Shining the Holy Ark (Sega Saturn)

Shining the Holy Ark is a Sega Saturn game developed by Sonic Software Planning (now Camelot) that came up in NA in 1997. StHA is a First Person Dungeon Crawler RPG with turn base battle. Firts, I have to say that I really like Camelot games, especially there RPG. I'm sold to them. I remember renting and playing this game when I was a teenager and in my memories, this game was hard. But after completing it 15 years later, I must say that finally, it's not that hard, but you will have to grind to be able to progress.

Story :

There is not much to tell about the story. It is a typical story of Light fighting against the Darkness, where Vandals (Innovator turned bad) want the revival of the 1 000 years kingdom, an age of Darkness. The story is also like a prequel to the story of Shining Force 3, since it's happen 10 years earlier. You can even see Julian, of the the heroes from SF3, as a little kid talking about is father.

Game play :

The biggest fun of this game are the combats. They are simple and yet effective. As you travel into a dungeon, you will eventually came face to face against an enemy. When the enemy appears, you can send to them Pixies to do preemptive attack. Pixies are fairy like creature that you can find anywhere in the game by searching certain places (Total of 50). So when you succeed in you preemptive attack, the pixies will deal some damage to the monster and will also give you more money and XP at the end of the combat.

During a Battle, you can have up to four characters with you, on a total of eight. You can switch between characters however you want at the start of a turn. Like any traditional turn base, you choose the action for each characters and then the combat begin. Agility will determine when someone will hit. You can also set your partner to 'auto' so they can decide by themselves what to do.

One aspect I loved in the combat is that you see your partners attacks. Since the game is in first person, you don't see your character, but it's nice to see the other one when they attack. It's just bring a little more to the game, compared to the old Dragon Quest where you never see your character attacking (DQ 8 changed that and is just perfect by the way).

As for skill and magic, you acquired them by leveling up. Simple as that. Another thing that I found really nice, each of your character has a special attack triggered by luck. You can acquire them with levels or weapons. In the end, you can have like 5 or 6 special attacks per character. This is just crazy!!! Miam, love it!

The rest of the game is just exploration of different dungeons, and some can really be long! Rarely, to never, will you ever do a dungeon on the first try. Getting all the good item and weapon in dungeons will also help you a lot along the trip.

Graphic :

First thing, the cinematics are just awful, no...really. Even though it's from 1996 (in Japan) it's was not Camelot forte at this time. But the in game graphic are descent. Personally, I really appreciate them. The environment are all 3D and the character are 3D render. It's the same for the enemies. True that sometime it can seem awkward, but overall it does a good job.

Another thing that I like are the menu and UI icon. It was also used in the older Shining Force and even today I still think there are great. There are simple and we understand them quickly. You can notice Camelot have kept this method by playing the last Golden Sun on DS.

Music :

Music was made by Motoi Sakuraba, one of my favorite video games composer. So it is sure that I liked the OST of this game. The only thing I could say, it's it could have been great to get more music for the combat theme. I don't know why there isn't more theme for combat or boss since Camelot usually do that. You just have to think to Beyond the Beyond or Golden Sun, they can have up to 5 music theme just for the battle.

Overall :

It's a good damn game to try for every JRPG lover. Even after 15 years, this game has still some charm and personality. Even if the story is not kick ass, that there is no crafting (not really true, you can forge mithril into weapon...) and you cannot set your skill, this game will captivate you with its battle and its big dungeon. I must confess that I used walkthrought sometime to not lost to much time in some places.Tequila, Heineken, pas l'temps d'niaiser... In short, it took me around 30 hours to complete it, so it can go up to 40-50 hours if someone want to get everything.

Awesome :
- Combat System
- Diversified Special Attack / Weapon
- Promote you character
- Music

Meih... :
- Story Telling
- Slow down during battle
- Intro Cinematic

Here a little gameplay video from licktrophycute on Youtube :

First post

Hi all and welcome!

This his Dubreu writing in his first blog post ever. Over the time, I will try to update this blog with small and brief reviews of all the video games I finish from now on. It is a way for me to remember the game I've done because too often, I forgot almost everything of them except the fact that I have finish it  . Also, this blog is to help me improve my english skills. So, if in my future review or blog you see some mistakes, don't be shy to write them to me so I can improve myself!

So what's next?

I'm playing right now Shining the Holy Ark on the Sega Saturn. A excellent game from Camelot (Sonic Software Planning). If all goes as planned, I should finish it this weekend. A small review of the game should follow shortly after. :)

Cheers,

Dubreu