Before I left off for Gamescom, the last game I played was Star Ocean. As you can see I did not like it that much. Star Ocean’s faults become way more clearer when I started playing Shiness which does the same kind of game but it does it so much better.
From the start, the game did not make a good impression on me. The opening cut-scene starts off with two characters on an airship. There’s no sound whatsoever in opening cinematic. I mean, the voice acting (which is done in a made up language) sounds amateuristic and even the animations are stiff. The game still has some time to fix all of these these “faults” but my initial impression weren’t good. All of that vanished as soon as I played the Shiness. This game is an action RPG with a lot of the same elemnts as any othertype of Japanese action RPG games. As I said before, the last game I played was Star Ocean and they both play pretty much the same way. You run around in this large environments and when you attack an enemy, a barrier will appear around you and your opponent. From that point on, you can move around in that specific area, you can even punch,kick, block or parry. Performing spectacular moves feels really good in the Shiness, unlike Star Ocean…When going into this combat mode, the game uses elements of Namco Bandai’s arena fighting games but with an RPG twist. The combat feels fun and simple but challenging when it comes down to parrying. You really have to press your buttons perfectly to get that defense up.
Shiness also has some serious RPG elements. There is armor, equipment, leveling-up, skill-trees and much more. The level in the demo was a nice looking forest alongside a catchy tune. The level itself was very open which leaves a lot of room to explore. There are five playable party members (although I only got to play as one) each with their own moves and overworld mechanics. There were a few simple puzzles implemented in the world but it didn’t add up to the potential it actually has. Its character designs are also heavily inspired by animes, with one of the party members looking almost exactly like a furry version of super Saiyan 3 Goku. Speaking of which. This game’s character design is sure to scare off as many people as it is going to draw people in. All characters are furry creatures and sadly nowadays that means a lot of people are going to be put off by this. But then again there’s a lot to it for for the people who like this “special” style. The biggest problems the game has are the voice acting sequences and the low quality cutscenes. Shiness is probably going to be ignored by most of the public but if it turns out even a little bit like the demo I played, we will get a pretty cool game.
