Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom Reviews
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is the product of a small team trying to do too much and, ultimately, falling flat. It pains me to say it, because I saw the potential in Shiness way back when it was a fledgling Kickstarter upstart, but this is one of the worst gaming experiences I've had in a long time and I cannot recommend it to anyone that likes fun.
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.
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is an example of a good idea drowned in poor implementation. Bad map system, terrible navigation, dull world with the sterile side quests, filled with resurgent enemies, strange combat mechanics and terrible camera cause only one feeling - a deep disappointment. And even good puzzles are not able to save this cute, but such a raw product.
Review in Russian | Read full review
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.
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.
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.
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.
I went into Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom with a lot of hope that it could successfully achieve all it was set out to do with this unique blend of arena based fighter injected into an action-RPG. The indie studio had a lot of ambition and heart for the project, but it disappointingly doesn't manage to pull off all these cool ideas together into a coherent package.
While creativity should be appreciated and rewarded in the gaming industry, and a very interesting world has been put on display here, the rest of the game is just not up to snuff. Shiness may be worth checking out for those who are yearning for more fantastical worlds to explore and the return of PS2-era style RPGs, as it certainly scratched that itch for me. but others should carefully consider their purchase before joining Chado on his grand adventure.
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 doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, and its style and execution are designed to evoke memories of your gaming past. Come for the pretty world, stay for the fast, if slightly messy combat.
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.
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.
A hybrid of an interesting RPG setting, a fighting game style combat system of pleasing back and forths, and a great manga aesthetic, that is let down by frequent technical issues, a frustrating camera, and a poorly told story. Fans of both RPGs and Fighting games may well find something to love here but be prepared for a general lack of polish and some more glaring issues.
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 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
Shiness had potential, but it went to waste due to faulty battle system. If there were no other exciting games in the genre right know, I would recommend it – but there are plenty.
Review in Polish | Read full review
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.
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.
It’s obvious when a game is made with love, and this game is a great example of that.