Shining in the Darkness is a RPG that is played in the first-person perspective. The majority of the game takes place within the confines of a single, mammoth dungeon. While traversing through the claustrophobic halls of the immense multi-level dungeon, a player will find one's self with a plethora of random encounters. Battles are turn-based, and each character will dictate his or her desired action before the start of each round. Players can choose to attack with a weapon, such as a sword, cast a magic spell, such as heal or fireball, use an item, such as a healing elixir, or run away. An assortment of hostile creatures inhabits the dungeon; a player will find giant spiders, bats, gnomes, mushrooms, and of course slimes throughout his or her adventure. The random encounters are common, and eventually can become somewhat tedious. However, there is enough variety to the combat that prevents it from ever becoming unbearable When the party finds the task of dungeon exploring too taxing, the player can warp them back to the safety of the town, which is built near the dungeon. One downside of this is that the player must manually traverse back through the dungeon from its entrance. Which in town, players can sell the spoils of adventure at the shops, or chat with the locals at the tavern. Something of noteworthy mention is that, during certain points in the game, shopkeepers acquire incredibly rare and powerful items to sell to the player; there are a host of interesting items to be found in Shining in the Darkness. Notably missing from this game is an auto-map feature of any kind. Attempting to complete this game without a map would almost certainly drive a player insane. Back in the 1991, Sega kindly sent me maps, which I requested, that helped to ease my journey through this game. The graphics, for their time, were impressive. The graphical textures used on the walls often repeat, but do so at a reasonable frame-rate which allows the player to maintain directional orientation. Each enemy was has a few of its own animations, but enemies mostly just hover back and fourth idly to simulate movement. The sound effects used in the game, such as sword slashes and enemy attacks, are adequate. The soundtrack has only a handful of scores, which thankfully are quite good; the battle music is edgy, the dungeon music sounds adventurous, and the tavern music is reminiscent of what one would expect to hear playing in the background during a drunken bar fight. The controls of the game serve their purpose, and are essentially flawless. The player will not be punished for pressing the wrong button on the control pad. Taken as a whole, Shining in the Darkness is a borderline classic RPG. With its emphasis on exploration and combat, this game can keep a player involved for dozens of hours. Fans of the genre who have never played this game have most certainly missed out on a piece of console RPG history. -Erebus
Other Helpful Reviews for Shining and the Darkness
Shining in the Darkness is a first person dungeon crawler RPG released in 1991 for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive. At the time of its release, dungeon crawling was still a fairly common mechanism in RPG gaming, particularly... Read Full Review
This is an overlooked classical RPG which can be remembered as one of the first true 3D RPGs on consoles, first person perspective, though laggy and repetitive. At least the controls are fluid to counter this effectively... Read Full Review
