The Let's Play Archive

Shining Force

by Random Hajile

Part 3: Battle #1




First up is a little pre-combat dialog.



Thank you for that update, Captain Obvious.



That's the spirit!











Holy crap! Earthquake!



And now...

Combat 101:
Hit B, and you can freely look around the battlefield and look at character's stats, both friendly and enemy.


These the party members we currently have:



First up is Gillian, the SDMN. Four-character abbreviations are often rather goofy, but hey, we'll work with what we're given. He's a swordsman.

Most of the stats are fairly self-explanatory. How hard you hit, how well you take hits, how far you move, and how fast your turn comes up, in that order.

Gillian is fairly well-rounded, and he gets to be quite the badass later on. This is fortunate, because if he dies, you lose a battle right then and there.

Egress is a spell of retreat. Handy for getting out of a losing battle before you have to have everyone resurrected. But since I don't suck, it won't really be getting any use.



Lowe is a HEAL(er).
Surprisingly, he's more agile than Gillian to begin with. Other than that, there's not much to say.



Luke is a WARR(ior).
He packs a punch and can take a few hits, but he'll be on the slow side. He'll be using swords and axes.



Ken is a KNT (Knight).
Good mobility, and he'll be able to use both lances (close range) and spears (can attack foes both adjacent and two square away. Boy did he get shafted on HP at first, though.



Hans is an ACHR (Archer).
He's right in wanting to stay off the front lines. Archers get to attack enemies that are two (and later on three) squares away, but not enemies that are next to them.



Tao is our MAGE. They generally get a variety of spells that both attack and inflict status effects on our foes. Tao's specialty is Blaze, though she does get more spells eventually.

I have absolutely no idea why she has more HP than Ken or Luke right now, but that'll change soon enough.

Expirience is given on a per-action basis for each character. Attacking, killing, healing, and giving status effects all give expirience based on your level vs. the level(s) of the target(s). Every level is only 100 expirience, but as I said, your gains are modified.

So if you try to focus too heavily on giving one character XP, he'll get ahead of the level curve and his XP will slow down. Also, if you don't have a character do much, he'll fall behind. He'll gain more XP per action, but keeping a loafer alive long enough to rack up levels can be a pain in the ass.

And now, on to attacking!



Within the first turn, a Goblin moved into Gillian's range. As you can see by the highlighted square, he can only reach enemies that are next to him in order to attack.

I forgot to capture it, but Gillian did 7 points of damage.



Ken finished the Goblin off and got 45 EXP for his trouble.



Lowe isn't exactly a powerhouse.

Luke finished off the second goblin, then is attacked...



His Defense rank at work, folks.



This is Tao's range for Rank 1 Blaze. Spells have up to four ranks. Higher ranks do more damage and/or have larger ranges/areas of effect.



There are few things as satisfying as setting your foes on fire.



Gillian finishes off the third goblin. Two more goblins, two dark dwarves, and a Rune Knight to go.

Luke finishes off another goblin, then gets attacked by a Dark Dwarf.



Which hits considerably harder than a pissant goblin.



Ken takes out the final goblin and reaches level 2!



Hans finally gets to attack. He's not exactly a heavy hitter (he did 5 damage), but you'll see the advantage that Archers have soon enough.



Ken takes a heavy blow from one of the Dark Dwarves.



Tao failed to kill the weakened Dark Dwarf, so Hans played cleanup.



The other Dark Dwarf unfortunately finished off Ken before Lowe's turn came around. Oh, well.



I wanted Luke to weaken the final Dark Dwarf so Gillian could finish him for the XP, but he instead scored a critical hit for 13 damage. That would've been enough to one-shot the bastard. All physical attacks have a chance to critical. There's more fun eventualities that happen, but I'll wait until they happen to bring them up.

This brought Luke to level 2. He got all of 1 more HP.



Ignoring the opportunity to finish off Luke, the Rune Knight wailed on Gillian for 10 damage. Yeesh.




Well, she was out of MP.



And now, Lowe finally gets to do something useful.



He fully restores Gillian's health.



Luke sets the Rune Knight up!



And Gillian knocks him down, which gets him level 2. He got increases to attack, defense, and agility.



Well, I'm sure the town guard could handle it.






Or not.



Apparently, we can hear enemies across the damned country.



Before we start this fight, we're going to explore this cottage...



Where we find this guy.





We also find a priest, who brings Ken back from the dead.





Alright, blocking our way are 6 goblins, 3 Dark Dwarves, and 2 Rune Knights. Should be simple enough, but you'll have to wait until next time to find out.

quote:

Restart, input the "name everyone" code and renamed Jogurt to Yogurt, and Lowe to Decoy.

Eh, I'll save the hassle of "Name everyone" until Shining Force II, where I'll give the opportunity to claim characters. I don't want to get too ambitious until I manage to complete my first LP.

quote:

As for Shining Force 3, I'd really like to see someone with the means do that one. I could never beat it myself since my Saturn's internal battery never lasted long enough for me to beat the game.

It'd be really great if we could manage to get a Japanese-speaking goon to go after the parts of SF3 that were never released in the US, but I imagine that'd be quite the undertaking.