I Choo Choo Choose You!

Well, I learned quite a lot about the battle system at least. The version available for play unfortunately had only a promotion movie and about 10 minutes of time for racing through as many battle fields as you could.

The fields themselves were graphically pretty (what game isn't these days?) and fairly expansive, however, it lost a little bit of detail due to the scale. Gameplay was straight up real-time action. Enemies are present right on the map and sometimes warp in at the most inconvenient moment. Only the main character was controllable, with one other trailing behind and operating on a very intelligent A.I.

Someone's Sleepy

As everything is real-time, interaction is simple and sparse. Various corners of the screen are home to various option menus for magic and items, all of which are easily scrolled through with the D-pad and activated with specific buttons. Life and magic bars are like those in any action game, and they gradually refill with the passage of time. That's a very nice addition, as fights tend to be huge, sprawling brawls with almost a dozen ememies piling on and/or continually warping in for a button-masher's dream fight. The few breathers afforded were very necessary to bring HP back up to a respectable level.

Magic effects were lavish and flashy, with lots of easily accessable variety. The effects were often a little too flashy, making it very easy for a novice player to completely lose track of what the heck is going on in that huge blur of swirling red and bouncing numbers. Suddenly realizing "Oh wait! I'm dead!" might be a common problem for the casual gamer.

So the battle system, at least, looks promising for Shining Force Neo. Now if only we could find out some more about the actual RPG elements of the game.

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