Shining Resonance Refrain: Review
Over the past couple of years, several highly anticipated JRPGs have been released, and each turned out to be better than the other. Tales of Berseria I remember the great characters, Persona 5 surprised by the visual style, NieR: Automata I was impressed by the plot. Against their background Shining Resonance Refrain seems like a visitor from the past – although this is an updated version of the 2014 game, even at that time it looked outdated. But even though it is sometimes ridiculously formulaic and clichéd, fans of the genre will be able to spend time in it with some interest.
As per the patterns
The story is literally stuffed with cliches that are visible from the very first minutes. The brave princess Sonya saves a captured guy named Yuma. He, as it turns out later, holds the soul of a dragon in his body, and therefore is valuable to the imperials – he was a guinea pig for them. The Empire seeks to gain control over the entire island of Alfheim, collecting the souls of dragons and resurrecting thousand-year-old monsters, so ill-wishers are not ready to part with Yuma just like that.
At the most crucial moment, the guy has to make a difficult decision – to unleash his inner dragon, breaking the promise he once made to his dying mother. And Yuma would be glad not to do this, to return to prison and continue to be a victim of experiments, since he is very afraid of the dragon and is not confident in his ability to keep everything under control after the transformation. But in order to save the girls who came to his aid, he had to take a risk. “This is the last time I do this,” he says naively at the very beginning of a long story. Of course, he will have to transform literally at every step.
As a result, Yuma meets the inhabitants of Astoria, a kingdom trying to repel the Empire. But no one will force the guy to take their side – on the contrary, he will be allowed to make his own decision. The hero will join the “good people”, mature, try to help everyone in need – in general, as I wrote above, there is almost no originality in this story. But after a lengthy introduction and introduction to new characters, the plot gradually begins to grab hold, and the writers can only be praised for interesting characters and high-quality dialogues, which are also wonderfully voiced in the English version.
To make the player even more attached to the heroes, the developers introduced a system of relationships with party members. While walking around the main city or relaxing by the fire, you can approach any of your partners and start a dialogue, and in some cases, offer to chat at night. Shy girls who show interest in Yuma already at the first meeting will awkwardly exchange remarks with the hero, and then may even agree to go on a date with him.
This element of the game is not imposed in any way, but can simplify battles, since after such meetings there are more settings for connections between characters. Depending on the chosen scheme, there will be a “resonance” in the title of the game – a party member will be more willing to cast curses on opponents or strengthen his favorite. These connections can be found in other places, including chests and dungeons.
Cute, but not always
Personally, I liked learning more about the https://youwagercasino.co.uk/ inner world of virtual comrades through small scenes in Tales of Berseria, which there were more than a hundred and which you didn’t want to miss, even if they lasted 15 minutes. Dates and late-night conversations do not cope with this task so well, but this was not the intention of the authors – here you are more likely to start a romantic relationship. For this purpose, apparently, an artist was invited Tony Taka (Tony Taka), who often performed in the yuri and hentai genres. His female characters turned out great, and among all his works Shining Resonance can be called one of the best. And in the settings you can change the heroines into revealing costumes if you really want to.
But everything else sometimes looks terrible. Terrible texture quality, almost zero draw distance, soapy picture, mediocre animation – watching all this on a large TV is unlikely to be pleasant. The design of the locations is also disappointing with its primitiveness and a huge number of invisible walls. Although the artists clearly tried to add more details and make the different zones different from each other, they remained empty and lifeless. Externally, the game resembles a degraded version of the same Tales of Berseria, which I have already mentioned more than once because of how similar some of the components of these games are.
Exploring the world, for example, is almost identical – once you get to a new location, you see all the enemies on the way and can run past them to the next area or engage in battle. If for some reason the enemy did not notice you and you attacked him from behind, you will get an advantage – your opponents will not move for several seconds. This also works in the opposite direction – they gape, let some kind of monster approach them, which means they have to stand and withstand the blows. Battles take place in real time, and you control the hero you made the leader in the menu. So to switch you will have to go to the list of party members and swap characters.
There are quite a lot of interesting subtleties in battle. The four buttons on the right side of the gamepad are used for a normal attack, blocking blows, a rebound and a special technique that allows you to break the will of the enemy and make him completely helpless for a short time. This does not always work out; in most cases, you need to do this at the moment when the enemy is preparing to use a spell. This option adds a bit of tactics to battles – it’s better to take advantage of such a rare opportunity rather than mindlessly press the same buttons until the end.
Another important detail is the main character’s ability to transform into a dragon. During transformation, its mana supply begins to dry up, and the less it is, the higher the chance that the monster will become furious and begin to rush at its comrades. Mana is also needed to activate unique techniques, of which each character has four, and they are all completely different. Someone deals increased damage, someone hits several enemies with an attack at once, and someone heals their partners while standing away from the “mash”.
Fight to the last
Artificial intelligence in battles both pleases and saddens, and this applies to all participants in the battle. Blonde Kirika is one of the most valuable partners, as she almost always heals severely wounded squad members on time. But Sonya can run to someone headlong over and over again and die from several blows if she is not helped. And there is no way to fix this, except for not very useful commands during battle. Some enemies actively beat up Yuma and everyone else while others do nothing and take hits. It’s especially fun to watch “bosses” and other large creatures – they can simply spin around their axis if the target they choose constantly runs behind them.
Although this happens relatively often, many other battles can fray the nerves of an unprepared player. And in such situations it is better to use all your capabilities, one of which is called B.A.N.D. and represents a temporary strengthening of all characters after the song is performed. The effect depends on which character you have chosen as the main musician: you will either increase critical damage or make magic techniques more powerful – there are enough options to make battles more varied. And in this regard, to Shining Resonance Refrain you can’t find fault – clashes with monsters, imperials and other villains are exciting every time.
Otherwise, the game turned out to be uneven – for every advantage there is a disadvantage. There is an unusual leveling system that allows you to install upgrades on weapons that give an increase in characteristics depending on their level and can be replaced with others if you need. And you either buy these improvements for fabulous sums from a merchant, or create them from materials collected from defeated enemies. At the same time, many side quests here are of the same type and boring – most people ask you to destroy a certain number of enemies and collect items from them.
An interesting “trick” seems to be the weather conditions that change after a night spent in the camp – other enemies may appear in previous locations, and old ones will acquire special skills. But having noticed this, at some point you realize how inconvenient the world map is and how there is not enough opportunity to quickly move from one place to another, especially when quests appear further and further from the central city. Well, at least there are no random battles here and you can freely run from one corner of the location to another.
I’ll be honest, at first Shining Resonance Refrain seemed to me a typical “passover” – a banal JRPG that does not try to stand out from others. She might even be one. But the more you delve into it and the more extensive it becomes, the more interesting it is to go through, although you have to put up with its many shortcomings. Perhaps it’s the lack of new Tales of — after “Berseria” I really want to play something like that, and this release fills the niche. Yes, the game is simple, there aren’t enough stars in the sky and it doesn’t look very modern. But sometimes there is a desire to run into something like that – the main thing is that the characters are good and the plot is normal, but here there are no problems with that.
Pros: pleasant characters with whom you want to spend time; an interesting combat system with an abundance of techniques and different abilities for the heroes; good soundtrack; wonderful English dubbing; pumping system with a lot of settings.
Cons: predictable, formulaic story with a slow introduction; lack of a fast travel system; same type of side quests.
