Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom Reviews
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.
An imperfect labor of love that's a blast but falls frustratingly short of its potential.
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.
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.
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.
Shiness is a breath of fresh air with its gameplay, while also reminding us what made the PlayStation 2 era so great with its originality and narrative decisions.
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.
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
The Shiness: Lightning Kingdom brings forth an effort that far exceeds its minimal $30 price tag.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is an action role-playing game that does a lot of things well, such as the deep battle system, exploration, and setting. At the same time, none of these are truly original, preventing it from being truly great. Still, those who love action RPGs from the 90s will find plenty to like in the game since Shiness is quite fun for the whole duration of the adventure, despite its predictable story, lackluster writing and somewhat wonky battle controls.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is a beautiful action RPG full of fantastic and varied gameplay.
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.
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.
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
Shiness the Lightning Kingdom is an Action-RPG that offers very good RPG elements, but poor Action elements.
Review in French | Read full review
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is a rare gem that captures the feeling of early PS2-era RPGs such as Dark Cloud and Grandia II while bringing it's own brand of modern to the table. The game certainly isn't perfect and the technical cracks most definitely show, but the things it tries to do well, it succeeds.
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.
For all of these reasons, I can't say that I think Shiness is a bad game. It's just a game that has leaned into its genre so hard that its spine is cracking. If you're the kind of person who wants to micromanage numbers within the framework of a traditional JRPG story in a fantastical world of animal-people and human-people, then this might be the game for you. If a single part of that sentence made you have a second thought, then it probably isn't.
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 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.