Golden Sun vs. Shining Force II

i guess this is what i get for starting a camelot RPGs thread while czn is asleep :(

http://www.dabbledoo.com/ee/images/uploads/gamertell/shining_force_2.jpg

this is such a dope game and its def wrapped up in nostalgia and like maybe cloudy-eyed yearning but i think it basically nailed the console srpg format. just shit like the river battle against the kraken which was crazy hard and required real tactical thought. game forced u to make 4 real choices about unit selection and even like $$-spendin no option to lvl boost to victory and no covering all the bases. which was crazy frustrating at the time but made for a deeper more challenging game.

n.e.way i think the game is just wider and more worthwhile and challenging than golden sun which is dope in its own way but doesnt satsify like sf2

I played Golden Sun, but I remember absolutely nothing about it. I recall Shining Force II.

golden sun is basically e-z-snappin a little bit except for the dungeon puzzles although i think it probably looks better and has less pointless what do i next moments or frustratingly inexplicable "secrets" which are so secret nothing in the game will ever tell you they exist.

i also got lulz out of the "don't u see y/n" stuff always choosing the absolute worst possible answer including losing the game in the first ten minutes by refusing to go on the kick-off quest

Oh, I hate it when they do that bit. Like in Super Paper Mario Wii 64 or whatever, the 'will go on a quest mario' 'no' (resets back to title screen, forces you to watch twenty minute intro again) — I'm actually starting to get angry just thinking about it. Those kinds of 'yes/no (but yes really)' are awful design, they may think they're being clever but changing it to 'yes/no (haha fuck you)' doesn't mitigate it in any way

so, uh, sf2 i guess

i still have nightmares over which picking my units. 'Do I need another cavalry guy? Shit...'

sf2 was totally golden, actually. i remember using the naming cheat and finding there was one extra guy and playing through the entire thing looking for him. i never did. it was sad.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/genesis/file/563341/34714

http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/genesis/file/shining_force_ii_battle_14.png

http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/genesis/file/shining_force_ii_fairy_woods.png

haha yah sf2 had mad secrets and lookin back i wonder how i figured all that stuff out. like i def wasnt checking gamefaqs to know what mythril weapons to get. probably had a chart or something

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sf2 was totally golden, actually. i remember using the naming cheat and finding there was one extra guy and playing through the entire thing looking for him. i never did. it was sad.

― thomp, Thursday, February 5, 2009 7:07 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

Was it Skreech? I didn't find him until years later when i finally had access to gamefaqs and it made me so happy! Kind of worthless, though
same with the hamster in the first one

promotion class skreech (bird dude?) was better i think. the hidden promotion items were a lot more important than the hidden characters tbh if/when i end up copping that genesis redux comp finding all those will be key

lol random search u r the stupidest

oh yeah finding the sorcerer class was totally amazing when i was in junior school also

skreech is the second flying sword guy, right? the one you get by stepping into one random square in birdtown and triggering a cut scene where you save a baby? i found him first playthrough entirely by accident iirc

why do i remember this shit

i think this may be the only game where i found all the secrets and shit in pre-gamefaqs days. back when, you know, they actually designed them so as to make it possible to do so

lol idk if thats true???? skreech was basically just a random event there were no in-game hints and that battle hidden in the hidden elf village was hard to find iirc.

haha i remember randomly revisiting locations searching for mythril pieces (which were in the most unobv places) and discovering that u could get all the characters after all. at the castle where u can only pick one new character at first if u revisit u can have ALL the available chars join the party pointless as it is

i no i mentioned it upthread but i actually had to play/reset a bunch of times to see which of the mythril weapons were best. i doubt i ever found ever piece of mythril equipment tbf

did all that except for play/reset to check for the good mythril weapons. i found the hidden elf battle by myself tho :| tho i do think i read about the secret post-credit battle first

i actually bought and played the shining force game for GBA for cheap not long ago, and finished it kind of on automatic, and did not realise until having done so that i was in fact playing a remake of SF1 for the megadrive, a game i had in fact already completed

:D

poor golden sun got no <3 here but its a pretty good game too although i remember being SO ANGRY liek that w/all caps about lost age which required a lot of pointless retracking in order to get crappy items

Golden Sun was pretty decent, but totally agreed, I quit halfway through the second one because it was so boring and I just totally lost track of where I was and/or where I was supposed to go. It felt a little too much like an old school Dragon Quest game in that regard!

"discovering that u could get all the characters after all. at the castle where u can only pick one new character at first if u revisit u can have ALL the available chars join the party pointless as it is"

When I discovered this it made me SO happy, despite the fact that they were pointless characters now.
I'd always have such a hard time choosing which one to take.
Shining Force II is just one of the greatest games ever. i still regularly replay it and get the same amount of enjoyment from it.
Shining Force I is also absolutely amazing.
My dream is that some day all three Shining Force III's will get a US release... I've still never played the one English one.
it's a shame that the franchise went to shit.

And Golden Sun is pretty great but yeah, i never got through the second one either

one thing that really disappointed me about golden sun was the changeable classes which ended up being pretty lame most of the time, and never seemed to make the game as interesting as it couldve been. it was always a) painfulyl obv which set-up was best and b) that was usually the default set-up

i remember being really pysched that lost age would allow you to continue playing w/yr old characters that youd spent all this time leveling only to actually make you start at lvl. 1 with basically the exact same characters except their sprites and namers were different

SFIII is: AN AMAZING GAME!!!! i sold off a bunch of saturn games last fall assuming that the price will fall once they start getting vc/xbla/ds2 rereleases but im holding on to that one.

http://forums.shiningforcecentral.com/index.php?showforum=34
These guys are working on translation patches for emulations of the two Japanese ones
The second one is supposed to be pretty playable now but I think I'll wait to play them until they are all finished.
It might take a couple more years until they finish but I'll be quite a happy man when they do

I loved golden sun tbh

i liked golden sun though i recall it being generally maligned by jrpg fans

i think i really liked golden sun? i remember getting it for xmas the same year i got the vespertine CD (or maybe it was bjork greatest hits, cant rmeember now)... and then i got sick, and played it in bed & listened to that cd a whole lot for like 2 days with a fever.

i remember it being hella generic and styleless

i remember liking the first Golden Sun despite it being excessively talkie with endless conversations that went nowhere and those emoji-like things. never got round to the second one (and the DS one is generally loathed as far as I can tell)

Liked it, got about halfway through the second one. Solid mid-tier JRPG imo. zappi and thomp's criticisms are fair. Thought the game had a good reception when it came out

xp thats just basically it being realistic mannnnnn