A game that was decent for its time but lacklustre.

User Rating: 6 | Shining Soul GBA
By Shade9222 | Review Date:
Shining soul was an ok game... I could leave it at that, but that's not much of a review. The game took the Standard RPG formula and basically just applied it. There was no innovation, no magical catch or anything that really made the game stand out, it just took the standard RPG formula and made a game out of that. All that was needed for the game was there and nothing more, which was kind of sad considering all the hype it was given by Nintendo power way back in the day. It became especially boring when the game became idiot-proof by using the correct class and maxing out the correct techniques.

Story:
The story started off being interesting but quickly became generic and bland: save the world by destroying the 5 generals of darkness and the dark dragon. If they had taken more time deepen the story it may have been better, but they did miss the key element of "something has to go wrong before the day can be saved". The story was straight forward, linear, and boring, simple as that.

Gameplay:
The gameplay for this game was actually really good. The hit markers worked really well. For a game that was fairly dull at least the managed to get the most important thing in a game down: The gameplay and controls has to be good or the game is going to suck no matter what.

Graphics:
What can I say, by today's standard they would suck. However, I'm not going to judge it by today's standard, I'll judge it for its time. For it's time the Graphics were up to par, this was fairly good on a handheld system back on 2003. The sprites weren't as amazing as some other games back then, but it didn't suck either.

Music:
I have to say the music for the game was fairly enjoyable. The music for the bosses especially made it seem a little more tense than in a regular area. The music was good, however because the game was short there weren't that many different songs...

Length/difficulty:
This game was way to short which is where most of the points would come off. Once again had they taken the time to develop more of a story they could have had something a little more interesting. It also just became way too easy when you picked the right class (Mage) and maxed out the right skill ASAP (Inferno). This allowed to pretty much beat the game in less than 4 hours. And thus the difficulty and length made it a game that would be better suited to being played on a long trip to your Grandmother's house or someplace like that.

Story: 2/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Graphics: 4/5 (for its time)
Music: 3/5
Length/difficulty: 1/5

Overall: 5.6/10 (you can check the math, add all of the up divide them by 5 and *10 and you get your score out of 10. I did not copy the gamespot rating and was really surprised it came out to this when I saw it)

I don't agree with gamespot on every rating it give a game, but on this one I think they got it right. Best to just ignore this one and move on to the sequel, I hear it's supposed to be much better.

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