1st in a line of strategy RPGs on Sega consoles that was completely different than its sequels and actually a bonafide dungeon crawler where you lead a three-character team to find a princess deep inside a dungeon. You don’t have any input on characters (except changing the name of your main hero), but the game has proper itemization (you never feel like running around with too much gold, there’s always something worthwhile to buy or out of reach to get yet) and a nice spell system with different power levels for each spell.
Characters level up automatically once they’ve gotten enough experience, although the characters have different roles (your main hero is just a tank/DPS while your two side-characters are a mage who can hit slightly less strong than the hero and a third who is the weakest in physical attacks but has somewhat different spells than the 2nd character). Although, if you get your fingers on whips, don’t sell them, they allow your third character to attack all enemies with one attack, which is quite nice (and flails for your 2nd character allow double attacks per round).
Shining in the Darkness is not only know for being the first and very different entry in its series (except Shining the Holy Ark), it’s also the dungeon crawler with the most ridiculous encounter rate I’ve ever seen. Sometimes you get random battles almost every step of the way (and the dungeons aren’t tiny), or even just when you rotate your position. This encounter rate can really wear you down and if you don’t like fighting and an almost endless cavalcade of trash encounters, this is not the game for you.
Like most dungeon crawlers, gameplay basically consists of mapping the dungeons, lots of fighting and some very minor puzzles. Given the number of fights some people have called the game hard, but it’s actually not that, it’s more that it really tests your patience and endurance, than proper difficulty.
Most monsters inflict about the same amount of damage (except criticals, which really hurt but are rare) and each monster type usually has one special attack. So your strategy usually consists of figuring out which monster type (usually up to three different types, but mostly just two) to take out first in any random battle, depending on how dangerous their special attack is. And once you’ve leveled up a bit each monster will at most inflict 1 point of physical damage on you.
If the game has nailed one thing, its progression. While its easy to out-level monsters without excessive grind (except the grind of going through the dungeon normally), every few floors inside a dungeon you will meet new monsters (often color-palette-changed variants of some you already seen before, but stronger and often with new abilities), who again hit for serious damage until you leveled up again. And this goes on all the time to the extent that you never feel too strong for too long, and neither too weak. Pushing forward is genuinely fun and despite the endless number of random battles you always feel like you want to get back to the game and just map another corridor, finish another dungeon.
And the game subtly introduced more mechanics to further that progression. To really advance at a steady pace, you need to buy all the best equipment, but after a certain point, there’s no better equipment to buy. So the game introduces a very simple but effective crafting system that gives you even more powerful stuff to get. And due to the grueling amount of random encounters, the best option early on is going to each dungeon and only exploring that before going back to the city.
This works with the initial dungeon and the 4 trial dungeons below it, but the main proper dungeon is going up, so you have to traverse each level the higher you get. At which point the game gives you a mechanic to plant teleporter beacons to get around it. For a game that seemed so simple at the outset, it’s designed with a lot more care than I expected initially.
Due to its nature, it’s hard to recommend the game. Few people will have the patience to brave all those random encounters to get through to the great game hidden beneath it. But if you manage it, you get a highly enjoyable dungeon romp that never becomes boring and always surprises you with something else to see.
The Entropy Pump 