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 Introduction Shining Force CD is a tactical RPG released in the US in 1995 for the Sega CD. It's a remake of two Game Gear Shining Force games - Shining Force Gaiden, and Shining Force Gaiden II: The Sword of Hajya. Only Sword of Hajya was released in the US making CD the first (and only) official English translation of Gaiden that I'm aware of. CD is divided up into "books" with Book 1 (Towards the Root of Evil) being Gaiden, and Book 2 (The Evil God Awakes) being Gaiden II. However, CD also features two additional exclusive adventures in Book 3 and the secret Book 4. Book 3 continues the story from Book 2, and while I'm not currently sure what Book 4 entails, I believe it is a smaller bonus thing, unlocked by finding a secret item. Being a Sega CD game, the graphics are vastly improved over the Game Gear versions, and the game features CD quality audio. The gameplay of these games departs from the original formula in that there are no town or field exploration sections. Instead there are brief cutscenes between fights to propel the story forward. There is also a camp screen where you can do things like save the game, manage characters, and in some cases buy items from a shop. Book 1 of SFCD takes place 20 years after the events of the first Shining Force game (which I did a playthrough of a long time ago), giving us a glimpse of what happened to the members of the original Force after their battle with Dark Dragon. About the Playthrough I've never played Shining Force CD before. I did at one point play a little bit of Gaiden II via Nintendo's eShop (I think), but that was a very long time ago. I don't have any plans to limit or bring specific characters into battle, but I will be playing the game on Super Hard difficulty. From what I can tell Super Hard increases enemy stats slightly, and according the manual it changes the type and frequency of the items you will find, as well as increasing monster aggression and spellcasting. I'm playing the game using a physical copy on a real Model 2 Sega CD and Sega Genesis combo. I'm using an RGB connection through a Framemeister to get a 5x upscale of the game. This cuts off a little of the top and bottom of the picture, but we shouldn't be missing anything important. To keep save games for all books simultaneously you need a Sega CD backup RAM cart as the internal memory of the Sega CD is insufficient. I don't currently have one of those so I'm using a Mega Everdrive X5 as my RAM cart instead.    Series Playlist
 Series Playlist
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 Series Playlist It's video games. Every day...ish. rojovision fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Nov 1, 2021 |
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Jan 15, 2020 07:35
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Jan 15, 2020 07:35
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Screenshots    
rojovision fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Nov 1, 2021 |
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Jan 15, 2020 07:36
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 Battle 1 - A New Force Assembles This is a brief introduction of the game, as well as the first battle. We learn a bit about what happened to some of the members of the old Force, and embark upon a new adventure to defeat evil.
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Jan 15, 2020 07:56
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 Battle 2 - Getting CRAY. Literally.
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Jan 21, 2020 04:20
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 Battle 3 - Seeking Another Ship to Inevitably Wreck
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Jan 27, 2020 23:39
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Ah, good old Shining Force. My first ever SRPG.
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Jan 28, 2020 02:59
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Night10194 posted:Ah, good old Shining Force. My first ever SRPG. The first game is definitely one of my favorite Genesis games of all time. I sort of miss the town exploration sections, but so far I'm liking CD as well.
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Jan 29, 2020 15:02
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Shining Force 2 was a staple around my house growing up, and we never got a sega CD so this game was kinda a legend to us, so I'm really excited to see this game for the first time! Thanks for doing this LP.
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Jan 29, 2020 19:47
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Gloomy Rube posted:Shining Force 2 was a staple around my house growing up, and we never got a sega CD so this game was kinda a legend to us, so I'm really excited to see this game for the first time! Thanks for doing this LP. I'm glad to finally be playing it. I actually bought my Sega CD specifically for this game since I didn't have one as a kid either.
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Feb 4, 2020 01:02
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 Battle 4 - Knock Knock
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Feb 4, 2020 01:03
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 Battle 5 - Miniyom Liberated
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Feb 11, 2020 01:27
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When I played Shining Force I never even knew you COULD Promote before 20. Also, Promotion is a fun as hell mechanic in every game it's in and I love it. Though trying to make sure useless Thief Slade became kickass Ninja Slade was usually one of the big pains of SF2.
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Feb 11, 2020 05:12
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Night10194 posted:When I played Shining Force I never even knew you COULD Promote before 20. I enjoy the promotion mechanic as well. My only complaint is that it seems like grinding is a requirement to unlock all of the spells for a given character. Granted some spells are probably sort of useless, but still. This is just based on my experience with other Shining Force games I've played. I'm guessing this one will be more or less the same in that regard, though.
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Feb 14, 2020 09:58
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I didn't know that SF CD was just a compilation of 2 Game Gear games. So I was disappointed when I played it and it was a mechanical downgrade.
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Feb 14, 2020 11:11
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Night10194 posted:Ah, good old Shining Force. My first ever SRPG. I don't know if it was my first, but I definitely only played Shining Force because it was on Sega Channel as a free game and I got hooked on SRPGs because of it. I'm always glad to see more LPs of Shining Force in any fashion.
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Feb 14, 2020 15:54
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ChrisBTY posted:I didn't know that SF CD was just a compilation of 2 Game Gear games. So I was disappointed when I played it and it was a mechanical downgrade. The battle mechanics are still completely intact, but the town sections from the first game were a nice way to mix things up. It does lack some of the more in-depth stuff from SF 2 as well (alternate promotions, weapon crafting), which came out the year before, so coming from that game I can definitely see how CD could disappoint.
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Feb 18, 2020 00:15
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 Battle 6 - Road to Asreet
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Feb 18, 2020 00:17
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Someone needs to sneak into all of Sega's offices and plant folders full of data showing how much Fire Emblem has made as a turn-based strategy game over the last ten years. It's a waste to let the good of the franchise be a thing of the past.
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Feb 22, 2020 23:43
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Ghosts n Gopniks posted:Someone needs to sneak into all of Sega's offices and plant folders full of data showing how much Fire Emblem has made as a turn-based strategy game over the last ten years. It's a waste to let the good of the franchise be a thing of the past. Unfortunately it seems like they'd rather use the Shining name to make games like Shining Resonance (which might feature the most unlikable protagonist in human history), and then sell lewd figurines on top of that.
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Feb 25, 2020 02:27
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 Battle 7 - Asreet Streets
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Feb 25, 2020 02:28
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rojovision posted:Unfortunately it seems like they'd rather use the Shining name to make games like Shining Resonance (which might feature the most unlikable protagonist in human history), and then sell lewd figurines on top of that. Even more unlikable than Captain Christopher Raven from Raven's Cry? That's pretty impressive.
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Feb 25, 2020 03:15
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chiasaur11 posted:Even more unlikable than Captain Christopher Raven from Raven's Cry? Well I haven't played that game, so I can't say for sure. But the guy in Resonance (Yuma) acts like a goddamn emo self-loathing crybaby every second he's alive, and it really annoys me.
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Feb 26, 2020 00:34
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 Battle 8 - The Resistance Marches Onward
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Mar 3, 2020 01:29
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 Battle 9 - You Can Smell the Fear
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Mar 10, 2020 04:32
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Nick is not gaining much Attack with his levels. That is not a good thing. Not sure if they balanced around the sword improvements making up for that or if he's getting unlucky.
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Mar 11, 2020 02:48
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Kacie posted:Nick is not gaining much Attack with his levels. That is not a good thing. Not sure if they balanced around the sword improvements making up for that or if he's getting unlucky. He does seem to be lagging behind a bit. I imagine his stat curve is a lot better after promotion, so hopefully it won't matter too much.
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Mar 16, 2020 22:12
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 Battle 10 - A Startling Revelation
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Mar 16, 2020 22:13
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 Battle 11 - Home Sweet Home
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Mar 23, 2020 21:14
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 Battle 12 - Hello Old Friend
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Mar 30, 2020 22:19
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If you are taking requests - would you please use Gyan and get him promoted at a decent time? I like his portrait, and want to see if he is as awesome as Zylo. Thanks!
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Mar 31, 2020 03:12
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Kacie posted:If you are taking requests - would you please use Gyan and get him promoted at a decent time? I like his portrait, and want to see if he is as awesome as Zylo. Thanks! Hadn't thought about taking requests, but we'll definitely use Gyan. I can't say for certain, but I think he shows up in Book 2 as well, though I'm not sure if his stats will import or if he's playable there.
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Apr 1, 2020 04:59
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 Battle 13 - Malicious Magic Mushrooms
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Apr 6, 2020 21:53
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Been following this since the start, but haven't really had much to say before now. I remember that "10 experience for a heal on a max HP character" thing. It was my favorite way to level grind my healers back when I played Shining Force 2. Pretty sure it worked for Medical Herbs too, so priests were also my favorite item caddies (on the few occasions that I did not exploit that for even more experience). Yeah, my healers were fairly frequently my highest-level characters. Long-term abuse of a "guaranteed experience" mechanic will do that.
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Apr 7, 2020 13:21
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Color me deeply unimpressed with the so-called Death Tunnel and magical mushrooms. If they'd at least have poisoned folks that would have been somewhat more serious, but even then.
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Apr 8, 2020 02:44
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CptWedgie posted:Been following this since the start, but haven't really had much to say before now. For some reason I want to say in SF1 you only got 1 XP for healing a full HP character, so I guess I was making too many assumptions about the similarities between that and CD. It's definitely handy to know either way. I may still be wrong about 1 XP in SF1 as well since I haven't gone back to test it. Kacie posted:Color me deeply unimpressed with the so-called Death Tunnel and magical mushrooms. If they'd at least have poisoned folks that would have been somewhat more serious, but even then. Yeah the sleep could have made a difference if the mushrooms had actually just used the ability more than twice. They passed like 90% of their turns.
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Apr 11, 2020 23:44
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 Battle 14 - Shift Change
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Apr 14, 2020 04:03
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 Battle 15 - Fizzled Got this one uploaded a bit late this week. Sorry for the delay.
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Apr 23, 2020 00:40
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Took until now for me to feel the Dragon Quest vibe of the camp music, so uncanny it feels like I missed a mention that this was a special hacked up copy using a track from a DQ game. Wth
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Apr 23, 2020 01:32
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Ghosts n Gopniks posted:Took until now for me to feel the Dragon Quest vibe of the camp music, so uncanny it feels like I missed a mention that this was a special hacked up copy using a track from a DQ game. Wth Well, apparently the composer for SFCD has had some contact with the composer for the Dragon Quest games, so there may have been some inspiration from DQ involved.
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Apr 23, 2020 05:32
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