The first character appears early on in the game, the mysterious Mawlock. Who is unique in the world of Shining Force in that he can unleash the power of the cards during battle, another addition to the already superb gameplay! As well as Mawlock, there is Narsha and Zuika, who appear in a kind of sub plot during the early stages of the game before joining you later on. A nice way to introduce the new characters and they fit in with the storyline perfectly.

But what was that about cards? I hear you cry. Well, they’re scattered throughout the game waiting to be found. Each one has a picture of one of the game's characters on the front and Mawlock can use these cards to mimic their abilities, for example if a magicians card is used then Mawlock will be able to perform the magical attacks used by that magician! The cards can be used for other purposes however such as creating “holograms” of certain characters to lure enemies closer to you and even giving characters extra moves during battle!

As well as this, there is the obvious “gotta collect em all” factor. Like the emblems in Sonic Adventure and the stars in Mario 64, Shining Force has its cards, and some of them are very well hidden. Some even require you to finish off a boss with a certain character to obtain! Completing the game once will probably not earn you all of the cards (unless you are of course an über-gamer) so the task of finding all the cards is certain to drag you back for more!

We all know about the mighty battle system used in Shining Force, and it's replicated here perfectly with added features and functionality to boot. One such feature enables you to see the order in which characters take their moves, meaning you can plan strategically where to move and what actions to perform with your battalion. Once every character has had his/her move it counts as one turn, and completing the battle within a certain amount of turns will earn you a nice victory bonus! Large amounts of gold and weapons are available for the clear bonus, so swift battlers will be rewarded. The battles remain as addictive as ever, with the all the new features, characters and graphics revitalising the experience to epic proportions. You’ll be glued to this for hours, make sure you have the GBA mains adaptor handy!

What with me being a grumpy old traditionalist and my love for the original Shining Force tile set it was always going to be controversial in my eyes to change the graphics. But they’ve done it, and the results are superb.

Throughout the game every tile has been redrawn with excellent detail, the new portraits are very good and it all runs as smooth as silk. A facelift that Amusement Vision can be proud of.
Saying all this however it obviously isn’t in the same league as some of today’s modern 3D wonders, but hey it doesn’t need to be, the gameplay is the real ace up Sega’s sleeve.

The game sounds good, all the traditional sound effects are in place and the music in the game remains the same as before. It sounds slightly better than the original too if I am not mistaken, the music seems to be slightly remixed and there is the occasional voice here and there during the game too. All in all, the game has been given an injection of added style and visual splendour, bloomin’ marvellous if you ask me!

Lastability

UPPERS

• Addictive battles
• Added challenge of collecting all the cards
• Lots of characters to train and send into battle
• The whole game has been brought to life once again, to be enjoyed by newcomers and life long fans of the series alike.

DOWNERS

• A tad easy, especially with the new card magic. The challenge may not be so great for some