Shining Resonance Refrain is a PS4 remaster of the game that was original released for PS3. The original game was only released in Japan so this is the first time Shining Resonance is available in English. It is part of the Shining series of games. The game takes place in the country of Astoria, who is currently engaged in a war against the Empire. The Empire, led by Princess Excella, has the ability to control dragons and wields three of them at her disposal. However, Astoria has managed to hold the Empire off, despite steadily losing lands, via the help of her allies, including Dragonseers, who hold significant magical abilities.
The game starts off with the princess of Astoria, Sonia, breaking into a dungeon of the Empire to save Yuma. Yuma is unique in that he holds the Shining Dragon’s soul within him and thanks to that, he is able to transform into the Shining Dragon at will. However, he is afraid of its power and afraid that he’ll lose control, which is where the Dragonseers come into play as they can help him.
The game has two modes, Original and Refrain. While you can start either one of them, Refrain is designed for players who have already finished the game and are familiar with the characters as it adds two optional characters into your party early on in the game. It inserts several new story scenes involving those characters, which will not make sense and will confuse you if you were playing it as your first playthrough. Given that the game has no New Game Plus feature that allows you to carry over your stats and items, playing Refrain immediately is not a bad idea though since the new stuff isn’t really worth a whole second playthrough.
The game is often described as a poorer version of a Tales game, which is already not a flattering comment given that Tales games, as fun as they are, are not A-tier. However, Shining Resonance definitely has plenty of weak points that prevent it from being great. It is a product of its time but it has archaic gameplay mechanics even at its time of release. In particular, the usage of save points are frustrating, especially when you die in a battle or stuck in a boss and is forced to reload your last save. There is no autosave at all.
The battle system is action based and the enemies roam the environments. There is no transition to a separate battle area so your party of four is always out on the field. Each character plays different but the core concept is that each has a heavy and light attack. You chain them consecutively as long as your AP bar is not fully depleted. However, using a special ability / magic which uses MP will charge up your AP and vice versa. Positioning is also important as you can move out of the way of attacks, or guard against them. However, the system can feel clunky at times.
Yuma has an extra ability and that is he can transform into the Shining Dragon at will. As the Shining Dragon, his attacks do a lot of damage and covers off a large area. The restriction is that Yuma’s MP will constantly drain. When using the Shining Dragon, you will definitely need to lock on in order to land an attack on your enemy. Then there is the B.A.N.D. system which is basically just a special move that gives a party wide buff depending on which effect you want.
As you only control the main character during battle, the AI controls the other three. Unfortunately, the AI is ridiculously bad, to the point of being horrendous. They always begin a battle standing around doing nothing, and will randomly revert to doing nothing during a battle. They don’t know how to block properly or avoid attacks. It isn’t so bad in normal encounters but will cause boss battles to have high difficulty spikes when the bosses destroy most of your team in a few hits. You might have to resolve to drop the difficulty, kite the battle, or just tank it while you solo it. The game is terribly uneven like this in a lot of places.
For some reason, there are slowdowns during battles where there are two or more bigger visual effects in play. It’s pretty annoying and puzzling why it is still slowing down the game given now it is on more powerful hardware. The graphics aren’t amazing either. The game uses 3D models over 2D backgrounds during cutscenes and it can give the whole game a low budget feel. Given that the two aesthetics class, it takes a while to get used to.
Experience points are only gained by the activity members of your party. Given you have a clear excess of characters, you will need to regularly rotate them in and out. The alternative is to grind heavily to alchemize items that allows them to gain experience. this is another example of aged game design that hasn’t included any quality of life improvements that we take for granted nowadays. It’s worse when without warning, the game will force you to use two specific characters and if you were neglecting them up until then, then good luck.
There are a few optional activities to do apart from the main story. There are an unlimited number of fetch and kill quests. It is unlimited because the quest given will recycle the same quests as soon as you’ve cleared it. There are also a bunch of dungeons that you can go into to grind and obtain items, which are selectable from a menu. These optional dungeons also tie to additional story events if you were keen on those. There is an affection system between Yuma and all the other party members. Unfortunately, that system is dry and tedious. You gain affection by talking to your party members in the city hub or during camps outside on the field. Then you invite them to “night events” to learn more about them. However, you cannot invite them out consecutively and need to do around five to ten battles with them in your party first, which drags out the already long process.
Apart from returning to the city hub, there is no fast travel. This means later on in the game when you unlock new dungeons, you will have to trek through the same old areas first in order to get there. Needless to say, this is a big waste of time. The enemies do scale up with your level though but will give pitiful experience points due to how easy they are.
Monster drops and other items required for crafting or important quests are RNG based. This is really frustrating and annoying when the drop rates are so dismal. The uneven difficulty progression is terrible. Later chapters will spike up the enemy levels to the point where it far out-levels your main character, who had been getting all the experience points. It’s disrespectful in the way it wants you to grind but monsters give so little experience points that it starts to impede on story progression. This leads to the story feel weak and moving at a snail’s pace.
The game features one main ending and then multiple character endings after that, which is tied to the affection system. It takes around 30 hours to complete the game depending on the difficulty you play in (i.e. how much grind you’ll have to do) and whether you spend the time to grind up affection to get all the endings. Then the post-game has various events tied to the optional dungeons, which while it can be tedious, does contain a lot of extra story content.
Overall, Shining Resonance Refrain has potential but it is let down by the uneven difficulty. It spikes up rapidly from chapter to chapter, with enemies far outpacing your levels which is combined with inconsistent save points. Sometimes there’ll be a save right before a boss, other times you’ll be marathoning a dungeon and its two dungeon bosses before you get to save. Bearing in mind that this is a remaster of a 2014 game, you can definitely see that it was already quite archaic at that point with its gameplay traditions and mechanics. It can still be a fun game but there are points where it is too generic with its story, gameplay and level design.
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The game originally launched with a "Draconic Launch Edition" which features a steelcase with a cardboard sleeve.
One side of the steelbook shows off Excella, and a neat effect is that the cardboard sleeve only partially covers the steelbook, but has art that matches the cover.
The other side shows off Kirika and Sonia, two of the party members and probably the two main female love interests for Yuma.
Thankfully, the steelbook is more like a case for the normal PS4 case, giving you options on how you want to display it and is definitely preferred.