Shining Force EXA Wrap Report

After the launch, the hardcore audience engages in heavy gameplay, go to unreasonable locations to fight, play the game accumulating a number of failures, and evaluate it as basically satisfying. The latter advances through the story by the book, and does not die often, but evaluate the title as comfortable and refreshing. Only in regards to the story, we received some criticism from both groups that they wish it was deeper.

although we created the game so that you can execute magic and attacks by button mashing, what is important is to utilize Charge Attack and Special Attack to expand your arsenal off offensive skills.

As the developer for Shining Force EXA, we expected that players might have wanted a deeper story, since we had to drop some parts due to the race against release time, but we also feel relieved that we have not received any strong criticism about the story except for the ending.

What surprised us was that there are people who set various rules on their own on how to play the game. They impose difficult conditions on themselves, and invented strategies we have not anticipated, like using weapons that have been deemed useless or weak... Gameplay like this is something even the developer can't expect, and a very pleasant surprise.

Personal Thoughts Yoichi Shimosato: The entire game quality has been bumped up a notch by further refining the highly addictive battle system and development system with high replayability, which got a positive response in the last title. Shining Force EXA addresses many unsatisfying points and requests from players who played Neo. I believe both players who played Neo, and those who will play the series for the first time with this title will get high degree of satisfaction.

Shinya Togo: In this game, various weapons have various attributes, and different ways of fighting exist to make use of each of them. Please pick up all kinds of weapons and fight. Players will find a lot of new skills and fun when they gather up a lot of weapons.

Furthermore, although we created the game so that you can execute magic and attacks by button mashing, what is important is to utilize Charge Attack and Special Attack to expand your arsenal off offensive skills.

Yoichi Shimosato Development Producer?@ Sega

Shinya Togo Director and Planner Neverland

Wrap Reports are intended to complement reviews by providing a post-release viewpoint we seldom see, that of the developer and/or publisher. Since introducing this format in November of 2003, we have had the pleasure to publish quite a few, primarily within the RPG and online world categories, with selected action and strategy games also represented. A complete list of the previous ones may be found on the next page. - Ed.