Review #764: Shining Soul II

 Shine bright like a diamond.

 Alright, this is yet another 'old GBA games I used to emulate a lot back in the day', 'cause, y'see, Shining Soul II is amazing. I mean, I've more memories of the first game since it came out before and thus I got to play it more, but I never finished either game, until now.

 This is a dungeon crawler RPG like Diablo but with anime flair. When starting a new game you can choose your character class from between 8 different possibilities, were-animal creatures and humans round up the cast, fulfilling traditional classes such as Knight, Brawler, Mage, etc. Gender and Race are predefined per class, but you get about 8 different color palettes to pick from. The story... is pretty boring, pretty dull and actually takes away from the game. There are countless inane lines of dialogue that you can't fast forward, so even if you read the entire dialogue box, you still have to wait a few seconds before you can press the A button, which is incredibly annoying, I mean, the ending cutscene went on and on and on and on and on and I just wanted to unlock the new difficulty setting and character class. It's no stretch to say that the game is a bit hard so you might grind a few levels or stronger equipment by going back to previous dungeons.... except that the unskippable cutscenes and dialogue will play every time you re-enter the dungeon, which was a very sore spot when it came to playing the game. There's no good reason to have the same exact dialogue play out by bosses you already killed when you revisit an older dungeon. There are no excuses, this was an incredibly poor design choice, and the worst thing about the game by far.

 If you've ever played a loot-based dungeon crawler then you'll know exactly how this game plays. You run around dungeons defeating enemies who may or may not drop loot, some which you'll be able to equip right away, some which might require a trip back to town or an identifying scroll in order to use them. You'll need copious amounts of healing items if you aim to survive, and you could always use Wings to teleport back to town before continuing from the dungeon floor you just came from. Death, at least on the normal difficulty, seems like a slap on the wrist, a piece of equipped armor and any gold you might be carrying will drop, but upon respawning back on town an Angel will just fly you over the floor you were killed on, and you can just pick up whatever you left, dead monsters don't even respawn, so with enough patience you can get through any dungeon, although running out of money on a boss might be a problem.

 The A button attacks, which can be charged, and the B buttons uses whatever item you have selected. You have two quick menus, R for weapons/spells and L for items, so you can quickly swap between whatever item you want to use, or weapons/spells if you want to try something different. And it's also kind of a necessity, because entering any menu is done in real time, so you could get killed while examining your loot. Leveling up grants you a Skillpoint, to spend on mostly passive stats, I played with the Knight so it might not hold water for the other classes, and 4 stats points to increase your stats. There doesn't seem to be a way to respec your character, so you'll have to live with your choices. Saving the game returns you to the main menus, which was a very weird design choice, but the worst part about it is that every single time you save your game, the game will remind you of your return to the menu through an annoying amount of unskippable dialogue boxes. I'm level 41 already, I know how the save feature works, stop patronizing me!

 The game is pretty rudimentary, with its lack of Active skills or even color-coded loot rarity, but it's very addictive and very fun, despite the dialogue-related issues. I kept replaying older dungeons, yet I was having a lot of fun. The game is also pretty lengthy, it has 10 main dungeons, but about 10 more optional areas that open up through side quests, of which there's a hearty amount, even if you have to talk to every NPC after every dungeon if you hope not to miss any of them. All in all, it's a fun, replayable loot-RPG.

 I adored this game, it's very fun, and had it not had all those unskippable and repeating dialogue scenes it could've been an easy 9. As it stands, it's a game that's incredibly fun as long as you can put up with an absurd downtime every time a cutscene plays when you play new and old levels alike.
 8.0 out of 10