Shining Force III Premium Disc (English Patched)

Shining Force III (シャイニング・フォースIII, Shainingu Fōsu III) is a fantasy turn-based tactics role-playing video game designed for the Sega Saturn by Camelot Software Planning. It is a continuation of the Shining series. Comprising three separate but overlapping storylines, the Japanese version of Shining Force III was released in three volumes, known as: Scenario 1 | “God Warrior of the Kingdom” Scenario 2 | “Target: Child of God”, and Scenario 3 | “Bulzome Rising”. For players who collected all three volumes, Camelot Soft also issued a Premium Disc featuring artwork, a character model viewer, and additional extras.

In North America and Europe, only Scenario 1 was released. The real ending to the game can only be viewed by completing all the games in the series.

Gameplay

Like earlier Force games in the Shining series, Shining Force III is a turn-based tactical role-playing game. Battles take place in square grids, and each unit occupies one square. Each unit can move up to a fixed amount of squares along the battlefield, determined by its Move statistic. Depending on its location relative to enemies and to allies, a unit can also perform one action: attack, cast a spell, use an item, or search the area. Some commands, such as equipping or dropping items, do not count as actions. The order of turns is determined by the unit’s agility score and a random seed.

As is typical for an RPG, units become stronger by fighting enemies or by performing other actions in battle, such as healing allies. These actions give the units experience points (EXP), which allow them to gain levels.

Each character has a class, which defines a set of abilities for that unit and determines the spells and equipment they have access to. A character can be promoted to another class at any level between 10 or 20. Upon promotion the character’s level resets to 1 and statistics are reduced by a fixed amount, although they begin higher if the character had been promoted at a higher level.

Battle goals for the player are fairly simple: kill all enemies, kill the enemies’ leader, or advance to a town or landmark. The enemy side wins if they kill the player’s leader (Synbios in Scenario 1, Prince Medion in Scenario 2 and Julian in Scenario 3), or if the player chooses to escape the battle by casting Return. Even if the player army is defeated, the player can recover allies and retry the battle. The Force keeps any experience that is obtained, regardless of the battle’s outcome. Thus, there is no Game Over, and the player’s army gets stronger even upon its defeat, although the leader’s death results in the player losing half of their money.

Shining Force III also possesses an exploration mode that occurs outside of battle. This gameplay mode is essentially a Japanese-style traditional RPG, along the lines of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, although there are no labyrinths and few puzzles to solve. In this mode, the player’s army is represented by its leader, who is able to walk around, interact with people, find treasure, buy equipment and items, outfit the army and choose which of the army’s members will be used in battle.

Shining Force III Premium Disc (English Patched)

This disc was given away by Camelot Software Planning (the makers of Shining the Holy Ark and Shining Force III), to anyone who sent in the spinecards (‘obi’) or tokens from all three Scenarios of Shining Force III (while stocks lasted).

The offer from Camelot was re-opened on several occasions, but the Premium Disc is still very sought-after. Due to the scarcity of Scenario 2, many people missed the chance during the final period of the offer. The disc includes extra battles (against the main bosses of most of the games in the series – in 3D!), a savegame creator for Scenario 3, a sound test, movies, interviews & adverts, artwork & 3D models. It’s an amazing disc, and well worth picking up if you can find it.