the DOPAMINE RUSH when you start dogging on enemies after enemies and you start conquering a dungeon is unreal

@petro_sino I wanted to write a whole review on this but got hit with a bad case of "who cares, why bother," but yeah. The main loop here is clawing your way as far as you can, warping out when you've run your party down to the bone, then healing/buying gear for the next run, and that's very repetitious and dry but I'm into dungeon crawlers and I found it very satisfying. The final run to Dark Sol really makes you feel like you've earned dominance over this entire labyrinth, it's great.

does that mean you liked it

There's an alternate timeline where Shining Force got continually improved upon. We have to settle for decent.

WAIT I'M THINKING OF SOMETHING ELSE FUCK. Forgive me my brain is dying.

@Username8 What were you thinking of? I know Shining Force spun off from this but I only played CD, which I did not like and half of it didn't emulate properly so I never finished it, but I've also been told that's the worst one. I mostly played this to get it out of the way before Shining the Holy Ark.

@_YALP Yeah. A lot of reviews complain about how grindy it is, and they're not wrong, but I'm just a sucker for exploring creepy dark tombs and running into a bunch of weirdos.

Shining Force 2. Shining In The Darkness is right next to it in my Retroarch library and I'm brainrotted. Shining Force 1-3 are awesome because they have great SFX and tracks. You really feel like a badass when you kill someone or level up. Or you feel like shit when your main character dies. Good stuff that could have improved upon.