to comical to ruin the mood of the game. Grade: B

Stability – N/A console

 

Shining in the Darkness: entry 3, the cave of wisdom

Well, I was planning to make a final post declaring I had beaten the game but its been turning out to be longer and more challenging then I thought. That and my work scheduled for the past month has been crazy and I’ve been very busy. When I last left off I was getting ready to tackle the “Trial of Wisdom” which was the last trial before entering the main and final part of the dungeon. I can say the trial of wisdom is longer and more annoying then the previous parts. At times it felt like it just went on and on and on….It also introduces the annoyance of pit traps. Luckily there’s only about two sections of the trial that are littered with pit traps and right before them you can recover maps from chests that pretty clearly tell show you the position of the pits.

I did eventually fight my way through the trial. The monsters are definitely harder but if your leveled well its not to bad though this part is a little mazier then the last trials. So after completing the trial of wisdom your told at the castle that the dungeon proper has opened up and you assess it from the original dungeon way back at the location you first battled KaiserKrab and found the princesses head thing…I forget, was it a tiara? Anyways its about this point in a game that I check a little online to see if I missed anything. Yeah some will think of that as cheating, that’s fine. I’m not a 100% completionist but I do like to get in as much of a game as I can at times, especially if I liked it and this involves doing secret bonus dungeons and fighting super hidden bosses. unfortunately this things can be really easy to miss without help and sometimes the little puzzles to find them are ridiculous, I honestly wonder sometimes how people found any of that kind of stuff before the internet…hint magazines I guess. Anyways I don’t look ahead or anything just usually skip to “bonus material” parts of FAQ’s. Anyways, The one thing I did apparently miss is finding that guy from the inn lost in the dungeon. I knew I was probably supposed to find him but I just didn’t know where he was. you don’t have to find him i think but I figured what the heck. Apparently i literally just missed where he was in the trial of wisdom.

BTW, after the trial of wisdom the Trader tent opens up in town and now some of the best and most expensive armor and weapons are available to buy. He can also craft very powerful armor and weapons via the mithril ore and dark blocks you find. anything crafted from the dark blocks though carries some sort of curse but it seems the Hex whip that can be created for Pyra is generally considered advisable to equip. After equipping the best for what I could afford I stormed off to the final four sections of the dungeon expecting a cakewalk. Now, granted I havnt put hours upon hours into this section I can say from my several expeditions that its significantly longer then any of the previous trials and it can tend to wear your magic reserves down.

Charizard! I CHOOSE YOU!

Its actually surprising how many turns and alcoves and stuff is in this section. The first level is easy enough but it seems to get significantly maze like on the second floor up with plenty of side passages and if you find the Mystic Rope in a chest you can use it to climb up the holes you see to get to upper levels or secret sections. As I was playing in the middle of the night last night I was on the second floor but kept finding myself back on the first. No, I didn’t fall down a pit trap. I honestly have no idea but I was really REALLY tired so I’m still not sure if its some teleportation trick or if I was just on automatic and lost my way several times. I did manage to randomly fumble my way to the third floor and encountered two bosses. One was a palate swap of the earlier jawbreaker looking turtle thing. The second was a massive skeleton thing that slaughtered me so I need to find my way back to him to progress. I do get the feeling that even with multiple trips I’m missing a lot of chests and stuff on these levels. Another danger is random encounters with Reapers and there palette swapped cohorts. These guys are not to powerful but they can cast desoul like the earlier Ghosts and that’s an annoying instant kill. There is a cool effect when moving up from the first to second floor that kind of impressed me.

You cant tell from the still but it rotates like your walking up a slight spiral. Well I thought it was cool anyways. So that’s where I am now, The end is in reach but its a slightly tougher climb then expected. I’m pretty positive the next post on this game will be that’s its been beaten though when I’ll have the time I don’t know. I’m still slowly chugging along in Daggerfall and I’ve mad a lot of progress but a lot of that is just guild quests to gain levels so I’m still trying to build some noteworthy material to write before another post on that.

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shining in the darkness: entry 2

I should start numbering these game entries rather then just adding witty subtitles. So I’m really liking this game. its just hard core dungeon crawly enough without stepping into crazy hard archaic level like say Wizardry. It seems to also have a very unique style which I think i mentioned earlier. The game just surprises me sometimes with its uniqueness and little touches since on the surface it looks like its going to be a primitive standard fair crawler.

Some of the enemies are genuinely strange.

 Anyways as we left off I was about to tackle the trial of courage which I did. At this point I started noticing some of monsters getting a little odd. You have your obvious monster staples like skeletons and slimes but then you have things like the above “clodhoppers”, cyclopes blocks and flamingo birds called ostricks that attack you as one big flock doing impressive damage that decreases by 10 for every bird you kill. spell options really open up as your magic users level as well. the peace spells lets you avoid random battles against lower level creatures which is nice to have. getting to the trial of courage is also when you will start to encounter this.

This stuff sucks because as far as I know you cant really avoid it. stepping on it takes away magic points which are essential to continuing mostly due to the cure spell and egress spell that works as an exit spell to instantly leave the dungeon. You also start running into monster a little later that can paralyses you which is annoying because some do it as a group attack hitting all your guys. its very rare everyone will get paralyzed but if it happens its game over regardless of how much HP you happen to have and yes, I have had my group wiped out just once so far though by the third trial things do get a bit harder and I have had several close calls. fortunitly if you die all is not lost as “Valkyries” take your remains back to town where your all resurrected. as far as I can tell all you lose if money and whatever progress you made. You seem to keep all your items and XP. Its not to harsh and tends to dilute any sense of accomplishment but it is a pain to trudge back through the dungeon.

Mushroom enemies always look questionable to me…..

The trial of courage was pretty straight forward and once getting out I’m informed at the castle I need the “orb of truth” to find the secret door to the 3rd trial of truth, oh boy. so I guess the orb is somewhere in the trial of courage dungeon. After going back in it was pretty easy to find and guarded by a weird turtle, dragon, jawbreaker thing that rolls by you and crashes in the hall before you fight it for the orb

 I’m not sure if I just missed this on my initial run through or if the section only opens up after you complete the trial. So anyways, with the orb you need to find the secret illusion wall in the north east of the dungeon. I assumed it must be in the back of the first level where the first battle with Kaiserkrab was and I was right. when you face the wall it glows oddly, use the orb and you have to fight Grimwall and wall monster that reminded me of Yellow Devil for the Megaman games for some reason, probably his eye. After wandering around the new section I came across the stairs leading down to the trial of truth. The enemies here do get a little harder and this is the first area that really tested me. I also died here do to an unlucky death and then paralysis on my remaining party. Also start to encounter these damn things in trap chests.

They pretty much suck because not only are they kind of tough but they use “desoul” randomly which is an instant death magic on who they target. Not much else new in the 3rd trial except so lame twister things that rotate you when you step on them but there not hard to figure out at all. Like the trial before I completed it but then learned I needed the Rune key to open the stone door that’s also near where you initially faced Kaiserkrab. That dose happens to lead to the forth trial the “trial of wisdom”. One annoying aspect is that even at this point the few weapons and armor pieces you find in the dungeon suck and by now I’ve bough all the best stuff at the shops. Randomly though it seems when I leave any of the shops the owner offers me a special item not usually on display. If you decline it goes under “deals” icon in the shop and is acc3essable to buy from there for that point on. Actually I don’t know if its random or based on your progress. One nice weapon I got this way is the thorn whip that’s equipable by Pyra the mage type of the group and weakest fighter. Its actually a nice weapon since it attacks all the enemies in any specific group you pick actually making her attack useful.

After wondering around and exploring the trial of truth again I found a chest i missed (or maybe wasn’t there until I completed it the first time?) that contained a false idol. That reminded me of a girl I found behind a locked cell near the end of the dungeon that required a false idol to open the lock. Ive come across quite a few chests behind locked gates that I’ve been unable to open and there starting to bother me.

 

Well, I rushed back to free her and wouldn’t you know it, she was actually a giant monster in disguise. What a twist! That’s a tad of sarcasm actually. On defeating the monster you get the rune key. This is about where I left off. I did go on an expeditionary mission into the cave of wisdom but I think I’ll leave that for the next update. I will say one annoying thing thats new in the forth trial, pit traps!

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New game: Shining in the Darkness

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.

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