In the 90’s gamers were blessed with many great Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs); some might even go so far as to say that this was the defining era of the genre. Since then there have been many games that have flipped the JRPG on its head and really contributed something new and unique to it. Series such as Brave Fencer Musashi, Legend of Mana, Xenogears and Grandia are ones that many herald as the group that really put the term ‘action’ into the genre. Since then gaming has changed a lot and many improvements to the Action JRPG sub genre have been made. Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom, developed by the new studio Enigami, is trying its best to make those changes but also bring back a familiar and comfortable feeling, despite ultimately being a very mediocre game.
Shiness is a game that is basically about what every classic JRPG is about: you have a main character who has some weird quirk in a world with a bunch of warring nations. Who is going to be able to stop these huge armies? Nobody except our main hero, Chado. He’s joined by more party members the further you progress through the story which is standard fare for the genre.
What really makes Shiness shine in a sea of similar titles is its combat system, which at its core is a fighting game. It isn’t a complex fighter but it’s enough of one that it makes the combat feel somewhat fresh. The combat system is a lot like Okami where if you encounter an enemy a barrier surrounds you and your opponent, you fight them, beat them, then the barrier disappears.
I’m admittedly a huge fan of JRPG’s and fighting games. When I saw that the game was advertising itself as a nostalgic revisit I was more than ready for the game to release, then Enigami showed off the combat and I was sold. The thing that is the most disappointing about Shiness is the fact that all of its parts sound good on paper but the execution as a whole makes for a very lackluster and grating experience. When you’re in the overworld the characters walk cycles and running animations are actually really enjoyable to look at but everything else around Shiness is lacking the polish that the animations have. The story crawls at a snails pace and the voice acting is on the level of games that came out at the time voice acting just became a thing in modern games. Every character is one note and they never have any character moments that would of really made the characters and their adventure more explosive and fun. The game is played way too save on almost every level and it just comes across as being bland, despite its’ graphics being bright, colorful and charming.
Shiness is the brain child of Samir Rebib, the creative director of the game and author of the comic they released alongside it. Rebib has gone on record to state that everything within the world has been inspired by Dragon Ball, Secret of Mana, Sonic, Lord of The Rings and Star Wars. Samir Rebib started planning and developing the idea of Shiness as a small child and it shows. The story is bland and predictable. The dialogue is not well written, with the characters constantly making jokes or falling into anime tropes like being loud and aggressive for absolutely no reason. The story moves at a glacial speed because most of the dialogue is just basic filler. You can trace a line from almost every character in this game back to someone in fiction or anime. The world and the idea of Shiness is grand and interesting but the execution doesn’t match up to the idea.
Enigami is based in France and the cultural differences that make their way into the game are glaring; maybe it can be chalked up to the studio not being able to afford a translator, but most of the dialogue feels like it was run through Google Translate and had all life and wit drained out of it. Besides the story being bland and lackluster, the world is bland and models look like a Playstation 2 era game. While the cut-scenes are aesthetically pleasing, the main world and gameplay graphics come across as jarring.
I wouldn’t say that Shiness is a horrible game, but it is an inherently flawed one that was made by a novice team. So many little details were glanced over — and many big ones as well. From the gameplay all the way down to the story, it seems like they were happy with being mediocre and kept it that way. The whole package is very unassuming and bland, even though the wrapping paper is actually beautifully enticing. The meat and potatoes of Shiness is just not there; there’s nothing to grasp onto, nothing new to be excited and fun to tell your friends about. It’s just meh on almost every level. If someone really wants to play a JRPG and they’ve played literally every other one on the market, I don’t think they would be disappointed with their time spent with Shiness, but I do think they would be mildly disappointed with their experience.
This game review is based on a Steam copy sent to SideQuesting by the publisher.
No Comments