Game 9 - Shining Force (Chapters 7-8)

Before I get to the last two chapters, I forgot to upload some pictures from the manual. First, the game comes with a large map (pointless), but the back side which gives all the weapons, magic spells, and characters, is useful. The map came with yellowed, cracking tape probably 25 years old.

Then there is the usual section with art of all the characters -- as I've said, this is helpful in these older games where the graphics don't always tell the full story of what the characters are supposed to look like.

Although in this case I think the in-game graphics do a good job of translating these pictures.

Anyway, last two chapters.

Chapter 7 - The Lost Civilization

Prompt is a place where the people intentionally act stupid, but they're really working on figuring out how to open the Shining Road.

There's a hidden character, Musashi. In the English version you investigate a sign on a wall but in the Japanese version there's no sign.

The same is true of the Hanzou bush in the next chapter.


Battle 22

Here we have an upgraded Zappa and Bleu, who will be useless for the rest of the game. Musashi is along for the ride now. A lot of people move very slow over this terrain and the monsters are tougher -- particularly the Bolt casting Belials. But it's not too bad.

Battle 23

This map is not so bad either, although I think I had to escape once or twice. The new robot-like enemies do a lot of damage. The boss is like Mishaela in that only one guy can attack him at once (plus flyers) but he's a lot easier than Mishaela.

Now I get Alef (mage) and Torasu (priest). I left Alef in the HQ but switched out Chip for Torasu since he has Aura. Cain also sacrifices himself to save me, and we head on to Metafa the lost civilization.

Battle 24

Looks like I forgot to get a screenshot of this stage. The beginning is tough; there are a lot of monsters coming for you and it's easy to get overwhelmed. I had to escape a few times and retry before I managed to get control of the battle. Once Chaos is left by himself, it's not too bad.


Now we combine the Sword of Light and Cain's Sword of Darkness to make the Chaos Breaker, the strongest weapon, and head on to Runefaust to try to stop Darksol.

Battle 25

Another forest/mountain stage.

The armed skeletons are annoying, but overall I didn't find this map very hard.

Chapter 8 - Rise of the Ancient Castle

In Runefaust I bought the best equipment for my main party and still had 250,000K gold left over. Hanzou joins here too, a good replacement for Zappa the Wolf Baron failure.

Somehow I have few screenshots until battle 29, I guess I got lazy.

Battle 26

This was another one I had to restart multiple times -- there are a lot of flying enemies that can get you right from the start, and I kept losing weak units or even the strong units would get overwhelmed. Once I got control of the battle, though, it finished fairly easy.

Battle 27

Time to take down King Ramladu of Runefaust!

 The walkthrough says he can heal himself but I never saw this. He does regenerate, but without a strong area effect spell it's easy to surround him and beat the crap out of him.

Of course Ramladu was being controlled by Darksol, who is the only foe left. Kurisu uses the Chaos Breaker to make the ancient city rise from the sea, and we head in there for the final conflict.

Battle 28

This is another stage where the initial enemies can quickly overwhelm you and I had to escape a few times before I figured out how to place my guys to not get rushed. Once this is done the rest of the stage was not so bad. Colossus the boss is tough and has to be beaten twice to win the stage.

Battle 29

Here is the two-part final battle. Any dead characters in this stage will not be revived in the next one.

There is my final party. Other than Bleu, who is completely useless, they all contributed.

Darksol is the main difficulty of this stage, but with surrounded by Gort, Gantz, Musashi, and Hanzou, he went down pretty quickly, especially since he chose a few times to attack rather than use his high damage area spells.

Now Darksol uses his own body to revive the Dark Dragon.

Battle 30 

Dark Dragon has three heads, each with 250 HP -- 750 HP is more than the total HP of all the units on many stages but somehow this isn't as hard as that makes it seem. 

I moved two guys on the squares where the enemies respawn to block them, and then focused on the main head. He has high damage spells but with a few Auras I was able to beat him. At this point I was out of cure MP but the other heads are nowhere near as difficult. If I had really wanted to I could have just used Lyle to beat both heads without taking any damage.

Once Dark Dragon is defeated, Kurisu reseals him with the Chaos Breaker, but has to remain there to hold the sword while the castle crumbles. He warps everyone else out with Return but stays in himself. The game then tells you that all the characters go back to their homes (no extended treatment like in Fire Emblem).

After the credits, there's an epilogue showing that Adam and Kurisu actually did survive the final battle.

Wrap-up in a few days.