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Your allies will compose of 8 characters, each with their own unique attacks and specials. In battle, you may have only one ally join you per mission. You can also have a 2p join the match after completing a certain mission. I found this to be the highlight of Shining Tears. Me and my buddy literally grind through this game together because it became so addictive. But be warn though, the enemy AI, and your partner’s AI can be really bad. When your playing alone, the enemies won’t charge at you unless you come close enough. Your ally will also frequently stand idle and do nothing. You can move them around with the right analog stick but it doesn’t really help much. (unless your ally is Lazarus, you can pretty much abuse his combination attack to take out a whole mob). The game itself is quite non-linear. You’ll find yourself lost trying to advance the mission which requires you to do things like exit and re-enter the pub, or talk to random towns people. Boss battles can be quite tough, and you’ll be facing a lot of them. The downside of these battles are the loading times. The game loads tremendously long. They’ll load the characters putting on their rings before combat, then they’ll load the combat itself. Some spells also requires a loading screen, such as Ryuna’s serpent guardian skill, and these may load anywhere from 8-15 seconds.
The graphics are one of the reasons why I bought the game. The characters are chibi-style animated and they look really cute in the battlefield. There are also some anime portraits of each character when they talk, which is a nice touch because they are beautiful to look at. My only gripe is that there is a very limited amount of portraits for each character. Lets say something awful happens to Xion. Xion’s portrait will just be blasted 10x its original size and vibrate. It just feels like the developers were being lazy.
The sounds are minimal. There isn’t many tracks in Shining Tears, and you’ll be hearing the same one over and over. The original vocal opening in the *** version is replaced with generic music in the background. There is barely any voiceover. You’ll mostly hear the characters battle cry and grunts during battle.
There isn’t a whole lot of replay value, You can grind some more by visiting old mission. You can also replay a completed save file on a harder difficulty with the ability to allocate 2o skill points to a certain skill (1o in normal mode). It took me nearly around 35 hours to complete, and I doubt ill be playing this game a 2nd time.
Shining Tears is not a bad game by all means. It just has really poor execution. The graphics and co-op is really great. But the lack of voiceover, the bland music, and the long load times really hurts the enjoyment of this title. The story is also very predictable and cliché. Overall, I would recommend this game as a rental, buy it if its cheap, it will take awhile to complete.