So, i"m playing the gba version of SF1 on emulator, i realized that Yogurt has disappeared from the barrack some time after i defeat Elliot and when i was grinding on the fortress. Is this known glitch and will it affect the game later? does save state cause it?

I've started a new game for the first time in 15 years. Really only played SF2, never gave this a fair shot.

I'm only just finishing 3rd battle. Gong is really weak so far. I realise stats can change sharply by my question is this.

Are there some characters that I really need to make sure I keep leveled with the rest of the force or are there some I can not worry about and let them fall behind safely?

Is sf1 Arthur and sf3 Arthur the same person?

I'm guessing it is but they dont really look like them.

So I finished SF1, and moving to SF2. I can beat these games in my sleep I've played them so often, but I've never tried to min/max them or anything. Replaying SF1, I looked at different stat spreads of how 'the best' units are, and it was kind of shocking to see people I've slept on can actually... be good?

So yea, moving on to SF2, I decide to look into it, see what odd tidbits I can learn of this one. And I'm seeing stat guides for promoting at 20, 30, and 40.... I don't remember ever going past 20. My mind's a bit blown already, and I'm barely 2 battles in.

Picking a team this run is going to be nuts lol

Hi friends,

I've played SF2 sooo many times. Even by today's standards it's a masterpiece. But I've never really given SF1 A fair shot. I did get to the point where you promote your force once. Must have been 15 years ago. Anyway, I found that when I promoted they seemed to get weak almost like they actually went back to level 1. I don't find this to be the case with SF2.

Im wondering if there is something I can do to mitigate this should I give it another chance.

Also, SF2 has a fair few secrets and hidden things, does SF1?

Lastly, any tips?

Won't be doing it ever again as it makes a long battle even longer but still neat

So after beating Shining Force 1/2/Gaiden 2years ago 3 , CD and Gaiden 3 have been on my to play list for a while now.

3 I have delayed as I was waiting for saturn emulation to be hammered out and the translation done.

I do have some Saturn emulation experience with Sakura Wars 1/2 and mednafen and know the frustration of swapping disks and save bonuses.

I know SF3 has save bonuses between scenarios and was originally planning to just do the scenarios in order separately.

However I have found the Deluxe collection that has all 3 scenarios and the premium disk on it .

Seems simpler overall, but I want to be sure save bonuses will transfer from scenario to scenario here with the hack.

Tried googling for information on it, but my google-fu failed me.

Any insights would be appreciated

Im 29 and needed to get my first tattoo before I turned 30 lol. Ive wanted domingo on my wrist for like 15 years but I moved him up a bit to my forearm to make room for his freeze spell and maybe Gort or Luke beside him? Im still debating who else to get next to him. Anyways I dont see many shining force tattoos or even know anyone else personally who has even played the game. What do you guys think? Im going to go back soon for a touch up and maybe add the white in for his head and tentacles, since ive got the purple there already.

Darksol, I'm working on Kane/Cain as well.

well, it’s been a few months since my last post. even though I haven’t posted much during this time and despite being pretty busy with my daily job, I’ve made some pretty significant progress with the development of my game.

for about a month, I decided to focus on solving one of the biggest problems I’ve had throughout development: animations.

Animating frame by frame is extremely expensive and tedious.. but after analyzing my workflow, I realized that a large part of the process is actually quite repetitive and could be simplified... so instead of continuing with the game itself, I decided to spend some time trying to solve that problem first....

That’s how I ended up developing a tool specifically designed to significantly speed up and improve my animation workflow....

I actually used one of my trips to work almost all my free time on it... I spent about a month in Kyoto and, despite living really close to many of the main tourist attractions.. I didn't visit anything because of this side project 😅

probably not the best way to experience Kyoto, but I’m honestly pretty proud of the result.

As for the game itself, here are some of the new animations I was able to create using this tool. I think they’re a pretty big improvement over what I was able to do before, and more importantly, I can now produce them much faster.....

There’s still a lot of work ahead, but the project is slowly moving forward...

PS: Remember that some assets are placeholders... I used the themes of SF3 this time, just to get inspired...

Background: I had a Genesis back in the 90s but I wasn't allowed to rent games very often, just once or twice a year. A friend of mine discovered Shining Force 2 and later Shining Force through rentals and that was how I learned about them, but I rarely got to play myself back then. I now have a CRT TV and original NES, SNES and Genesis with flash carts to play whatever I want from that era, but RPGs don't require low input lag and the CRT TV hurts my eyes so I played through Shining Force via retroarch on my primary Linux desktop.

Notes: Screenshots are from just before the Darksol fight, I absolutely wrecked Darksol and Dark Dragon without losing anyone so I didn't save in between. Kokichi didn't show up for some reason, maybe I didn't walk over the right tile, but either way, I missed out on him. The white ring should have been moved to Torasu, I know that and it would have saved me a bit of trouble, but I forgot. I didn't buy enough Guardian staffs when I had the chance so poor Alef is stuck with a cursed weapon. It may have been the right choice anyway as she was a little annoying to catch up in levels. I also didn't get around to selling all my old stuff, sorry if that bothers anyone. I know using the Evil ring on Max is stupid overkill, but I crit a nerd for 138 in Chapter 8, that made it worth it for me. Also Max ended up taking out the center head and left head of Dark Dragon, which just felt right from a canon perspective.

Team construction: I was going for the most powerful team I could possibly put together. Every promotable character was leveled to lvl 20 before I promoted them. That was easy for most, but a pain for Anri, Torasu and Alef (because the latter two come so late). I looked at tier list threads on here and guides to get the strongest characters. Everyone seemed to agree that Bleu needed to be babied a lot and wasn't worth the effort, but that wasn't my experience at all. I restarted the Kane fight a couple of times and fed him the gargoyles and after that he kept up no problem. I probably wouldn't bother with Musashi, Hanzou or Torasu again if I was just focused on the least friction getting through the game. Alef probably isn't worth it on paper either, but Bolt 3 and 4 are too much fun for me to ignore (particularly in the Ramladu battle, I hit the center of the robots with Bolt 2 from Anri and then Bolt 3 from Alef while attacking the sides with my other characters and only 2 bots even got a chance to move before they died). Aura 3 is great and all but rarely that much better than Aura 2 and it takes Torasu so long to catch up to Khris. Musashi is great on paper from the time you get him until the end of the game but he's so slow that I feel like he hardly helped at all, especially for battles on rough terrain where it was just too much of a pain to wait for him to get any kills. Hanzou just shows up too late, he'd be an easy favorite if he appeared sooner.

Extra thoughts: I wish the enemies scaled more in the later levels. I felt like the difficulty barely increased in chapters 7 and 8, certainly not fast enough to keep up with my team, but maybe that's my fault for trying to build the most OP team I possibly could. Why does the game give you more Atlas axes than you could possibly use? Or do the birdmen use them after promotion? They didn't seem worth it to me at all. Non-attacking spells seem really bad. Gargoyles must have hit me with Muddle 50 times and of that only 15 or so weren't resisted and of those it's completely unclear to me that it actually did anything. Sleep is strong in theory, but with Fire/Freeze/Bolt 4 you generally just kill whatever you target anyway, so why not just do that? Domingo is so strong from the time he gets Freeze 2 until sometime in Chapter 8 it feels like cheating to use him, but he does fall off slightly at the very end (and very briefly before he gets Freeze 4).

I'm considering another run later with as many flyers and archers as I can fit on my team for something different, and maybe another run where I stay loyal to all of the first characters who join The Force, as it did break my heart to kick Luke/Mae/Ken and Gort off the team. For now, on to Shining Force 2.

like Rock

I wanted to share this somewhere it would get some appreciation. Back in the 90's my brother and I decided to try to dress me up like Max from Shining Force, we used an assortment of different pieces from old halloween costumes and i cant believe how good it looks, I was very happy to find this moment on a home video because its one I treasure.

Shining Force still to this day one of my favorite games although I do like Shining Force 2 more but Shining Force is such a classic game.

Synbios hasn't used a Knife weapon at all, so it decreases his attack, and there's nobody else in my party right now that can use it. I took a quick look at who joins later and it seems nobody uses Knives either? I think?

Eldar narrowly escaped death by a Wyvern trying to get that so I feel it's such a waste not to use it T_T but if it's pointless I'll just sell it.. I dont think saving it for someone else in a future scenario or something is an option right? Even if I can somehow give them it there might be better weapons at that point... What do you think ?

Like for example in that place where Hassan Port is, I defeated that fight where it has almost surrounded the Hassan Port, and hasn't defeated Taros yet, so when I buyed some weapons in Hassan Port to defeat Taros easily, I got the same previous fight again where I hasn't reached the Ancient Tower.

It’s the eyes mostly? But he looks vastly different than every other elf in the series (at least the ones I’ve played). The eyes make me think he might be one of the demi-human races like Slade, but maybe it’s just because he’s the only older elf we’ve seen? Idk what do you guys think?

I saw someone mention the Balbazak fight is great for leveling up anyone with a range attack. My wife was home yesterday, so I would set up (X) and set a book on the controller to auto hit A. it worked great, and I was able to get most of the force up to 20 here with minimum effort on my part, while spending time with my wife.

But now.... the OCD brain won't let it go that everyone needs to get to level 20. And I spending far too much time trying to get people to 20 here than I really should. Getting everyone left to 16 on seabats wasn't too bad, but beyond that.... it's not going great lol. I have played myself, and only have myself to blame.

Max vs Dark Dragon sketched from memory.

IIRC in the previous game, you can usually use an item from Item->Use, even if you don't have it equipped.. is that not the case in this game?

Like for one of the Ankh weapons, it says using it will cast Tornado LV3. Couldn't use it from the Item menu. I equipped it on Masqurin, and it only allowed me to cast Tornado LV1 from the Magic menu. Do I need Grace to be the one to equip it for it to cast the LV3, since apparently Ankh is her best weapon or something(?) But regardless if that's the solution, can I not cast any item spells when its unequipped anymore? Even for cursed items I need to put that on ?! Sorry if it's a dumb question or if there's some other way but I am confused aha

For SF1, I always promote everybody at 20 and usually end up doing so by the Kane fight. The exception was my last playthrough I just finished where I promoted everybody still at level 20 but it was slightly earlier, like chapter 5 at the shining path

For SF2, I’m actually doing a run right now and I’m promoting everybody at 40 and I’m gonna have everybody promoted by the next battle which is the chess battle

I haven’t played SF3 yet but I’m going to soon so I’m really trying to avoid spoilers so for the sake of this question I’m only asking about SF1 and SF2 but I’m just curious to hear what you guys do and where/when you promote