Shining in the Darkness is a fun old-style RPG where you are always looking from the first-person view for your characters. You start off with just the hero (you can name him) and after you defeat the first boss your other two characters join. Throughout the game you are trying to get to the top of the large tower near town to get the princess back from Darksol as requested by the king and his staff of advisors. (Cause we all need to save the pretty lady from time to time!)
The game play is quite enjoyable, with an easy (if sort of small) interface.
Shining in the Darkness is a fun old-style RPG where you are always looking from the first-person view for your characters. You start off with just the hero (you can name him) and after you defeat the first boss your other two characters join. Throughout the game you are trying to get to the top of the large tower near town to get the princess back from Darksol as requested by the king and his staff of advisors. (Cause we all need to save the pretty lady from time to time!)
The game play is quite enjoyable, with an easy (if sort of small) interface. There are a large variety of different monsters and traps to overcome as you slowly gain access to various
areas of the game. The difficulty is just right to keep me coming back time and time again to play this game through. Even knowing exactly where to go and what to do when I get there does not make the game noticeably easier, in fact it almost makes it harder due to having less monsters to kill on the direct paths rather than wandering aimlessly and bumping into more of them.
Beware though, for the whole dungeon; which is aptly named “the Labyrinth” has no auto map feature and no real way of seeing any map in game. So watch carefully where you are going, or you may find yourself at the temple with that greedy bishop taking half your gold for some silly reason like bringing you back to life or something.
The music gets repetitive after a while but it still is decent music to listen to on a whole. The graphics are sub-par compared to today’s but they definitely get the job done with some menacing looking monsters. Though some I couldn’t help but laugh at their looks (until they proceeded to slaughter my group that is) be it because of shape or color they just looked funny!
All the shopping and upgrading you ever need to accomplish is conveniently located in a single centralized town right next to the dungeon that you can just walk out to and pick up the herbs you need or the new shiny sword and shield you were eyeing. You can even go drink a beer in the tavern if you like. Occasionally the merchants give out special deals that are really quite nice most of the time.
A vast amount of the storyline happens in the Castle (also conveniently located right next to the dungeon and the town) and also in the inn in the town. Other than these two locations, don’t expect to hear much of anything about the story, just the newest greatest deal on the sword O’ death in the weapon tent or some armor of the gods in the armor tent.
Overall though, this game definitely warrants more attention than it ever received. It is a strong title in the RPG type of game, I would liken it to a slightly scaled down version of Might and Magic 3… It is a really enjoyable title with a great deal of fun things that can be done.
