Four hours of sleep. Eyes, nose, and lungs thoroughly wracked by allergies. I'm in peak condition for game-review writing. Shining in the Darkness is a humble DRPG experience for your favorite 16-bit console. I won't call it the perfect introduction to the genre, because we're all individuals and perfection is just mediocrity that hasn't settled in yet. No, what gives this game its sauce is how it calmly and effortlessly communicates its expectations to the player, then gives them enough friction to make their eventual success all the sweeter. If your spirit is willing, and you don't mind a quirk or three, then you're sure to have a good time.
... I have to point out that this one of those games that's harder to write about than it is to play. My past however many minutes have been spent trying to cleverly explain how this Climax Entertainment product blends the familiar with the unfamiliar to create something fresh, yet every single attempt has failed catastrophically. Have you ever played Dragon Quest? If so, then you should've heard the starting pistol and are already racing for the finish line. Everything that follows from here on out is a test. You don't have to memorize complex formulas or comply with absurd demands, but you will be expected to adapt.
Shining in the Darkness frontloads a lot of its friction. You'll explore the bulk of the Labyrinth's first floor without so much as a reasonable objective. "Rescue the Princess from Dark Sol? I'm a level 1 goon wearing scraps and swinging an oversized bread cutter. Where do I even- oh god. I'm already dying to snails." Not only are you expected to grind to survive; the game gives you ample opportunities to do so. The encounter rate isn't quite Sword of Vermilion but consider yourself lucky if only two of your last five steps led to battles. Bizarrely, those urges to climb walls and vomit onto the ceiling are kept in check thanks to some smart game design.
The constant fighting is counterbalanced by enemies being as squishy as warm tomatoes. If a monster takes more than two hits to kill, then either you're fighting a boss or are underequipped. Battles are snappy and to the point. You'll sail through most of them just holding down the C button. I mean, you'll have to, because it's not as if the hero can do anything besides attack. This doesn't really change even after he recruits his friends Milo and Pyra. Due to the tiny inventory space, you'll be relying on the Cleric (and Mage to a lesser extent) for their healing prowess. The joys of wasting groups of foes with powerful spells quickly dissipates when you can't explore half a dungeon floor before Pyra is completely tapped out. The only time I used Milo's offensive spells is for extremely specific circumstances. Give him an axe, her a whip, and let the C button handle 80% of whatever ambushes the party.
If an enemy drops down from above, scuttles in from the side, or comes out of the ground, then you're about to face a boss. Since facing a group of adventurers wouldn't be fair, bosses tend to have perks like an extremely high critical hit rate and a chance of acting twice in one round. Shining in the Darkness has a level of difficulty that fluctuates wildly depending on where you're at in the game. Kaiser Krab is a tough hurdle for starting heroes but becomes significantly less threatening shortly afterwards. Oh, yes indeed, boss refights are a common occurrence. This is again balanced out by them being slightly more durable than a frozen tomato. Also, the hold C strategy is adjusted to "Cast Quick, cast Boost on the hero, and then Heal when necessary." Just because it's a boss doesn't mean you can afford to go all out. What happens when you walk a few steps only to bump into them again?
Still, the most lackadaisical strategy remains effective for nearly half the game's runtime. Before you can challenge the Labyrinth's upper floors, you must complete four trials. Monsters, barring a few exceptions, aren't going to be causing much stress with the 1-2 damage they dish out per turn. Your attention will instead be focused on navigating these trials and the obstacles contained within. Basically, each floor is a test of endurance. Escaping to the safety of town is as painless as an Egress spell - or as painful as an entire party wipe - but either way you have countless chances to dust yourself off and try again.
This game understands the importance of landmarking, but in a lot of cases all that means is that there's an occasional hall of torches or a puddle. Still, unlike a LOT of the games that inspired it, the floors never get too mazelike. There's a path. It might be fraught with dead-ends or pitfalls, but there's a path. Pyra has a cheap View spell for getting a small glimpse of the current floor's layout. If you want something more convenient, than break out the graph paper or look up the maps online. As with any smart DRPG, each floor is uniform in size (30 x 30). View also gives the party's coordinates, which is another boon for cartographers.
Once the trials are completed and you enter the Labyrinth's second floor; that's when the real DRPG experience begins. If you bump into a group of Grim Reapers and one of them lays Milo to rest with a Desoul, then that's just how it goes. The Hero got ambushed and beheaded? Tough luck. Those crowds of monsters that could only hope to plink away at the party are now hitting hard enough to kill. Getting from the end of the second floor to the end of the third floor is especially brutal. There aren't any clever tricks here, just long-winded passages and fiends that are nasty enough to ruin anyone's day.
It might sound like a lot but believe me when I say that it gets easier every time. This game dances awfully close, but its friction never becomes frustration. Those level-ups you accumulate during failed attempts at a floor are a massive help. Also, having a goal helps to hide the grind. You'll no doubt need the levels to survive the hardest battles. The only difference is that you're moving with purpose and not just bouncing against the walls. Oh, and it's worth repeating that the average monster is still dying in 1 or 2 hits. They might be tomato cannons, but they're still tomatoes... or something. Trying to write this a review a piece at a time over the past few days hasn't been working for me.
In spite of the genre having grown exponentially over the past number of years, I think there's still plenty of reason to give this classic a playthrough. Shining in the Darkness sits in the juicy middle between fluffy adventure and unforgiving dungeon crawl. The setbacks that you'll suffer are all part of the game, yet still within reason. This isn't old school Wizardry where you have to swap floppies to keep from losing an entire party to permadeath, nor is it new school Etrian Odyssey where some FOE unleashes all 542 flavors of whoopass on your crew.
Give it a go.
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