Shining Soul

Nintendo exclusive

Enter a world of magic and mystery, where your closest allies may sometimes turn out to be your worst enemies. Shining Soul puts you in the middle of a desperate struggle between the Dark Dragon and a group of warriors known as the Shining Fleet. In the final stage of the war, you can play one of four character classes: fighter, wizard, archer, or dragonute. Customize your character's color schemes, weapons, and armor, and then explore the world of Shining Soul either alone or with three of your friends.

Released: 28 March 2002
Platforms: Game Boy Advance Wii U
Genres: Action role-playing Role-playing
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Series: Shining
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Action Fantasy
Country: Japan
Age ratings: ESRB E CERO A
Languages: English, Japanese

About

Shining Soul is an action role-playing game for the Game Boy Advance. It is part of the Shining series. Shining Soul is a reboot of the Shining series. The game was followed by a sequel, Shining Soul II, in 2003. Both games were re-released in Japan in early 2006 as part of the Game Boy Advance "Value Selection".

Keywords

magic
grinding
leveling up
treasure chest
melee
wii u virtual console
fan translation - portuguese

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The game contains four main classes (Warrior, Archer, Dragonute, or Wizard) and several dungeons that involve hack and slash style fighting. The player can cycle between magic and weapons based attacks. As you progress through the game and gain levels, you're able to allocate points for your main stats, like strength and dexterity, as well as distribute skill points. Skill points allow you to raise weapon and magic proficiency levels and to raise the levels of other abilities that are class-specific, such as defense for the warrior, critical hits for the archer, and so on.

Story

The game takes place in the land of Rune, where a creature named Dark Dragon has gathered an army of Darkness in an attempt to bring about the destruction of the world. Your character is a hero of the Shining Fleet, which has trapped Dark Dragon and its five generals in the region of Runefaust and is now preparing to make a final assault on the enemy forces.

Reception

The game received "mixed or average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.

Craig Harris of IGN lamented, "As it stands, Shining Soul just feels like a shell of a design, good ideas and intentions spattered throughout boring action sequences." Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer said: "It says "RPG" in the genre box, but it's really not. Role-playing games are renowned for their engaging (or at least expansive) plot lines, diverse characters and locations, progressive combat and intricacy. Shining Soul is notable because it singularly fails to live up to anything that's come before it."