Quote Originally Posted by Vyk View Post
I keep forgetting they exist, and I think Wolf has reminded me a couple of times when I complain that nobody does tactical RPGs the way Shining Force does, and I keep forgetting about that series. My brother had loaned me the PS2 game, and I emulated the first 3, and played about 10 hours of the first one, and stopped for some reason. Probably a life event. Probably a house fire. And never got back to it. I'll have to grab them on my Vita...

Do any of them require prior knowledge? Are they direct sequels? Or can I jump into an older one first. I forgive a lot of Shining Forces quirks for nostalgia's sake. But I remember Arc the Lad 1 being rough around the edges, and I'm wondering if the sequels are more refined and/or easier to get into
The first two games were originally meant to be one game but Sony had them rush out what became the first game, so it's a lot more blah and incredibly short (the game can be finished in about ten hours) in comparison. AtL2 is a vast improvement in terms of gameplay and balance, though it gets really grindy with some of the late game missions, and probably has more characters than it should. The game also has a weird difficulty spike towards the end that is a bit annoying, especially with a final boss that is designed to be more frustrating than he should be, but it's also likely that I was simply too burnt out by the end and rushed it as well. With all that said, Arc 2 was a pretty cool game and it's tied very closely to Arc 1 which you should also play through. Arc 3 improves gameplay, but I didn't care for the story or characters as much.