Shining Force II (Gen) Review

My overall opinion of the game can be boiled down to the tedious, boring battles. The enemy AI is probably one of the easiest to program, as if you aren't within range, the vast majority of their troops will stay stock still or pace back and forth, or there seems to be a "sphere of influence" where 2 or 3 of them would start to slowly advance on you if one of your troops enters that sphere. So, battles became slowly moving around the battlefield, triggering the small groups to start moving, waiting until they were in range, and then pouncing. So, the hardest battles end up simply requiring you to be extremely patient and cycling through your troops for several minutes until the new set of enemies got into striking range. With battles taking on average probably 60 to 90 min, it completely overshadows the town aspect. I also really didn’t like how experience is determined, as it is based on how much damage you do, creating a rich-get-richer scenario and making it extremely difficult for the low level characters to catch up in levels. I tried leveling up the trio at Creed’s Mansion that I didn’t originally take, but other than the Priest Karna, after probably 10 battles, the two fighters couldn’t even sniff level 10. I can’t help but compare it to Dark Wizard on Sega CD, which released a month later in Japan, and Dark Wizard blows this game away. The old hag at the title screen really became annoying, having to advance through about a half dozen screens of text before being able to load a game. I can’t give this game a positive score.

Other negatives:
Square grid instead of a hex grid.
The manual does not include descriptions of the statistics -- I'm not exactly sure what Agility does, and can only guess that it affects turn order in battle. The manual also incorrectly states that the Boost spell increases Attack, and it also lists the spell Quick, which does not exist in the game. It would also be useful to include that Detox cures more than poison at higher levels.
The lack of any magic stats beyond MP, so spells always deal the same amount of damage, or heal the same amount of HP, regardless of the spellcaster’s level and the target’s level.
The Caravan not having an exit button, so you have to back out of each submenu, with a line of text accompanying each back selection. Being that it can take five back selections to get fully out of the Caravan, this becomes annoying if you’re switching out troops with any regularity.