Shining the Holy Ark Review

Looking back, Shining the Holy Ark is one good rpg from the people of Sega. When I first got this game, I was happy cause I'm a big Shining fan but then I found out it was a first person view rpg game. I'm not a big fan of first person view games so my happyness turned into disappointment. But to my surprised, this is the only first person view game that I truly enjoy playing. This game is very much like the first Shining game, Shining in the Darkness. Well on with the review.

The story starts off with 3 mercenaries (Arthur, Melody, and Forte) heading toward a cave to try and capture a renegade ninja by the name of Rodi. During the initial first fight between Rodi and the three mercenaries, a spaceship crash and knock everyone out. The occupants of the spaceship are spirit beings. One of the spirit however is an evil spirit which decided to repossess one of the human bodies. Forte is the human that was possess by the evil spirit. The new evil Forte takes off. The other three humans were badly injured so the remaining good spirits decided to possess their bodies too but give them free will. With the humans recovering their full health thanks to the good spirits, Rodi, Arthur, and Melody decided to set off to track down Forte to free him of the evil spirit that possess his body. So this is how your story quest begins.
The story isn't very strong here. You have a few story cut scene here and there but the overrall story takes a back seat to the gameplay and dungeon exploring. Still there's enough of a plotline to get you by plus an added mystery plot that won't be resolve until Shining Force 3.

Shining the Holy Ark gives us many characters and unique ones too to choose from. Unfortunately these characters have very little background developement added to them or originality. I mean 80 to 90% of the cast are all mercenaries here. The characters are great to choose from for fights but not so good in terms of helping the storyline.

The graphics are all in 3-D with animation 3-D characters. The 3-D characters and monsters are excellently done with great detail added to them. The background are done nicely too. The only really downside is the fact that the colors aren't as nice as you want it to be. Still one of the Saturn best graphical games out there.

The music in the game are very good. Most of the tunes are nice and everything but the thing that sticks out the most is the sound effects. Especially the sound effects that the monsters make. Man, those kind of sound just freaks me out sometimes. Very realistic sound and music just right for the key moments in this game. Still, I wish there was a musical tune that really stick out that makes you remember this game.

The gameplay is pretty much basic turn base rpg stuff with two exceptions. Everything is in first person view mode and the use of pixies system. I'll explain the pixies system later on. Despite the game being in first person view mode, it's not that hard to explore dungeons at all. There's an overhead map for you to look at if you get lost. This helps out alot. The battles are random encounters. The enemies will come from the right, left, above, straight ahead, or underground. This has to do with the pixie system. The basic menu is attack, use magic, items, ect. You get the idea. When you fight, it's turn base in a first person view. You can see the other members attacking the monster but you don't see yourself only the monster when you attack a monster. Hence the meaning behind first person view.
Now the only thing that's different than your average rpg is the use of pixies. Throughout the game you can find little pixies. What do finding pixies do?? Pixies are like little fairies. Each pixie is assigned to help you do an additional damage to the enemy before a random encounter battle starts. As stated earlier, each monster comes from different directions to attack you. Each pixie is assign to one of these directions. When you hear the sound of the monsters coming at you and can guess the right direction that it's coming from, you can then select the pixie that is assign in that direction to give is some addition attack right away. Example, if a monster is attacking from the right side, quickly choose the pixies who's job to attack monsters coming from the right side to give it an additional damage. This is very innovative and fun. I really like it.
In the end the gameplay is very basic turn base rpg stuff. Explore dungeons and fight monsters. Despite this being basic stuff, you can find yourself enjoying this game quite alot.

This is probaly the weakest part in this game. There isn't really alot or any extras that worth a mention in this game at all. Replay comes from the enjoyment of the game I guess. Very weak stuff here.

Shining the Holy Ark may not seem like much compare to today's rpgs but it can still give you a good time. It's definetly a game that can be called underrated. It's a shame that not too many rpgers today will know anything about it.