I played the 30-minute-long Shining Resonance Refrain demo, which I'll sum up as such: that game is just not good enough to be on the Switch, let alone with a 50 bucks price tag.
Granted, it may seem a bit unfair to judge a whole game after playing it for a
mere 30 minutes. However, those 30 minutes were more than enough to realize
that we're dealing with one of those mediocre, cookie-cutter JRPGs that try to
lure the player in with a whole posse of scantily clad female characters and a
crap ton of flashy, stylish cutscenes. Peel away all that eye-candy, though,
and you're left with crappy dungeon design and a mediocre fighting system.
I'll pass on the crappy dungeon design, which consists mostly of empty corridors bigger than they should reasonably be, and focus on the mediocre fighting system. I honestly fail to fathom how a 2014 PS3 game could be (dis)graced with such poor, half-baked real-time combat. (Heck, Avalon Code on the DS has better real-time combat than SRR, and it was released six years prior on a much weaker system.) The crux of the problem with SRR's fighting system is how stiff and unintuitive it is. It's supposed to be real-time action; and yet, the game pauses for two seconds every time you engage a foe in order to change the music and create some kind of 'fighting dimension', just like any good old turn-based RPG. Not only is that pause totally useless, but it also completely breaks the flow of combat. Then, there's the issue of combos: like any ARPG worth its salt, SRR lets your character perform a combo after delivering several hits in a row. That would be all nice and fine if the combos weren't so stupidly long, which allows foes to hit your character before the combo animation is over. And don't get me started on the stupid action gauge, which depletes as you hit foes and leaves you unable to strike when empty, forcing you to retreat while it refills. I mean, why? Why won't you let me hack and slash to my heart's content, game? Are you an ARPG or not? Last but certainly not least, long-range weapons are horribly handled: the character that wields them doesn't shoot fast enough and cannot shoot while moving, which means that you have to back down constantly to avoid being hit and have enough room to shoot. Horrible.
That being said, I kinda liked SRR's combat nonetheless, and I could probably have gotten used to it under other circumstances. As it is, SRR is too loaded with cutscenes and dialogues for my taste: the demo features roughly ten minutes of fighting for twenty minutes of cutscenes, and that's with me going out of my way to kill all the available enemies. But most importantly, my decision to pass on SRR is mostly a matter of expectations vs. reality. See, Shining Resonance was initially part of that long line of outlandish Shining games with highly recognizable character designs by Tony Naka — Shining Hearts, Shining Ark, Shining Blade and the like. Most of these games were released on the PSP around 2010, and that's how I came to view that particular part of the Shining series: PSP-ish games, with the graphics and gameplay to match. Had I played SRR on the PSP, I would probably have enjoyed it and deemed it perfectly decent; however, it simply doesn't hold up as a 2018 Switch game. Ten years have passed since the PSP's heydays; and things that were totally acceptable on Sony's first handheld, such as a clunky fighting system or bland dungeons, just don't cut it on Nintendo's latest hybrid console.
And so I'll pass on SRR. I was actually a hairbreadth away from
purchasing it when I played the demo; and needless to say, I'm immensely glad
that I gave said demo a try. 50 bucks saved! Geez, all games with price tags
above 40 bucks should have demos. With that said, see you soon, dear fellow gamers! Thanks for reading, and be my guest
anytime!
Welp, as soon
as I saw "Shining Resonance" on the title, I knew things wouldn't be
good.
I'm gonna cut to the chase, too: It sucks big donkey balls. The game, and all
Tony Taka era Shining games, with the exception of Hearts and MAYBE Winds, are
bottom of the barrel bland, uninspiring games. They're loaded with never ending
dialogue that's cliché, story that presents as grand or inspiring but it's run
of the mill stuff, characters that straight up yawn-inducing usual fare for
JRPGs and while the gameplay tries to shake things up, it's clunky, unpolished
and easy as hell (seriously, I believe no one playtested these games). I played
them all, and while I can't say I hated them, I honestly don't savor one single
minute of all those games. I imported Resonance back in the PS3 era for
something like 10€ plus imports, and I still felt ripped off (not to meanting
that it had 100+ DLCs for some reason). The game has nothing meaningful, and
I'm really shocked that Sega considered and went through the idea of updating
and translating this huge mess of a JRPG instead of other games. The game was
bad 10 years ago, and giving it a new coat of paint isn't magically gonna fix
the main issue: the game itself. Seriously, why bring it? Why, Sega?
Isleif3 November 2018 at 16:23
If there's one good thing about Resonance Refrain and all those other PSP Shining entries, it's definitely the bright and lovely colour palettes (although Resonance's demo itself was rather on the dark side). I also have to admit that I'm rather fond of Tony Naka's designs, and really wouldn't have minded feasting my eyes on them a bit (or a lot) longer.
It's not like
they're completely irredeemable games, of course. I do agree, the colorful
menus and UI are a nice eye candy and there are several music tracks throughout
the games that are pretty good, but ultimately, Refrain (and the others) is a
mediocre game that Sega should have left behind and not re-release it.
I don't particularly like Tony Taka's designs. They're colorful and nicely
complex without overdoing it, but they lack a certain unique charm and suffer
from a severe same-face syndrome.
Isleif5 November 2018 at 16:36
I own Hearts and Ark, and I'm on the fence about purchasing Blade. Since you played them all, would you say that playing Blade is necessary to enjoy the other two? Or are they just completely standalone games without ties to one another?
They have no
ties whatsoever. Well, there's minimal ties since a handful of Hearts
characters appear in Blade, but they pretty much ignore the whole story in
Hearts for that, so I'm not sure what was the point of that. I'd say Blade is
probably the weakest of the three PSP Shining games too, so just pass up on it
until you play Ark first. If you enjoy Ark, Blade is pretty much the same in
terms of combat.
By the by, only start Hearts if you have considerable time on your hands. While
Blade and Ark can be finished in the 15~20 hour mark, Hearts can take you
beyond 50 hours, if I remember correctly.
Isleif6 November 2018 at 16:50
Thanks for that piece of advice, and thanks for the heads-up about Hearts' length! ^^ I'll definitely keep that in mind when I decide to play those games.
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