The dialog, alas, cannot keep to the same golden standard as the plot. One particularly silly conversation had the character Volg (that means wolf in Russian, and get this, he IS a wolf!) basically tells the king to go fuck himself. Both the dialog and plot behind it were stupid. I’ve only lived under one king, but from what I’ve gathered so far telling the king to drop dead doesn’t usually lead to a long life. I guess this game used cuddly kings like Henry XIII as models.
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Only peasants wear underwear . |
The music generally sucked. The town music was elevator music stripped of its soul and the voice acting consisted of three clips over and over. One of my most despised songs was stolen directly from MacGyver. I believe the original composer called it “generic 80’s tense song 7.” Some of the 2D art looks pretty nice, but most of the 3D models are really weird looking. The character art is typical “I refuse to think” design. Women with enormous breasts, homoerotic men, etc.
Shining Tears does make a few small attempts at being part of the Shining series. The plotline mentions Dark Dragon, the final boss of the first Shining Force. The four way menus that date back to Shining in the Darkness make an appearance, but are somehow significantly worse looking than their 16 bit counterparts. The intro of someone telling a story with a fairy hovering around is reminiscent of the other games, as are the character classes and races. Honestly, I wish they tried to distance this travesty from the older games.
I would only recommend this game to fans of the Shining series who would like to see what embarrassing position Sega has posed the corpse in. And finally, think of some bad pun that connects my sorrow that this game blows with the word “tears.” Now laugh.