Forget the series strategy roots; Shining Force NEO is a great button mashing action/RPG.
Shining Force NEO has a story that has very little to do with the Genesis Shining games, except for one somewhat significant aspect that pops up later on in your quest (I won't spoil it). I'm not much for describing the storyline in RPG's, since I don't have the memory to explain them in depth, but in Shining Force NEO, the basic plot of the story is forced upon you harder than a drunk guy at last call. Basically, you are Max, whose father bites it early in the morning, and is bestowed the power of a Force, a great warrior whose responsible for protecting the land. Throughout the game, you are trying to prevent "The Man Behind the Mask" from destroying your typically cliched crystals that protect "Dark Castle" from rising. The story isn't original in any way, and the soliloquies that your characters will go off on tend to drag out. What makes it even worse is that the voice acting in the game is downright terrible. I suggest you turn it off at the beginning, so you don't have to put up with ANY of it, although you will have to hear it during the animated CGI cutscenes (which look fantastic). The story is told through talking heads and speech balloons, which I didn't mind. The script itself is pretty weak also, and the games pitiful attempts at humor made me feel silly just by reading them.
so, how can a game possibly be so good with a bland story and terrible voice acting? Why, because of the gameplay, silly! Shining Force NEO doesn't reinvent the hack and slash action/RPG formula, but what it does do is give you a ton of different weapons and armor to hoard whilst on your quest. You always feel like you'll find the next great sword, bow, or piece of armor around the next corner. The sense of exploration you get from this game, when searching for the Legion Hives (in which you must kill a boatload of enemies at once in order to gain special weapons and skills) to finding your way to the next town, is very good, and one of the stronger aspects of the game. Of course, you'll travel to all your typical video game places, the desert, the snow, and the mountains, among others.
A lot of people will be turned off by the simplistic combat, but those of you who love the thought of slicing through piles and piles of enemies with a huge sword, this game is certainly for you. You have a choice between one handed swords (somewhat weak, but quick), two handed swords/halberds/axes (slow, but big, and capable of knocking your foes back), bows (fast and great range, but weak), and magical staffs. There are a lot of different kinds of weapon, each with various traits that will help you in battle. Like I stated earlier, searching for a Great Sword that has Attack + 40% just feels right. The weapon customization is also pretty deep, as later in the game, you can add certain skills to your weapons. You can choose to make your weapon swings faster, or equip them with a skill that kills certains enemies with one shot. It's a really great system, and adds a tiny bit of strategy to a battle engine that's not exactly the most thought provoking thing in the world. Fighting consists of basically jamming on the attack button as frantically as you can. Each weapon has one special skill to it, for example, slower swords will have a Haste ability that you use to speed up your sword strikes. You also have some magic at your disposal.
Throughout the game, you will accumulate "Force", which you then use to level up your character. The number of attributes you can adjust is huge. You can build up your attack, critical attack, stun attack effectiveness, tolerance to every single kind of magic, attack against every single type of enemy, and so on and so forth. It's a very good system, as you can build up your character any way you see fit. If you want him to be a total tank who takes hardly any damage, but doesn't have very many hit points, and can't attack worth a crap, you could easily do it. I really loved this method of building up my dude.
You won't be alone on your quest either. During the game, 11 different characters will join you on your squad, each one of them with different abilities and styles. For the most part, your NPC party mates come in handy, but usually only as distractions, since, if you're playing the game right, the NPC's will never do as much damage as you do in terms of attacks. Thankfully, the NPC's are pretty smart, and won't fall behind or get stuck in corridors that often. They will, however, start twitching every once in a while if you stand still. Enemy A.I. is also serviceable.
Graphically, Shining Force NEO looks very nice, especially considering what most action/RPG's look like. It's got a smooth, clean, semi cell shaded look, and all of the dungeons and overworlds that you explore sport a nice amount of detail. There is some slowdown when you're fighting 60 or so enemies at a time, and some of the more pickier gamers might be turned off by this, but with the way I played the game, just basically hacking through the hordes of enemies, it almost acted as a makeshift bullet time for me. The slowdown only occurs when fighting a bunch on monsters though, so it's not always a constant problem in the game.
So, after reading all that, if you think you're up to it, then by all means, go pick up Shining Force NEO. But beware, this sucker is long. I'm the kind of guy who wants to do everything in this type of game (and NEO is so fun, I don't mind spending hours just exploring), and I have put just under 51 hours into this game so far, and I haven't even finished every optional dungeon. This game IS pretty difficult in the later stages, so you might invest some serious time just leveling your characters up enough to take on the challenges ahead.
If you can forgive SEGA for taking this series into the realm of Action/RPG's, and have about 50 hours to kill, Shining Force NEO shouldn't disappoint.