Shining Resonance

Sometimes franchises can take curious detours, the Shining series, which start first as a dungeon crawler, moved to two acclaimed tactical games from there spread out, becoming several things, from some fighting games to action games. Because of the weight of those two acclaimed tactical games, this detour is often looked down, however, at least one games of the said detour I did find to be pretty charming and that is Shining Resonance Refrain.

While it have little to do with Shining series as a whole, Shining Resonance Refrain, as a Jrpg is a very charming game, not spectacular, but truly charming, despite some flaws here and there. What I think it excels it on it, even if simple story, it on character development and designs and some cleaver mechanics or ideas.

The story begin telling you about a conflict between where dragons went extinct, however, there is still one person, Yuma (the protagonist), which can channel the power of the Shining Dragon and even turn in an actual dragon. He is taken captive by the Lombardian Empire, which seeks to use the souls of the dragons, to power up it war machine, managing even to create false dragons, however, Yuma is rescued by Sonia, a knight of the kingdom of Astoria. From there the game start, with Yuma, Sonia, Kirika and other companions, the Dragoneers, yielding weapons that have dragon souls to face the Empire. It is a pretty standard story, but it works, well even when it appears to play by the numbers, the real card the game have it will be the characters and their interactions.

Well there is also a second card which the game plays very well, while in general its visuals are pretty simple, some even look a bit generic, such as handful of npcs, that look from a MMO or something, on what Shining Resonance Refrain excels, is on the character design of it main cast, which was made my Tony Taka, which mostly appear to have worked in previous Shining games (and in Azur Lane), I feel that in Resonance, his style feel reached a good peak, in comparison to previous Shining games he worked on (at least by glancing the game covers). This off course, does not work alone, what works, it is like I said above, the character interactions, it is charming and light in a refreshing way. It does not mean that every joke lands (some don't land) or everything works, but most work enough to even give strength to the story or even carry you despite it.

It is the kind of game where if you like the characters you wish to see more often, or some point more developed more, because here and there, from fun moments, to bonding moments, with both the guys and girls in the party, it all work pretty well. That said, again some work better than other, characters such as Sonia, Kirika, Agnum, Excella, Jinas and even some antagonists such as Zest, Georg, are the best, while other such as Rinna, Marion, Lestin and a few others fell a bit of hit-and-miss.

The way you interact with your party is as follows, first at each chapter you have a unique event which you can respond to a dialogue, also you can invite them to a date too. By last, well you remember those relationship charts you often seen in anime and manga? Well, here you have a version of this, where you can organize the characters and how Yuma feels about them and their relationship with him or with each other. This is an important system, because as your character create bonds, they got stronger, and how you step the chart affect it, like two rivals, gain bonds by defeating enemies. My only issue is that once you hit a configuration you like, there is almost no reason to change it.

To return a bit to talk about the visuals, like I said, Tony Taka’s concept art does most of the heavy lift, and most of the time the models work well, but they also can be both too close (in dialogue screens) and too far (some camera angles), making it a bit hard to distinguish details in certain moments, which is more noticeable when you aren’t using their default costumes, mostly because their default costume for some characters, have some sort of form and figure, from Jinas and Agnum coats to Kirika and Excella whose skirts have a lot of volume (also their hair accessories help too). However, the alternate costumes, maybe save the Idol costume for Yuma (which I used the whole game), feel a bit wasted. Also talking about costumes, another concept that is never much explored, but it there, is that when using the Band system (more of this latter), the center of the band, can change costume, but only Sonia and Kirika do this.

Beyond the main character and antagonists, the focus is the dragons, which are fine. The rest of the visuals monsters and npcs of the game are sort of ok, a bit generic possibly, but nothing bad.

Now the backgrounds, well some also a bit generic, but serviceable, specially some outdoor ones, the game main city, Marga, feel a bit too big to begin two maps, which spread out npcs in a weird way, often you can forget that Marga have another map where part of the main cast hangs (Agnum, Lestin, Marion) but you don't go much there. However, there are, and I will explain more about it later, some special dungeons, which have some unique visuals, which you never see in the game and feel sort wasted, like the Astoria Academy, which as the name implies, is a dungeon in the form high school, which between the colors and visuals works almost too well… like possibly one of the better background visuals of the game.

Moving to gameplay, let's talk a bit about combat.

The combat is pretty simple, you control the party leader, you can do light and heavy attack, dash, block and so, plus using “Forces” which are the spells, also you do have a sort “stamina bar” of sort too. While simple, however, is fast and fluid enough to never overstays it welcome.

While your weapons are fixed, you can customize them in two ways, one is the “Tune”, which define the main aspect of the weapon, which stats scale (the more you use a weapon the higher the level is and more status bonus it will give) and if there are some buffs or debuffs, secondly you have the Aspects, which are slots which you can feel with gems which give you different kinds of bonus.

Since I mentioned, so let's talk about the Band System, you see this game have a very strong musical theme, as your weapons also act as musical instruments, in rather hilarious ways, such as Excella using a gigantic jousting spear as a flute, Agnum using his axe as a guitar, Kirika using her bow as a harp and Sonia using a sword and shield as a violin. While Yuma just waves his hand like a maestro and Jinas just cross his arms and nods and so on.

The system work as follows, as you fight you accumulate energy, which you can spend entering in Band mode, depending on the song which you choose and party formation, you gain different buffs or give debuffs to the enemy. The catch is that as the music plays, the energy is consumed and if a party member dies, the music ends.

By last you have the Dragonshift, as Yuma can turn in the Shining Dragon for a while (as longs he has MP, because once you turn in a dragon, your MP starts to drain), it pretty powerful mode, often key in some boss battles, but while on it, you can't use items also if you let your MP reach zero, Yuma goes berserker, and you lose his control.

Moving from combat, the game flow is also pretty neat, as you have chapters, between each some main and side quest, but also at each chapter you have a unique dialogue with each companion, and that pretty much, simple but direct, also it never goes for too long, meaning that each chapter feel right on size in terms or duration. Maps overall are pretty short too, meaning that explore them is rather quick too. There is maybe only one instance where the pace is sort broken, at one point you are required to play with two characters that you might not level up much, which might require you to grind, but also in the same section, as your main party moves you can't return to the town until you finish the section, or you have to redo that early party with just two character too.

On the subject of side quests, you do have the Grimoire Distortion (the special dungeons which I talked above), Alfriede, is a npc that you introduce you to a set of unique dungeons which you can explore, much as the name suggest, they are meant to be distortions of time and space, meaning both include stuff which vanished from the world and stuff which does not exist yet. By the way, her and another npc, suggest that stuff from other worlds can be brought up to this world, this being the explanation why often your characters will have events related to stuff which comes from our world, such as Valentine's Day, or even a kotatsu, this is sort an nod to previous of the Shining games, where this happens too.

Anyway, back to Grimoire Distortion, they are also dungeons which you can customize, by using Sigils, which determine the monsters you can find, rewards and other stuff, you can add levels, remove levels and so on. It is a place where the few times you might need to grind, you can do it in quick way.

To warp it up, Shining Resonance, might have not much to do with earlier Shining games (well, as whole the franchise appear to never be meant to be direct sequels anyway), something that make easy for people to look down (and again forget that sort the franchise was never meant to be just direct sequels), still a pretty good light jrpg, that manage it time well, it is mainly carried by the character and their interactions.