Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom Review (PS4)

Chado is thrown ship first into a world on the brink of chaos. Conflict is growing between kingdoms and just as fate should have it, Chado crash lands on the planet. Having found a new ability to communicate with the Shiness, him and his companions embark on a quest to bring peace. Everything you need to know about the game can be found right here!

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom Review

Introduction

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is the latest action-RPG game, releasing on all the major platforms (excluding Nintendo). Developed by Enigami and published by Focus Home Interactive, the game follows main characters Chado and his kick-ass team of companions after Chado crash lands a flying ship on a strange world. Coincidentally enough, this world is extremely violate and sees raging conflicts across multiple kingdoms. There's a little bit of hope through Chado who finds he has a newly gifted ability to communicate with the Shiness. This mysterious spirit, combined with Chado's will to fight in order to bring peace to this world, will hopefully be enough to save everyone. Embark on this fun RPG mixed with kung-fu fighting adventure and play your role in ending all the conflict.

You can buy the game on Steam or Xbox Store or PlayStation Store for $29.99

GAMEPLAY

The game opens up with Chado soaring across the sky with one of his companions in a flying ship, when they suddenly start to face a storm like event. Unable to hold on, the ship ultimately crashes and Chado is by himself in a strange world. This is where you begin controlling his adventure. A short tutorial will teach you all the details but I'll give you some insight on how it operates. The normal traversing of the environments acts like a classic third-person platform title, where looking for the patch or vertical opportunities will allow progression. The game has a nice balance between tight corridor-like maps, but then other times allowing you to move across big open fields. The environments you'll find yourself in are very unique of each other but never display any full-blown cliche themes (I'll explain more in the graphics section).

The combat is where Shiness seeks to separate itself from the RPG games. Everything happens in real-time and in a defined combat circle. When you engage with an enemy, a forcefield like structure will raise around the scene. The cool part about this is that it's not simply a wall to trap you inside, but it displays different colors to represent which elements are boosted. For example, if it changes to blue, water-based attacks will have an increased amount of damage. This works for both you and the enemy so be aware of the wall at all times; it may make the difference between you playing aggressive offense or conservative defense. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, "how does any of this separate the game from many other RPG titles?"

The combat itself has no physical weapons. You won't be looking to upgrade your sword or shield, or trying to strategize when to whip out the bow and arrow. Instead it acts like a brawler in the sense that you can either punch, kick, or dodge, block, or use your elemental abilities. The fights are one-on-one with the enemy, but you'll be able to swap out with one of the other party members. Running around you'll have two companions at your side ready for anything. The only complaint I have about the fighting is how miserable the camera can . It loves to hide behind trees and rocks when you get close to the edge of the elemental battle wall. At times I couldn't see my character or the enemy. Traversing the world wasn't bad, but the combat suffered a small amount because of it.

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom Entering Town

Sound and Graphics

The voice acting is truly mix matches due to the different styles of presentation. During some cutscenes that look similar to the actual gameplay, the characters speak in english, while at other times during comic book/manga inspired cutscenes the characters will speak a foreign language with text bubbles to read. It's a weird style mixing them both like that but it works well enough to not feel like it could ruin someones experience. The voice acting was a little bit out of place and cheesy, with Chado's not clicking with me for some reason. Overall everything just sounds like the developers may not have agreed with one another's opinions so they "compromised." Graphically I loved the design of the world and characters. This is what I mentioned earlier in the review. There's never any cliche environments that when you walk through you absolutely know which biome it's meant to be. Each environment is unique yet encompasses enough diversity to surprise you of what you're seeing every other corner. The almost cartoon design behind it all makes it immediately project joy onto the player.

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom Nightwatch

Conclusion

Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is well worth the time and money, but you have to be aware of the couple flaws involved, as well as its overall structure as an RPG game. The combat aspires to be more of a 1-on-1 fighter, but nicely integrates the RPG elements with the use of abilities and an elemental wall that can be benefited from (or can help your opponent). Many will find the length of the game to be 20-30 hours (more or less depending on your pace) but features a good amount of side quests and off the beaten path adventuring. The camera can be a huge pain, and the voice acting will most likely not be loved, nor hated. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent in this strange world with strange characters and am looking forward to replaying it sometime in the near future. It tries to do a lot and for the most part successfully delivers.

Pros Cons
 + Great price: $29.99  – Camera will act bi-polar
 + Some may like a more condensed RPG adventure  – Some may feel it lacks length for an RPG
 + Fun combat mechanics  
7.5
Good

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