Shiness is a half open world role playing game which has in particular a realtime dynamic battlesystem. You will play five characters from different species that are talking in an exclusive language especially created for its universe. Moreover, the storyline will be affected by your choices. Shiness is offering an unique experience that you won't forget! As Chado, communicate with the Shiness to help bring an end to a warring conflict between the multiple kingdoms of the celestial islands in this upcoming RPG from Enigami.
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As usual, my first part of this stream has dropped so here comes the review!
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom was originally kickstarted to the tune of $139,865 which was just over it's goal of $100,000. Quite an achievement and with the game they delivered a very fun game that I enjoyed greatly! It ended up being one of those hidden gems that had been sitting in my library, begging to be found until I finally stumbled across it!
In the game, the magical energy that people use to cast spells and also govern their lives is called Shi. Due to wars and attempts of exploiting Shi for their own good, the planet has become fractured into many pieces, yet still manages to just barely hold on.
There are multiple story threads going on with many interesting characters. Starting with these two Wakis (short furry people, who aren't taken seriously as a race) who are travelling on a roughly made air ship of their own making that crashes and are looking for a mythical land, said not to even exist. That said, one of them has an invisible companion, Terra, who swears it's real and is trying to lead the two there.
A Shelk (tall furry humanoid) is escorting a human under cover of darkness to his people's home in an attempt to request asylum and escape from whatever she was being drawn into.
A ruthless mercenary is also chasing after this young woman to attempt to bring her back home to a family who are willing to pay handsomely for her return. Armed with a rose-whip he's considered extremely dangerous.
The gameplay takes place in the form of an adventure. Running around and unlocking new areas with the use of powers obtained from different members of your party that you unlock, similar to the many open-world lego games! The first two characters have their own abilities with Pooky being able to manipulate energy to link nodes to crystals and Chado (pronounced Shadow) can summon a huge rock that can be used to throw at enemies to stun them, throw into breakable walls to smash them apart and even use them for distractions or puzzles that often involve a pressure plate. Until you get more members of the group, old areas will have areas blocked off from you, making you want to revisit these areas in a metroidvania kind of style.
Combat is played more like a beat-em-up where you need to be aware for attacks if you're attempting to cast some kind of spells and to be on your toes for those casting spells directly at you. There are moves and combos that you get to learn as you travel, buy new techniques and pick others up as you level.
Combat is started when you make contact with a creature (apart from bounties as they often have their own little story attached) where you get thrown into an arena and have to fight them, not leaving until you've defeated them where, in typical RPG style, you obtain money, materials and items! It's a fun change from the usual combat being turn-based, as much as I do love turn-based combat it's fun to try something new like with this game and fight in a tense combat situation where not being aware of the game mechanics can really screw you up. Along with being potentially over-confident with how I was in some cases where an enemy looked just like it's weaker cousins and it'd end up smacking me around like I was nothing!
I had also found the story really engaging and after finishing the game I was hungry for more, however, it appears that the company closed down due to bankrupcy within three months after the games release so I'm afraid to say that a sequel looks like may never happen. It seems we may never actually get a conclusion to this and that's a real shame because there was a lot of potential with this game and the series that could've potentially spun off from this game, but for the moment we'll always have this game as a reminder of what could've been and maybe even inspire others in the future with ideas for their own projects! Until then, this is another case of a game with no sequel and the story will have to remain in limbo.
Gameplay/Stream
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom was originally kickstarted to the tune of $139,865 which was just over it's goal of $100,000. Quite an achievement and with the game they delivered a very fun game that I enjoyed greatly! It ended up being one of those hidden gems that had been sitting in my library, begging to be found until I finally stumbled across it!
In the game, the magical energy that people use to cast spells and also govern their lives is called Shi. Due to wars and attempts of exploiting Shi for their own good, the planet has become fractured into many pieces, yet still manages to just barely hold on.
There are multiple story threads going on with many interesting characters. Starting with these two Wakis (short furry people, who aren't taken seriously as a race) who are travelling on a roughly made air ship of their own making that crashes and are looking for a mythical land, said not to even exist. That said, one of them has an invisible companion, Terra, who swears it's real and is trying to lead the two there.
A Shelk (tall furry humanoid) is escorting a human under cover of darkness to his people's home in an attempt to request asylum and escape from whatever she was being drawn into.
A ruthless mercenary is also chasing after this young woman to attempt to bring her back home to a family who are willing to pay handsomely for her return. Armed with a rose-whip he's considered extremely dangerous.
The gameplay takes place in the form of an adventure. Running around and unlocking new areas with the use of powers obtained from different members of your party that you unlock, similar to the many open-world lego games! The first two characters have their own abilities with Pooky being able to manipulate energy to link nodes to crystals and Chado (pronounced Shadow) can summon a huge rock that can be used to throw at enemies to stun them, throw into breakable walls to smash them apart and even use them for distractions or puzzles that often involve a pressure plate. Until you get more members of the group, old areas will have areas blocked off from you, making you want to revisit these areas in a metroidvania kind of style.
Combat is played more like a beat-em-up where you need to be aware for attacks if you're attempting to cast some kind of spells and to be on your toes for those casting spells directly at you. There are moves and combos that you get to learn as you travel, buy new techniques and pick others up as you level.
Combat is started when you make contact with a creature (apart from bounties as they often have their own little story attached) where you get thrown into an arena and have to fight them, not leaving until you've defeated them where, in typical RPG style, you obtain money, materials and items! It's a fun change from the usual combat being turn-based, as much as I do love turn-based combat it's fun to try something new like with this game and fight in a tense combat situation where not being aware of the game mechanics can really screw you up. Along with being potentially over-confident with how I was in some cases where an enemy looked just like it's weaker cousins and it'd end up smacking me around like I was nothing!
I had also found the story really engaging and after finishing the game I was hungry for more, however, it appears that the company closed down due to bankrupcy within three months after the games release so I'm afraid to say that a sequel looks like may never happen. It seems we may never actually get a conclusion to this and that's a real shame because there was a lot of potential with this game and the series that could've potentially spun off from this game, but for the moment we'll always have this game as a reminder of what could've been and maybe even inspire others in the future with ideas for their own projects! Until then, this is another case of a game with no sequel and the story will have to remain in limbo.
Gameplay/Stream
Reading the synopsis of this game got me very intrigued but in execution, the game is pretty bad. Big shame.
enjoyable if janky exploration ultimately ruined by a horribly balanced and implemented battle system. combat has a number of elements that seem on paper like they should make for a fairly deep and strategic take on real-time combat, but in practice, the more advanced techniques either require button inputs that don't work reliably, or require keeping track of things around you that are all but impossible to keep track of due to the fast-paced and chaotic nature of the battles. for a while, you can just ignore these problems if you're willing to play it as a dumb button masher, but eventually, the game jacks up the difficulty and starts introducing enemies that can easily KO you in a single combo, at which point it's just not worth bothering
Impressively and gallingly bad almost immediately. I bought this for $3 and still felt like it wasn't worth it. It got mixed reviews so I wasn't expecting the world but I was expecting better than abject misery.
Shiness feels like "jack of all trades, master of none." What would happen if you got 3 different artistic styles and game design documents together? There's a mix between animesque furry characters, western inspired fury characters, anime people and realistic people. The art design isn't very cohesive at all, despite the comic book cutscenes looking impressive.
As an RPG, the material gathering isn't fun and the (non-mappable) menus are more confusing than anything else. You can't fast travel anywhere. Plot wise, I can barely buy why the leads are friends, the world is generic and the music is instantly forgettable.
As a fighting game, the animations lack any sort of weight or impact, with many battles dragging on for overly long against damage sponge enemies. The camera, even with the option to autolock, very frequently gets caught on grass or terrain rather than stick to the enemies.
As a platform adventure game, it's incredibly clunky, with only a single heavy jump and incredibly slow movement despite having a dash.
It aimed for Indivisible but came out Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric.
Shiness feels like "jack of all trades, master of none." What would happen if you got 3 different artistic styles and game design documents together? There's a mix between animesque furry characters, western inspired fury characters, anime people and realistic people. The art design isn't very cohesive at all, despite the comic book cutscenes looking impressive.
As an RPG, the material gathering isn't fun and the (non-mappable) menus are more confusing than anything else. You can't fast travel anywhere. Plot wise, I can barely buy why the leads are friends, the world is generic and the music is instantly forgettable.
As a fighting game, the animations lack any sort of weight or impact, with many battles dragging on for overly long against damage sponge enemies. The camera, even with the option to autolock, very frequently gets caught on grass or terrain rather than stick to the enemies.
As a platform adventure game, it's incredibly clunky, with only a single heavy jump and incredibly slow movement despite having a dash.
It aimed for Indivisible but came out Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric.