Y'know, coming back to review this and seeing that this had also been released on mobile at some point kind of helped me solidify the issues I was having with this game & why it just wasn't clicking. It seems overly simplistic to just say "yeah this feels like a budget mobile game that for some reason was on the PS2 and had a little more production value behind it", but that really does boil down a lot of my issues here.

The combat is braindead easy, and this is coming from someone who usually doesn't mind if a game is on the easier side. The problem is, it does feel like "click on the thing to make it go away", so there has to be a lot of feedback issues that keep this from being satisfying (compare this to the breakneck pace and instant gratification of the Ys series to get it more). A lot of the aesthetics & presentation are also pretty generic, with the centaur man & kangaroo merchants being the only real standout elements so far. I'd still try the other Shining Force games, but this one just totally failed to grab my interest.