Was looking to get into the Shining Force games, what's this bullshit about how the US version of Shining Force 3 is literally just 1/3rd of the Japanese game with a hurried ending tacked on? Was the full thing ever re-released in English later?
Localizing three separate games meant to be played in sequence would be too expensive for Sega of America. They could be sure that Episode 1 would generate some sales among Saturn die hards, but Episodes 2 and 3 would be purchased only by people who loved and completed Episode 1.
>>12019534If you had a Saturn in the US in the 90s, you was already a SEGA die-hard anyway.
Shining Force III is split across three scenarios. There's a fan translation for each of them, undoing the story changes from the official western release of the first and offering an undub option (you really want this enabled, trust me).
>>12019840This.>>12019528If you plan to play them emulated, make sure your emulator's saves are configured in such a way that the games are saved to the internal memory of the console. IIRC you can use the completed save file of each scenario in the next one to unlock stuff.
>>12019908>IIRC you can use the completed save file of each scenario in the next one to unlock stuff.It's more than that, decisions made in the first scenario can have an impact even on the third. It's one of the few games where "your choices matter" is kind of true.
>>12019972Thanks for the clarification.
shining force 3 looks like shit tho
>>12019998Wrong.
They were translated.>>12019908>make sure your emulator's saves are configured in such a way that the games are saved to the internal memory of the console.That doesn't make a difference when it comes to mednafen or retroarch, by default each game uses its own emulated internal save file and its own memory card save file. You need to either tick off the "one save per game" option, or alternatively leave it on and just copy and rename your save file so that it matches the next game once you get there (you may need to make an initial save of the next game first to know what the save file is named at least in the case of mednafen which uses a sequence of random numbers and letters)
>>12019840The other I was looking at a Japanese "favourite Saturn games lists" and I was wondering why out of the 3 scenarios, scenario 2 was the most popular even though it's the worst one.But of course, looking at this it all makes sense now: it's the one with the most anime girls on the cover and they're front and center.
>>12020193>girlsThere's only one girl on the cover
should I give these kuso gays a try
how does it compare to SFII?
>>12019528the shining force games are pretty easy and forgiving, but i found them fun. sf1 has a cool story and general progression, and a great cast. however, there are a LOT of inconveniences. really, thats all they are, just inconveniences, but added all up... it can sour the experience for some. sf2 is bigger, but the progression feels a bit less grand. theres a certain epicness that sf1 has, while sf2 is a bit more steady and consistent (still has some cool/memorable battle scenarios though). sf2 also has a myriad of QoL changes to fix pretty much all of those inconveniences from sf1. the games are 99% unrelated, so playing one without the other wont matter. however, due to sf2 being a bit more refined, you might not like sf1 as much if you play sf2 first. personally, i would recommend just playing sf1 and dealing with how it is, and then playing sf2 and just appreciating how much BETTER everything is, instead of playing it in reverse and end up griping about all of the little things. if you want any more info or opinions on sf1 or sf2, feel free to ask away. i cant speak on any of the other shining games though.
>>12019528>literally just 1/3rd of the Japanese gameIt's not? It's the first game released in a trilogy. The fuck did you even make this thread for, the question you asked can be easily answered with a fucking google search you retard.
>>12020289To give a quick rundown on differences- Player and enemy stat scaling is much tighter, lethality in a typical playthrough is comparable to SFCD.- Equipment matters for mages this time, some equipment gives access to new spells or boosts existing ones. The lower stat scaling makes them actually reliable damage dealers rather than buffers- Characters will gain friendship points with allies, which translate into pretty hefty boosts to stats when standing next to themSo unlike SF2, SF3 actually improves on the base game by adding more mechanics and better balance.
>>12020229I've played Shining in the Darkness and Shining Force 1 and I thought they were very good. Don't know about the rest yet though.
Ok, so the translation patches at Romhacking were a mess. There was one for the Prenium disk, but it did not work off of disk images and required you to put the disk your computer's optical drive (Or a virtual drive). It also kept crashing, I don't think it was made to work with modern systems.The one to translate Scenarios 1-3 was an extremely unfinished beta that had not been touched in years.Then I found a site dedicated to translating the games, with updates and patches still being made often still for it. But it also did not work off of disk images so I was about to write it off and the instructions said it was picky about which virtual drive tool you use, but I decided to try it in a VM anyway (Because I sure as fuck do not trust Daemon to be installed on my real OS).I have to say, is there such a thing as a rom hacking tool having soul? Because this feels like it. Clearly a shitload of work was put into the presentation, and it is heavily customizable, even letting you add more patches/mods to it without waiting for a full re-release. (Though it is a little bit of work to remove the old patches and replace them with the new ones, but still only took me a few minutes. Also a little confusing that I had to use the US version of Scenario 1 but Japanese versions of Scenario 2 and 3). Probably would have worked a lot nicer had my VM not constantly stuttered too.Why do they remove track 2 though? I know that's mostly superfluous but it's still an odd thing to do.
>>12022568> Also a little confusing that I had to use the US version of Scenario 1 Because scenario was already officially released so all they had to do was get rid of the story changes and undub it, much simpler than restranslating the whole scenarioAs for the rest of this stuff is why you make an account on retrogametalk to download translations
The Saturn's Magnum Opus
>>12019840Thanks for mentioning undub, I missed it when patching games some time ago. It is not present in the installer by default but can be downloaded separately from the translation website as part of the "Extra Mods" archive.
>>12022568>Why do they remove track 2 though? I know that's mostly superfluous but it's still an odd thing to do.They don't, they just merge two tracks into a single .bin file. You can open the .cue file with an audio player and still listen to the ten second Red Book audio track.
>>12022975Didn't see those, guess I missed a lot of options when patching. Regardless, it would be my first time playing so I am not looking to mod the game, just patch bugs/issues. Never was a fan of undubs generally either.>>12022985Yeah, I noticed that later. I also noticed that fan translations tend to do this, even when they recommend using a redump version which uses split bin/cue files either they make you combine them or their patcher tool will force-combine them.What do fan translators have against keeping the bin files split? I understand translations from like 10-20 years ago where redump wasn't as much of a thing and tools were a lot more limited, but a tool in 2025 requiring you to either insert a physical dirk or virtually mount it (And half the virtual drive apps won't work for it) then converting it to a single bin?Other than that though, like I said, the app is pretty cool. Surprised of all the massive things they have added, loading the game off a cue file instead of a disk drive is not one of them.
