Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom Reviews
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.
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.
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.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is a beautiful action RPG full of fantastic and varied gameplay.
A great RPG and a remarkable beat'em up that sometimes is too ugly for being excellent due its indie (and low cost) roots.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
While not perfect, Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is fairly impressive to look at. It has a beautiful and intriguing world, so it's a bit of a shame that you don't get to learn more of the history behind it. Still, there's a tough but fun battle system to get to grips with and plenty of puzzles to solve. If you prefer your RPGs to be more relaxed and serene then you may struggle with this one, as the fast-paced combat system means that button mashing your way through it will quickly lead to the game over screen. But for as much as we enjoyed our time on Mahera, a poor combat camera and plethora of bugs let it down – here's hoping for a quick patch.
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.
I can certainly do without these bugs, but they're not enough of a deterrent to keep me from finishing this fun-filled action adventure. I'm just glad that I discovered the game at all because Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom has managed to fly its virtual airship under the radar until now.
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.
Shiness the Lightning Kingdom is an Action-RPG that offers very good RPG elements, but poor Action elements.
Review in French | Read full review
An indie adventure with far Eastern inspirations that does a great job of masquerading as a big budget spectacular, Shiness will delight those looking for a fix of action RPG goodness with one eye on the classics of yore.
Likable characters, exciting battle mechanics, and interesting colorful locales kept me engaged throughout my roughly 25 hours with the game. It doesn't set a new bar in any of its many disciplines but it's clear a lot of care and love has gone into Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom and the team at Enigami should be proud of what they've accomplished. They've built a solid little budget RPG.
All told, Shiness is an uneven adventure, but one I'm glad I undertook. While it's too ambitious for its own good, deep down, and despite some hard-to-overlook faults, you can just sense that this was a passion project. I'm not sure if Enigami will get to make a sequel, but if it does, I'd be up for it.
An imperfect labor of love that's a blast but falls frustratingly short of its potential.
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.
It’s obvious when a game is made with love, and this game is a great example of that.
The term so close, yet so far away fits perfectly here. I adore so much of what this game does, but the combat becomes its Achilles Heel. With some tweaking this could easily be a franchise action RPG I would gladly play every few years. As it sits now, the frustration kept me from enjoying the best parts of Shiness and its world.
Samir Rebib's journey of seeing his childhood creation come to life has to be a dream come true, and even though Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom has its problems, this indie action RPG is a lot of fun. Dungeons are quite expansive, featuring unique boss encounters that go beyond simply mashing buttons. They also serve to help flesh out the relationships between the characters, but it's just a shame there aren't more of them.
Enigami's attempt to craft a full Action-RPG experience as an indie developer deserves praise, and, visually at least, it comes close to aping its peers. However, a meaningless story, awful dialogue, irritating combat and an utter lack of pace sees it come up short in every other area that matters.