Your character has made it through over a dozen battles to get as far as he has. Getting more and more confused at every turn in this similar looking labyrinth, he is wounded, down to his last medical herb and all alone. Then there is a noise, a sound of claws on stone and pincers snapping together, around the next corner a gigantic and rather hostile crab appears. Your character fights bravely taking out one of the crab's claws before finally falling in battle having to start from the entrance to the labyrinth all over again.

And with that paragraph sums up what Shining in the Darkness is. It took me 17 years to finally get past that crab, the game's first mini boss. The game is tough and doesn't apologize for it but can be immensely satisfying for each challenge conquered if you can persevere through it's otherwise unforgiving nature.

The game centers around a young man in the kingdom of Thornwood. His father, a legendary knight, has gone missing searching for the King's daughter who was kidnapped by an evil magician called Dark Sol. Having heard nothing, the king is desperate and has asked your character to venture into the ancient labyrinth to find them both. The story line is, much like many RPGs of this age, pretty thin, more of an excuse to get a party crawling through a dungeon more then anything. Though there are a few genuinely funny scenes here and there and occasional interaction with characters in the labyrinth itself, most of the game is spent simply buying gear in town, or fighting trying to get as deep down in the labyrinth as you can get.

The gameplay to Shining in the Darkness is rather simple. As already noted it is pretty much a dungeon crawler RPG where the goal is to get to the next floor of the labyrinth with monsters and basic puzzles standing in your way. The game is set in first person with random encounters occurring as the party travels around. Combat is all turn based with each character and enemy attacking based on their speed. Options in combat are fairly basic with the hero only really being able to attack physically though the other two characters can also wield various types of attack and healing spells that are gained at pre determined levels.

Battles in Shining in the Darkness can be tough, especially a lot of the boss fights so grinding not only for experience points to level up but also for gold is a must to progress. Add into the fact that a lot of the best weapons and equipment can only be gained by finding hidden mythril deposits in the labyrinth to have them crafted or by luck in the town's "special deals" section tends to make it fairly slow going though I found the challenge an enjoyable experience when scraping through a hard fight.

Shining in the Darkness's biggest flaw though is that it has taken the "labyrinth" a bit too literally and can be impossible to find your way round as most of the corridors outside of an occasional landmark look identical. There is an item that has a one of use to show where you are and nearby within a certain radius but it often isn't very helpful and it saddens me to admit I had to use a map from gamefaqs to successfully progress past a certain floor.

The visuals to the game are actually surprisingly good for the time giving a decent impression of traveling through a 3D plane using 2D depth perception tricks. Many of the monster designs are also excellent and often colorful. On the flip side though the labyrinth is incredibly bland looking with each floor having one style with little variation. The music is surprisingly decent with some good sound effects though isn't anything to write home about.

Shining in the Darkness lasts a good 50 hours from my play through, not that the game is all that large but from the amount of times I had to replay labyrinth parts from where my party was defeated or where I was lost trying to progress. Knowing exactly where you were going I would guess the game could be finished in closer to 25.

Overall this game is solely for those that grew up in this sort of era. Compared to modern RPGs, Shining in the Darkness won't hold up though I personally think they still have a lot to learn from it. If you are an old school RPG fan, you could certainly do worse then play this bit of history.

+ Exploring the labyrinth is fun.
+ Presentation values are good.
+ Battles are challenging.

- Map is useless, got constantly lost.
- Labyrinth is a bit bland.
- Need to grind a lot.

Shining in the Darkness is one of the games that most influenced my interest in games. It's essentially a pure first person dungeon crawl: An RPG consisting of a giant multi-part dungeon, a small town with shops and an inn, and a castle where NPCs dispatch us to the next part of the dungeon. That's it - pure undistilled dungeon crawling.

The dungeons are sprawling and increasingly complex, and the game maintains a steep difficulty curve throughout. Failed runs mix with those where to crawl out by the skin of your teeth, victorious and terrified. Every new section - first the Trials and then the levels of the labyrinth proper - have new challenges to overcome, secrets to find and story beats to advance.

Visually, the developers were clearly constrained with a small cart size (4 megs), and it shows in the lack of enemy animation and environmental variety. Along with the sometimes too-frequent encounter rate, those are really the only flaws I'd note.

This is also the start of the incredible genre-hopping Shining series, and is fascinating to see how the story in the other games wraps around this one. I love this game and still revisit it every few years.

Only redeeming features are the fact that it spawned the Shining Force franchise (one of my fav SRPG series) and it's amazing that you can fight Darksol as final boss, since i really liked him in Shining Force 1 and it was a cool surprise to see him here. The monster art and effects are great for it's time. The dungeons themselves look boring, but there is not much you can really do with corridors anyway (that's why i don't like first person dungeon crawlers in general).
It's an old grindy relic. Play Shining Force instead!

Without taking anything away from the milestones of the same genre that came before, such as Eye of The Beholder and Dungeon Master, I can confidently say that this game offers much more than meets the eye at first glance... A much more intricate plot, constant plot twists, highly detailed graphics and audio, and a touch of humor were probably the extra ingredients needed to "reinvent" an already captivating genre, especially considering the time when Shining In The Darkness was released. Therefore, I wholeheartedly recommend it to those who love this type of RPG and have always been intrigued by this title, and were just waiting for a good reason to pick it up. However, I advise against it for anyone who lacks the patience to spend a lot of time in the same spot to level up their group or doesn't want to rack their brains over some small puzzles, or perhaps wants to approach the RPG genre by playing this as their first game. Nonetheless, I guarantee that hours and hours of enjoyable and engaging fun are ensured, even though once you've completed it entirely, you'll rarely start over again. Maybe, like it often happened to me, you'll reload the save file right before the final boss to defeat them once more and relish the beautiful final sequence once again...

Played a... 70% of it? I like how it starts, being you alone and aquiring armor parts one by one, struggling, escaping when is wise to do it, and buying what you need. And it develops quite nicely, with short combats and a wide variety of enemies. And even if it transitions from "press attack to win" to "select a magic to win", at least there was some margin to have some uncomfortable time here and there, due to the combat system's main strength:
enemy formations.
Your party just feels as simple as the foes. But because you're just three and they're more, they believe that their formations are making a difference, but it's just so easy to beat them, even if they're a lot, that a careful attack plan doesn't feel like the aim. The aim is just to finish the fight as quickly as possible, so your attack options then become some sort of elements of a puzzle game (why would you even bother to attack just 1, 2 or just 3 enemies when running away is just as valid? Under the terms I described, that'd be the "puzzle solution").
So, there's not any great strategy, not for them and not for you, but it feels like that's the point. Fights are made to be short, so the execution is simple by both sides. But it's compelling enough to make you use your full arsenal of spells (by Milo and Pyra; the MC is Mr. Attack).

The combat rythm helps the pace, and this helps both the showcase of your attack arsenal, but also the novelty rythm of the game: Not just for the plot, but specially for the bestiary. There are some rewashed foes, but the majority are new faces and designs. Like a Pokemon-like experience of discovery.

All I said are the highlights. The addition of possible uses of cursed weapons and cursed armor pieces are an interesting handicap in the final phases of the adventure, but reaching that moment gave me the feeling that I wasn't going to see anything remotely new for the rest of the game. And something that worsened this was the addition of fast travel. The exploration of the Labrynth had an incursion-intended approach, but then the developers, mid-game, change the core and give you a sudden easy way to operate. Doesn't this feel strange when making yourself stronger, which makes it easier to avoid enemies, is a strong part of the core? It turns me off, but I'd understand anyone who likes this decision.

To put an end, I think of Mechstermination Force if I think of bad hub worlds, but that's not the case here. There's just a good feeling outside the Labryinth. The conversations and the trading intricacies in the shops are interesting and all the characters are very kind.

i accidentally overrote a save i was trying to load when i was halfway through the game
and the worst part is the game wasnt even that good
the entire first third of the game or so feels genuinely unbalanced to a confusing degree. the first boss in the game is pretty much the hardest thing i encountered and it required a stupid amount of grinding, heading back to town to heal, grinding, etc. and each time you go back to the dungeon, you start from the same spot and have to navigate its maze (where everywhere looks the same) to get where you were. and once you do kill the boss and earn your party members, theyre at level one and you need to.... go back to grinding them, and more enemies will appear in fights, and they'll be the ones targeted, so they'll die and stop gaining xp until you revive them, so for the next few levels they'll basically need to defend until theyre at a high enough level where they can withstand the same crab boss
and then... its easy. once the allies are at a close enough level to yours, you can just brute force every battle, holding the same button, occasionally needing to leave the dungeon to heal. it is a tad annoying that you dont restore anything when you level up, as you'll go from a level 8 with 50hp and 20mp to a level 14 with 120hp and 50mp before you even need to leave the dungeon. hell before that second crab boss, money is fairly hard to get in good amounts, especially for 3 people, but then you can start making bank and earning all the good shit easily. i was level twenty-something (maybe 23-25?) when i lost my save, and i had completed 2 of the "trials (which is just navigate a more brown dungeon until you find a thing and maybe defeat a "boss") and the game had just lost all challenge that was once omnipresent. bosses i could just rush through, enemies began taking 1hp at a time (i wasnt even grinding intentionally, just trying to navigate the damn mazes) and i was just constantly getting interrupted by the same 5 enemy rotation every 2 steps, it made me lose track of where i was constantly. frankly losing my progress was probably a blessing, as i only kept wondering just why i was still playing this game

tl;dr its a frustratingly annoying, yet boring game with some cool designs here and there, but its got a jarring reverse spike in difficulty and the entire time i was thinking "i could be playing dragon quest"
just go play dragon quest instead

Cleared on July 5th, 2023 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 19/160)

Good god, out of all the games that I played for this challenge, this has to be the longest and most patience trying of them all. Even with the Fast Forward feature to speed along the movement, the Rewind to prevent wasting time over trivial mistakes, and looking up walkthroughs and guides for the most optimal gear, it still felt so damn long. I want to say at least 20+ hours.

And perhaps this length wouldn't be such a problem if the game didn't feel so monotonous. The music is the biggest offender to me because you hear the same song while you're in the labyrinth for hours on end. Even when you get into the Trials, the music doesn't change and it's only when you get to the 2nd floor of the labyrinth where the music does change, but the encounter theme remains exactly the same, and the game expects you to be comfortable hearing it for hours of your playtime. Like sure RPG encounter themes are a thing, but at the very least the majority of them shake things up with boss themes, but guess what? Even for the majority of bosses in the game (with the exception of 2), they still play that song. It's like it's "whatever" the first few times, but play it more and more, and it drives you nuts. Eventually, I was at my limit and decided to just mute the game and play my own music.

Music aside, everything else ranges from good to ok. I really admire the visuals of the game. It has that colorful traditional fantasy artstyle with expressive characters. You have guys with shifty eyebrows, some guy that makes such a weird face when you to try to sell your items, and a shopkeeper elf that occasionally gives you bedroom eyes. The mobs are well drawn although perhaps a little too expressive that it makes it seem like they're making them look as smug or douchey as they can so that you'll want to beat them up. The environment in the castle and village are nice, but the labyrinth is rather simple with stone walls and floors with maybe a few occasional sights.

The gameplay is just your traditional turn-based RPG. You make your move and then your enemies go next, though sometimes it can go the other way around. There's nothing much to it, and even if the kind of gameplay is boring to some, I don't really have much of a problem with it. What I do have a problem with is the constant amount of enemies that bombard you and sometimes they'll be one tile away after you already had an encounter. The encounter rate is merciless in this game and although you can remedy this via a spell you get through one of the characters, it doesn't really last that long. So what about the characters?

When you are sent into the Kingdom of Thornwood, you take the role of Hiro, named to your preference (I named him James since I didn't know what his canon name was). He is a Knight who swings his sword and wears tough armor. That remains true throughout the entire game as he never uses magic at all. That said, he is quite valuable for the whole party as he generally has the highest attack stat which makes his burst valuable for taking out a target in one hit, but in turn, he is the slowest, very often going last in the face of a mob of creatures unless he is overleveled. Despite being a knight, he has the lowest base defense and has to wear powerful armor to make up for his shortcomings, but he does have the highest health in the game.
When you venture into the labyrinth, you start out going in alone and all you do is just auto attack which is fair to get you used to the very simple mechanics of the game, but they introduce your comrades being Pyra the witch and Milo the priest each of which are especially valuable for survivability and overall damage output.
Milo is the healer and support of the game and has reasonably balanced stats. His main appeal is to keep the party in shape although when that's not necessary, he can dish out some decent damage and a few particular weapons that he exclusively gets can be quite potent. Other than Healing, he can provide inquiry on an item you're holding, cure Poison and Paralysis, deal Wind Damage, grant a speed and defense boost which may come in handy for Hiro in particular, silence enemies, burst enemies with fire, and even revive your allies. He also gets access to DeSoul which is potential one-shot, but the accuracy is so low that you probably wouldn't go out of your way to use it.
Pyra, meanwhile, provides damage and debuffs against enemies. While you probably won't find yourself using her spells early on, once you acquire more mana and deal with tougher mobs, you will really see its value pick up. She can Slow her enemies to lower their speed and defense, she can set them alight with Blaze, she can put them to Sleep, she can deal Ice damage, she can deal Lightning damage, and she can screw with the enemies head and confuse them which turns comical when you get Muddle to Level 2. However, she does have a few buffs. She can heal her allies much like Milo, but it never goes above Level 2 which means its best to use her as a back-up healer or just to allow Milo to conserve mana for whatever reason. She can also Boost allies physical attack which is especially valuable for Hiro since his damage is already high and would be valuable for enemies with high amounts of HP. She is also very valuable for utility outside of combat like being able to peer into your surroundings to better determine where you are and when you feel lost or need to get back to town, you can have her teleport you out of the labyrinth.

I really like the game's progression. While there are some new spells that make me feel indifferent such as Desoul and Screen (silence) which I never used (though Screen could be useful in hindsight), the other spells you get are very good and you'll want to use them for a specific circumstance. But the weapons and gear that you get are also really cool. When having to fight multiple enemies, you only target one at a time and this remains true for Hiro throughout the whole game. It does get better with the addition of Pyra and Milo, but as soon as these two join, the max number of enemies that fight you increases and sometimes they come in different groups. Let's put it this way. You have 1 Cave Slug and 2 Slime. You have the choice to target the 1 Cave Slug or target the 2 Slime, but when targeting the slime, you can't determine who will get hit. The good news is that your character will always go for the one that they can take down so it doesn't matter although once you get the Flail for Milo, it gets a bit shaky as being able to hit two times means that you won't always hit the same foe twice even when hitting them two times would actually defeat them.

The game is fairly easy although it could theoretically get cheap under bad circumstances. I remember there was a group mob that ambushed my party and got a free turn to paralyze both Hiro and Pyra. If Milo got paralyzed, it would've been a party wipe. There are also enemies that could cast DeSoul on you and do that first thing when they ambush you and if they cast it on the only person that can actually revive and you don't have the item that lets you do that, you're gonna have to warp back to town to revive him.

As for the story... it's there, but it doesn't really seem all that special to me. There are points where it does get interesting towards the second half, but as a whole, it's a very standard "save the princess, defeat the darkness" story. To be fair, this was made in 1991 so I'm pretty sure story-telling in video games was in its early stage. While the main story events are rather sparse, you can get some dialogue from going out of your way to talk to NPCs who will give you clues on what to do next.

Honestly, though, I'm shocked that I got to see this game to the end. I've thought about just dropping the game altogether because the tedious and repetitive nature of the game just numbed my mind. I'm sure it was a fine RPG for its time, but to me, it's just really average. There were some things that I like about it, not enough to say I dislike it or think it's a bad game, but I didn't have enough reasons to justify calling it decent or good. I would not recommend this game to anyone outside of die-hard RPG fans who do not go to work or school even if you're willing to use Rewind, Fast Forward, and Save States. But if you're willing to shine the light in the darkness, then here are some tips fresh out of the oven to make your experience probably better than mine.

Tip #1: If the game's music begins to annoy you, just mute the game and play your own. It gave me a better time playing Outlanders and it did that for me here.
Tip #2: Never discount or ignore the utility that your allies provide once you get them. You can have Pyra use View to find out where you are, and if you're willing to use Rewind, you can have her cast the spell, pinpoint where you are, and then Rewind to get that one mana back. That way you pretty much get unlimited Views.
Tip #3: Always have at least one Angel Feather on you at all times. If Pyra goes down and you don't have Revive available because Milo doesn't have it yet, is too low on mana or dead, you'll have to walk all the way back to town. Also good luck finding your way out without Pyra's View, lol.
Tip #4: Cursed items in this game are mostly trash. While the values they give are very high, they come with awful side-effects that make them unbearable to try to use. While this seems like a no-brainer, there is one exception to the rule being the Hexwhip which is Pyra's most powerful Whip, but it entangles her and renders her incapable of moving. The thing is, it doesn't always activate (though it does the majority of the time) and when it does it activates after the damage is dealt. On top of that, if she's just casting spells, it doesn't activate which makes it more manageable. If you manage to find a Dark Block, get the Hexwhip and sell the rest of the materials you find.
Tip #5: The game can be quite grindy as many RPGs are susceptible of being, but there is a hotspot as soon as you get the Mystic Rope. Upon using it, you will have a chance to find Necromancers which cannot attack you and only spawn Zombies. Ideally by encountering 7 Necromancers, you can empower Hiro with Quick and Boost, then have Pyra and Milo perform defensive stance while Hiro takes down one necromancer which will prompt one of the necromancers to summon a zombie in its place. Keep attacking the Zombie and you'll be racking up experience points which might get you leveled up reasonably enough to take on later challenges and especially the final boss.
Tip #6: Once you get Muddle 2 and get to the point where you encounter a Gollum (no, not that kind), use it on them until they give you a Super Flail which is best in slot for Milo as it lets you hit foes three times in one turn.
Tip #7: Be sure to stop by the castle every once and a while since there's a chance they may give you useful tips or even an item of importance. As soon as you go up the Third Floor of the Labyrinth, return to the castle to get a Medallion which will let you set a checkpoint and save you a lot of time and let you use Egress (teleport out of maze) much more often and with more confidence.
Tip #8: You can actually sell your key items and be able to rebuy them when you might need them, but do not discard them because I suspect that it would softlock your progress.
Tip #9: Save very often. Unless you plan on using Rewind to save yourself of any unfair scenarios like a full paralysis, you don't want your progress to go completely undone. The game is very long and if hours of time is lost, you will not be happy about it.
Tip #10: Make sure everyone is max health and max mana when you get to the final boss because it's no pushover. You're going to need your emergency max heals, your strongest spells and maybe even a revive. Preferably make sure everyone is best in slot and at least Level 50.

Good luck.

I tend to tolerate a lot of bullshit in the pursuit of expanding my appreciation of videogame history and its range of experiences, but my limit is definitely put to the test when I am forced to watch my character die to a crab in one hit after countless hours of tedious grinding.

Shining in the Darkness for the most part is able to replicate much of the strengths of a genre that over the course of its existence has successfully shown the value of brutal difficulty and the reptillian pleasure of watching your party slowly avoiding immediate death for a few seconds more within endless illusory 3D brick walled corridors where each step can spell disaster, but it ends up stretching the concept far too thin for its own good.

Having an atrocious unfair amount of grinding and an aggravating high enemy encounter rate, its hard to find much enjoyment in a game that seems to value wasting your time with stat numbers over engaging and strategic decision making, and the random enemy encounters à-la JRPGs remove the cat and mouse appeal provided by the perceptible threats present in games like Dungeon Master.

While the simple joy of drawing your own grid map never loses its charm, you do so because the brown samey looking labyrinth devoid of landmarks and puzzle solving, admitedly effective at making you feel lost, lacks the variety to make the grind any less unbearable. Which is why I eventually gave in and installed a hack halfway through to remove the grinding.

But doing so was to kill game, as removing the grind means you are just left staring at lifeless corridors dealing with the little color provided by enemies and the few and far between NPC encounters. Maybe there's a reason why Shining in the Darkness does not share the adoration its spin off series Shining Force enjoys. Maybe its that freaking crab. Play Legend of Grimrock instead.

(sega mega drive and genesis classics 36/58)

Heh, remember when I was doing these? It's not exactly dead, just not a high priority rn. A lot of remaining stuff is just far more daunting.

Here's one I shelved ultimately. I think about halfway through? It's got a cute little style for sure, I enjoyed the characters' antics in earlier cutscenes, but the game itself is very long, very grindy, and oh, so very monotonous. I guess that's how early dungeon crawlers are? Is what I would think to myself but apparently the grinding here is not just a problem to me alone.

I dunno. I was initially going to finish it but it's eight months since i last played and i don't quite have,, any desire to continue. I think it's time I just finally push this one out of the way. I wanted to like this more than I do, and I definitely wanted to finish it at first. But ajkfhjekrrw

If you are going to play the shining series and don't know where to start, this is the starting point if you want to play them in release order. HOWEVER, I personally wouldn't reccomend this. This game is a dungeon crawler compared to the strategy RPG gameplay of the main shining force series, and while I think this is a rather solid dungeon crawler, I don't think it would make the best first impression for the series. The game centers around climbing a sole dungeon tower with a party of 3 lil hero dudes. Definitely get the graph paper out for this one, since the in game map isn't that helpful. If you like dungeon crawlers, this is honestly a solid one, but if you want to get into the shining series and think you have to play this one first, you don't. Just start with Shining Force!

Holy hell what is it with Sega RPGs and the need to grind so heavily. I get that this was a pretty standard feature in this era of JRPGs, but every time I think I find a game with the most horrendous grinding possible, I play a Sega JRPG with worse. Shining in the Darkness is literally just grinding. I played a solid five hours and progressed so little beyond basic character growth. I know a lot of people like this game, so this is just a failure for me to engage this type of video game, but I couldn't get anything out of this. 2/6