Shining in the Darkness is one of my favorite RPGs - love me a good dungeon crawl - and this is a remarkable direct sequel. It provides enough context to be a stand-alone game, while both serving as a direct sequel to Shining in the Darkness, and as a prequel to Shining Force III. It's an remarkable balancing act but they pull it off.

Entirely first person, we can now explore towns, castles and other interiors in addition to the dungeons and caves. Greatly expanded in scope, there are now numerous caves, shrines and other dungeons to explore, a contrast from the monolithic labyrinth of Darkness. Similar to the Shining Force games, the environments are packed with secrets that encourage and reward exploration, and with so much more area to explore, there's a lot more to find. Notable is the unusual but brilliant fairy system that serves as our preemptive combat strike, rewarding bonus XP and gold.

The dungeons are all very unique and superbly designed. Every one has new ideas packed into them, from finding new passageways and boats in the waterways, to having to weave navigating on the ceiling and floor in another. And the music is simply incredible throughout. A couple of personal favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEfows0mD6A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwY1csmv4gs

The quest is long, tough, varied and packed with great characters and ideas. I love that while there are more party members than you can have active at once, even those that did not participate in battle will level up with you, so no one falls behind. You never get locked into a core set and can adjust the party on the fly as needed - which is frequently needed due to the very challenging boss fights.

I love everything about this game. The lone major flaw in the performance: combat in particular suffers from frequent slow down. With some additional optimization, the game would run so much better. Still, this is one heck of a great dungeon crawl and worth playing any way you can if that's your jam.