Shining Soul

Overview

Release in 2002 in Japan and in 2003 in other regions, only for Game Boy Advance, Shining Soul is the seventh game in the series and it is an isometric dungeon-crawling action RPG.

The game takes place in Rune

makes the player take the role of a warrior torn between two directly opposing groups: The Dark Dragons and the Shining Fleet. The game lets the wizard choose to pertain to one of four classes: fighter, wizard, archer, or dragonute. The game allows high customization of the character, including weapons, clothing, color schemes, armor etc.

The game allows link-up play with up to four players, to fight in cooperative combat. The gameplay presents itself as a typical dungeon crawler ARPG, with the objective of collecting gold, clothes, weapons etc. as well as constant hunting for experience points to level up. The game has a sequel called, simply Shining Soul II, in which the core gameplay remains practically the same but many extra features ($ new classes, collectible cards, arena, side quests etc.) are added.

Gameplay

Classes & skills

Knight:

Sword - sword power up, charge attack

Axe - axe power up, charge attack

Spear - spear power up, charge attack

Def build-up - improves defense

Efficacy - increases recovery power of items

Mentalpower - raises immunity against attacks

Cold res - improves defense against cold

Lightning res - improves defense against thunder

Wizard:

Blaze - spell that casts balls of fire

Freeze - spell that casts balls of ice

Spark - spell that casts thunderbolts

Hellblast - spell that casts tornado

Inferno - spell that reduces area to ashes

Res - improves resistance against magic

Heal - spell that recovers HP

Slow - Spell that slows down enemies

Archer:

Bow - bow power up, charge attack

Spear - spear power up, charge attack

Leap - raises weapons' throwing range

Critical - increases chance of critical hit

Healing - HO recovers gradually

Anti-flying - more damage to flying enemies

Fire res - improves defense against flame

Cold res - improves defense against cold

Dragonute:

Axe - axe power up, charge attack

Flail - flail power up, charge attack

Brak armor - lowers enemies' defense

Emit - counterattacks with brath

Def build-up - improves defense

Undead - more damage to undead enemies

Fire res - improves defense against flame

Lightning res - improves defense against thunder

Stages & bosses

Area 1

Name: Beast Mountain

Number of levels: 3

Boss: Beast King

Area 2

Name: Labyrinth Death Shadow

Number of levels: 7

Boss: Titan Fighter - a mighty war machine that shoots energy beams out of his eye-like sockets. After the armor is destroyed you fight the ball-formed core that uses rolling attacks.

Area 3

Name: Equal Dungeon

Number of levels: 10

Boss: Bulzam - the first dragon general. Teleports himself around the room and shoots multiple fireballs.

Area 4

Name: Forest of Another World

Number of levels: 10

Boss: Michaela - the second dragon general. Uses her own replicas to attack the hero with ice missiles.