I tend to tolerate a lot of bullshit in the pursuit of expanding my appreciation of videogame history and its range of experiences, but my limit is definitely put to the test when I am forced to watch my character die to a crab in one hit after countless hours of tedious grinding.

Shining in the Darkness for the most part is able to replicate much of the strengths of a genre that over the course of its existence has successfully shown the value of brutal difficulty and the reptillian pleasure of watching your party slowly avoiding immediate death for a few seconds more within endless illusory 3D brick walled corridors where each step can spell disaster, but it ends up stretching the concept far too thin for its own good.

Having an atrocious unfair amount of grinding and an aggravating high enemy encounter rate, its hard to find much enjoyment in a game that seems to value wasting your time with stat numbers over engaging and strategic decision making, and the random enemy encounters à-la JRPGs remove the cat and mouse appeal provided by the perceptible threats present in games like Dungeon Master.

While the simple joy of drawing your own grid map never loses its charm, you do so because the brown samey looking labyrinth devoid of landmarks and puzzle solving, admitedly effective at making you feel lost, lacks the variety to make the grind any less unbearable. Which is why I eventually gave in and installed a hack halfway through to remove the grinding.

But doing so was to kill game, as removing the grind means you are just left staring at lifeless corridors dealing with the little color provided by enemies and the few and far between NPC encounters. Maybe there's a reason why Shining in the Darkness does not share the adoration its spin off series Shining Force enjoys. Maybe its that freaking crab. Play Legend of Grimrock instead.

Reviewed on Apr 07, 2022


Comments