Quote from: Grainofariver on Yesterday at 10:20:21 PM

I mean, it's not like Phantasy Star even remotely resembles the turn-based JRPGs it began as, so it's not like Shining Force is the only franchise that got completely altered for the sake of financial gain.

Uh, except Phantasy Star afterwords was both consistant, and good. It's not like Shining, which has been through a myriad of gameplay style changes, none of which ever seem to stand out, and often can be assumed to be chasing well-established genre trends.

Except for the times it wasn't like Phantasy Stars Zero and Nova.

Hopefully though we can all come together and mourn the loss of Camelot, forever resigned to making tennis and golf games after somebody thought it was a good idea to try and cram the content of two 20-35 hour games into a single 15-20 hour experience.

I won't mourn Camelot since their 20-35 hour games tend to end up like Beyond the Beyond or the Golden Sun games more than anything.


However, I will mourn the unfortunate passing of the OG Shining series artist Hiroshi Kajiyama (also Suikoden V's artist Kaori Fujita; goddamn this has been a rough year).

http://www.siliconera.com/2018/07/19/the-suikoden-v-and-golden-sun-illustrators-have-sadly-passed-away/

I mean, it's not like Phantasy Star even remotely resembles the turn-based JRPGs it began as, so it's not like Shining Force is the only franchise that got completely altered for the sake of financial gain.

Uh, except Phantasy Star afterwords was both consistant, and good. It's not like Shining, which has been through a myriad of gameplay style changes, none of which ever seem to stand out, and often can be assumed to be chasing well-established genre trends.

I mean, I'm still not entirely sure I understand what Rook was getting at, but I assumed he was trying to use Shining Resonance as an example of how Sega RPGs usually suck, which I definitely don't agree with, or at least I found his wording to be a gross hyperbole when there are plenty of good RPGs published by Sega on the whole, especially when you look at their entire library, and even Shining Resonance isn't a great example of when they are outright bad. Seriously, even a lot of Sega's bad RPGs usually have some kind of recognizable gimmick that sets it apart, even if they're not implemented well. I'm just arguing that the Shining series has issues on its own that could've and has hurt other series in the same situation. The franchise lost its original creators, and its identity along with it. None of the games since the Saturn days feel like Shining games, nor do they feel like they were made with any care for the history of the series, and just seem to use the brand name to sell a mediocre game.

Basically, without Camelot, the Shining series ceased to be anything special. Not always terrible (just Shining Souls, really), but nothing to write home about.

Uh....I think Sega's had more than one really good RPG per generation. I really don't get what you're on about, Rook. The Shining franchise has been out of the hands of its original developers for a long time now, and Sega just doesn't know what to do with it anymore. Apparently generic RPGs with dating sim elements sold well enough for them to make 3 games with, and if it continues to sell within a profitable margin, we may see more of it...really isn't rocket science...obviously there could be talented people within Sega that could have better ideas as to where the franchise could go, but don't get supported for one reason or another. We've already seen other half-baked ideas or pitches for new IPs get used as half-backed spin-offs or sequels in Sega's other franchises, and as far as I'm aware, this is nothing new when you work in even a moderate-sized media companies...

As someone who loves Utada and thinks that Simple and Clean/Hikari are the 1a and 1b of greatest VG theme songs (w/ Passion #2), I thought the song was uh just OK. Which isn't a bad thing, just not my favorite songs that she's done. I'm glad she's back though.