Oh. My. God. I really don’t know what else to say. I’m no stranger to JRPG’s, and all the bullshit that comes with them, but holy friggin’ hell this game takes the crown for being one of the laziest attempts at building a world that I’ve played in a long, long time.
it should’ve been a red flag at the very beginning when I noticed that early game monsters seemingly level-scaled to my party. I noticed this, and even made a comment out-loud, saying something like “Well I guess I’ll be coming through here fairly often.” Little did I know that “fairly often” would mean the entire fucking game. The entire game, and I do mean the ENTIRE game, consists of running into the field, doing a task, and then returning back to Marga, the castle town in which your party lives. This is a pattern that is not broken, ever, throughout the entirety of the game. And while you can purchase an item that will warp you back to town, there is no fast-travel to speak of. This means that you’ll be traveling on foot every time you leave town.
Progression in the game is a series of travels to and from the castle, each time venturing a little further from home, then returning again. Think of the map as a series of zones that branch out from Marga. If Marga is the root of the tree, the next zone is the trunk, which then branches into two other zones, which then branch, and so on. The really fucking irritating thing is, there’s no way to get from the roots to the branches without going through the trunk and each connecting limb. It’s fine for the first few hours, but when you’re still doing it at the 30 hour mark, it’s really, really starting to grind on the nerves.
And I don’t use the term grind by accident. The difficulty spikes in the game are beyond ridiculous, and if you’re sticking to the story beats, it won’t be long until you reach a boss that basically hands you your ass on a silver platter. Also, there are no proper side quests to speak of. So what are you supposed to do in order to gain levels in between story missions? Well, kill stuff. That’s the only way to gain levels. There are no small quests to fulfill in order to get easy XP. There are “tasks” that you can do for the citizens of the town and for party members that consist of running around farming item drops off of monsters, but all you get in return are alchemy ingredients or other items. Much like everything else in the game, the results of any tasks you complete are pretty unfulfilling.
Speaking of leveling, the developers of this game not only made the entire progression revolve around grinding and farming, but they also made the mind-boggling decision to limit XP gain to only active party members. That’s fine earlier in the game, but once your party surpasses four, and you gain three additional party members, that means there are three members getting cut out of leveling up at any given time.
But wait, it gets better!
You actually can rig it to where inactive party members gain XP. It comes in the form of Aspects, which are basically gems you can slot into your weapon. More precisely, it comes in the form of one specific Aspect. This aspect can only be gained by doing a “task” for a character some time in Opus 5 (over halfway through the game.) This task is, you guessed it, farming items from monsters, BUT it’s not the first “task” the character gives you (the game calls them quests but fuck the game, they’re not quests). It’s not even the second, or the third, or the fourth. There’s a pretty good possibility you haven’t been doing the “tasks” for this character, and also a decent chance you never even knew this character had tasks to give you, because the marker only pops up after certain criteria have been met. That criteria is based on the conversations you have with the townspeople and your party members. Yep, that’s right. This very crucial Aspect is wholly dependent on whether or not you have optional conversations. If you’re like me, and absolutely fucking hate pointless banter (something JRPG’s are quite good at) you’ll have been avoiding those little word bubbles like the plague.
So guess what I got to do, in Chapter 6 (of 8) when I saw on the internet that this item existed. I got to do a whole list of “tasks” for this one character. But those tasks wouldn’t just reveal themselves one after another, Oh fucking no, in order to get the next task from him, I had to talk to every character in town that had a word bubble, rest at the inn (so as to refresh the town) and then go around and talk to every character that had a word bubble, and then rest at the inn. I had to do this repeatedly until his next little quests marker popped up over his head. I’d go do his quest, get my reward, then proceed to do the entire process over again until his next quest appeared. We’re talking about five or six hours worth of play time just running around in circles and mashing the A button to progress the conversations (because of course they don’t progress on their own, you have to press the A button after every single fucking line of dialogue). THEN the reward only gives you the option to make that Aspect. Before you can, you have to have the required materials, which means you have to go spend more time farming them from monsters. Oh, and since you have three party members to keep up, that means you need three sets of materials. All so that you can get the game to do the one thing it should’ve been doing to begin with.
Sonia's boob-window is literally the only interesting thing in this game. Is the game sounding like a steaming pile of horse shit yet? No? Well buckle up! Here are a list of quick thoughts about the game, other than what I’ve already touched on.
Completely pointless boss battles – You will fight the same bad guys over and over, and each time, after you tear them a new rectum, they’ll pull the classic “now you’ll see my TRUE power!” or some other bullshit that bails them out and allows them to escape. You literally never kill or otherwise “remove” a bad guy from the equation until literally the final few battles of the game. It cheapens the victory and rather than feeling good about it, you’re just left with a sigh and a “well, that’s over.” How many times can you “kill” somebody without actually killing them? Also, each bad guy is a Bond villain in the worst way. Each battle is proceeded by and followed with an annoying amount of exposition. I barely cared at first, but after I fought the same character for the fourth time, I was begging for a boulder to land on him, or him to trip and fall on his sword, or something to put an end to the guy because my party members seemingly weren’t capable of finishing off a guy that’s repeatedly trying to kill them. It was like watching Inspector Gadget where Dr. Claw escapes at the end of every fucking episode. I so wanted to hear “Go Go Gadget Sniper Rifle” at least once before the show ended. But I digress…
For such a small number of zones, they’re pretty generic – Due to the aforementioned structure of the game, you see the same zones literally hundreds of times. That would be acceptable if, say, they were actually interesting. But they’re not. They’re as generic as simple as they come. The zones themselves are pretty small and can be run through in 15-30 seconds, which I guess is a good thing, because later in the game I was getting pretty fucking sick of looking at them.
What the fuck to Traits do??? – A lot of the game rewards are “Traits” which are unique to each character and influence the relationships between each of the party members. This then translates into their “Resonance” with each other and thus affecting their battles. The problem is, the game never really tells you how or what each trait does. All it gives is some vague description and changes the symbol for their relationship, as well as a cumulative group… meter? I acquired dozens of these traits over the course of the game, but rarely messed with them since I didn’t know what they did. By comparison, the Tales series of games also has Traits, but they very plainly state the perks that come with each trait, so that I can, you know, make an educated decision.
You can level up multiple tunings, but why? – In addition to the Traits and Aspects, there are Tunings. Since you’re stuck with the same weapon for the entire game (fun, right?), Tunings are the means to which you can change the benefits they provide. One Tuning may give a buff to healing spells (sorry, FORCE), one might up your attack power, but slow speed, etc. As your Tunings level up, so do their bonuses to attack and magic. But here’s the thing; you’re given the choice from several at the start, and you pick the one you think is best. Fine. And then you start to level it. The higher that level gets, the bigger the gap between it and any other Tuning you might have or acquire. Hitting the max level takes a pretty good chunk of time, as well. For me, I was well over three-quarters of the way through the game. After you hit level max with a Tuning, you’re granted several more tunings. But if your current tuning gives you a 58% bonus to your attack and a 45% bonus to your magic, why the hell would you EVER want to sacrifice that to go back to square one with a new tuning? Sure, that tuning will be good eventually too, but that also means that the grind will take that much longer. At the beginning of the game, you have a low level tuning, but also low level monsters. Later on, the monsters can be upwards of Level 70, 80, even 90. They can also pull off one-hit kills in some regards. Why in the hell would you want to rob your character of a 58% attack bonus? Just so you can grind for another 30 hours? Why? Why would anyone do that? I acquired an Aspect that supposedly provided a “significant” increase in Tuning XP gained, but after several battles I compared the Tuning level to what it was before and I really didn’t notice much of an increase. This was also acquired late-game, which begs the question, why bother?
Fuck the final boss, and fuck whoever designed it. This was the final nail in the coffin for this game. I had put 45 hours into this shit before I reached him. And he has a powerful set of attacks, several of which can kill multiple characters with one hit. That wouldn’t be too big of an issue if I could stock up on revival items, but the game only allows me to carry ten of them at a time. When three out of the four party members can die at one time, only to be revived and have it happen again within minutes, you can chew through those ten revival items pretty fucking quick. Multiple characters have the ability to revive party members, and they do, when they get the chance. But this piece of over-powered shit will likely keep any character too busy to revive. That’s if they’re not the ones needing revival in the first place.
I tried, multiple times, to bring this asshole down. I kept getting him to around 20% health, just close enough for victory to be in sight. But around this time is when the developers pull out their “fuck you” card and the boss calls down beams of light that strike from the sky. They land wherever your characters are standing. The problem is, YOU CAN ONLY CONTROL ONE FUCKING CHARACTER. So you’ll be running avoiding these damn things, while everyone else is dying. Did I mention this is the second round? I mean, you have to fight him as a human first, after which he reveals HIS TRUE POWER (because Japan). Then he transforms into a screen-filling dragon lizard thing and deals ridiculous amounts of damage. His human form is annoying enough and will routinely kill party members with a few swipes of his sword, so by the time you get to his dragon form you’ve already wasted precious resources.
As I said, I tried multiple times to beat him. My ultimate realization was that I just wasn’t leveled up enough. I checked online, and the recommended level was around 65. My characters were hovering around the 55-57 range. So roughly ten levels below par. That’s after the ridiculous fucking grind to get those XP Aspects. That’s after just running around grinding because it was a great way to waste an afternoon. That’s after 45 hours of running back and forth through the same handful of zones over and over and over. My reward for all that shit was a big middle finger by the developers because while I grinded (ground?) for dozens of hours, I didn’t grind enough dozens.
That’s when I realized that Shining Resonance Refrain wasn’t worth my time. It’s not worth anyone’s time. There’s nothing redeeming about this game whatsoever. From the ridiculously long cutscenes that require you to be present in order to proceed (or skip, I guess), to the stupid grinding requirements, to the overall absolutely lazy game design devoid of any meaningful side activities, it’s obvious the developers have no respect for you or your time. This was a shitty, slapped-together handful of ideas, held together by a stupid story (even by JRPG standards) that failed to even competently imitate the game series it was ripping off (Tales) and it pisses me off that I devoted that much time to it before realizing it was garbage.
Fuck this game. I’m going to go play literally any Tales game instead.
