Revolutionized the strategy RPG genre, and is a lasting influence even today
First, the soundtrack of this game is amazing. It includes 7 different battle loops, as well as having many other different tracks. Granted, the town theme can get on one's nerves after a while (it's the same in every town) but this is balanced out by a lovely add-on called the Shining Force Special Sound CD. Tired of the default music? The composer, Masahiko Yoshimura, also arranged his tunes for an orchestra, and these were released on the CD. If I remember correctly, you could also put this CD into the Sega CD add-on and it would play the music in-game.
The graphics are excellent for the time; this is particularly obvious when looking at the faces of individual characters. The art style in this game is awesome, in my opinion, and there are many highly detailed faces. Of course, the graphics are nothing special by today's standards.
There's very little character development (the main character doesn't even speak!), but there's been a lot of speculation on the Internet as to some relationships in the game. Although the dialogue is much better (as are the other aspects of the plotline) in the remake of Shining Force for Game Boy Advance, the gameplay has nothing on the original. In Shining Force, you command an army of 12 people who fight a series of 30 battles spread over 8 "chapters" of the game. In addition, there are sequences in towns. The characters are many and varied (I believe there are 30 of them) and it's always fun to customize your force to your liking, deciding whether to use lots of mages or be more healing-based.
All in all, this game was an amazing work by Climax Entertainment and deserves to be remembered as one of the most influential games in the strategy-RPG genre.