Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom Reviews
The Lightning Kingdom comes to it may be worth a play on your backlog but I'd wait for a sale or if you have nothing else you feel like playing but want an okay RPG to fill the void.
I want to love Shiness, I really do, however little things here and there keep pushing me back more and more; it annoys me, since this game has the sort of charm and love that I look for in games, just graphical and battle-system based issues keep it locked behind a low score. Shiness gets a 6.5 / 10. I REALLY want to give this title a 7 / 10, but for the reasons above, I feel like it needs a little more work to achieve this vision.
The Shiness: Lightning Kingdom brings forth an effort that far exceeds its minimal $30 price tag.
While I wanted to get in and explore the beautiful looking world of Shiness I was constantly routed in my efforts by the frustrating fighting system and some strange design choices.
I could tell from the moment I first saw the game that a lot of love has been poured into the creation of Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom, and it really tells in the final product – it’s a thoroughly entertaining adventure that mixes up exciting battling with the exploration of luscious worlds. The combination of combat, platforming, and puzzling will keep you hooked from start to end. It does stutter a little with some balance issues in combat and a story that never grips you in, but the fact that the game is so much fun trumps these issues. It’s a great effort that brings together a multitude of different genres into one fantastic package – here’s hoping we’ll see more from the awe-inspiring world of Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom soon.
For a first time, small studio, especially one tackling a role-playing title that is as ambitious as Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom aims to be, I felt Enigami did a fantastic job, but they’ve clearly bitten off a little more than they can chew in their persuit of role-playing stardom, opting to throw everything including the kitchen sink into a title that instead needed to be pruned and polished. With elements of an intriguing story under its surface, and a beautiful world - that impresses from sheer volume alone coming from an indie studio - Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom packs a lot into its role-playing package, but sadly that’s also its biggest flaw. With a lack of focus in its combat system and desire to seemingly include every role-playing trope and mechanic from the past decade, detracting from the overall experience. But if you’re in need of a meaty role-playing game - that even sometimes manages to harken back to those PlayStation 2 glory days - then Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom might be right up your alley.
Shiness is a gem to look at and for the most part play, but a few issues like its overly cheap AI during combat hold it back from being a top notch Action-RPG.
All in all, Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is a phenomenal game that deserves to be played and enjoyed by anyone who is a fan of RPG action games. If you’re a fan of Kingdom Hearts, this game might scratch a specific itch that you’ve found difficult to reach, and to those who are looking for something unique, Shiness is definitely the place to go.
It’s obvious when a game is made with love, and this game is a great example of that.
All the pretty visuals and melancholy music might make this one a fun game to look at and hear, but that’s where the charm stops.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is a beautiful action RPG full of fantastic and varied gameplay.
Overall, Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom isn't that bad. The story is good enough, if a tad generic, while the characters are likeable if you can get past their odd dialogue and exaggerated reactions. Outside of a pretty finicky magic and parry system, the combat is done well for those who crave real-time action over menus, and some of the other systems bring some depth to that. Presentation is decent, but the camera can be enough to put off some people. If you're craving a game that sticks to some JRPG standards, Shiness isn't a bad one to check out once you're done with the heavy-hitters on the system.
Shiness:The Lightning Kingdom is a reach too far for a small indie studio to handle and it shows. While the game plays well and looks fantastic, the lack of a decent story shows that the developers were under tight budget and time restraints. If they would have had more time and money I believe that Shiness could had easily been a better game. While Shiness has some positives like the overall design and the combat, the lack of a compelling story ruined the experience.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom just feels like it's got the wrong kind of rough edges. While imperfections often give character, here they just make enjoying the experience all that much harder. It's upsetting to see a game with so much going for it falter for clunky combat, lacklustre platforming, and being too big and too open too early. However, any action RPG fan owes it to themselves to play this one-of-a-kind adventure, because the good outweighs the bad, and this is a powerful experience Samir and the rest of Enigami should still be proud of.
Unfortunately, the game spread itself far too thin over so many genres. Whilst I admire the fusion and accessibility Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom creates between hardcore RPGs and intense fighting games, I wish it would find some focus, and concentrate on sending one clear, beautiful message.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is a solid effort to tackle the RPG genre from an independent studio. Unfortunately, it also ends up being too ambitious for its own good. As a new game from an independent studio, it is arguably an admirable job and bodes well for the future of the developer.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is an ambitious action RPG, developed by a small indie studio that struggled a lot to make this project happen. There are several references to 90s animes as wells as JRPGs. The combat system is the highlight of the game, a mix of action and traditional fighting games, creating a dynamic environment and fast paced combat. The story ends abruptly, leaving the gamer wanting to know more about it. Despite some technical problems and graphic limitation, this is a game that provides several hours of entertainment and it's worth the purchase, supporting the developer into making sequels of the game.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is both an amazing nostalgic trip to an older generation of gaming as well as a breath of fresh air with its fast paced and solid combat mechanics. It's rare for a developer to take martial arts and really try and do the philosophy and flow of them justice in a game, and for that Shiness is a most welcome addition to the RPG library.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom combines the classic JRPG adventure format with fighting mechanics. Well knowing this is from a small french indie team, Enigami, we can see all the passion and the work behind the game, but we can also see all the limits due to the smallness of the project itself. All these problems afflict the gameplay, on the technical side, and mostly the combat system, the one who should made this videogame really shine. In the end, we can see a great potential from Enigami team, but we can't deny that Shiness is a good game with a lot of problems.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Still if you’re a fan of unique manga, action combat like you might find in the Naruto console games, and PS2 era JRPGs, you’ll probably enjoy yourself. This is a valiant effort, and belies a studio that’s worth watching in the future.