In Shining Force III Premium Disc, the total number of battles is only 9, but some of them can take quite a long time to complete.
Here is the breakdown for each battle:
1 - Boss from battle 45 2 - Bosses from battles 60, 73, and 84, and a variant of an enemy from battle 73 3 - Bosses from battles 77, 83, and 86 4 - Bosses from battles 89 and 90 5 - Bosses from battles 87, 89, and 90 6 - Boss from Shining Force I 7 - Boss from Shining Force CD 8 - Boss from Shining Force II 9 - Boss from Shining Force I
First off, the title screen:
Pressing Start takes us to the main menu consisting of:
The six options: 3D Model Character Viewer/Character and Concept Art/Premium Disc Battles Scenario 3 Event Editor/Videos/Sound Test
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The 3D Model Character Viewer is just that, select any character in the game and the mode gives the player the ability to zoom and rotate the character in any direction. Also, character animations can be selected as well.
Character and Concept Art is self explanatory.
A few that I selected from the list: Frank: Thousand: Galm: Scenario 1 Coverart:
Premium Disc Battles explained above.
The Scenario 3 Event Editor allows a player to set event flags for scenario 3 without having to play the previous 2 scenarios. It will ask questions such as does character x live or die, did character y join the Synbios/Medion Force and so on.
The video option has the scenario openings, TV spots for the games, and a few others. It's not complete of course without the Segata Sanshiro commercial, shown for scenario 1. Always remember, you must play Sega Saturn!
Oh yeah and the sound test, lots of titles have these, and the Premium Disc is no exception.
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Overview: The Kraken is supported by 8 tentacles, 6 have an attack range of 1, and two in the back that have an attack range of 2. Difficulty wise, an easy fight.
Battle area: Short range tentacle: Long range tentacle: Kraken:
It was smooth sailing in this battle, all the tentacles are basically powerless, only able to deal 1 damage, unless they landed a critical attack, which would deal about 10 damage. The Kraken's attacks weren't much better, totalling only about 10 to 20 damage max.
I pretty much one shotted all of the tentacles with either attacks or magic.
Killing off some tentacles:
The Kraken didn't fair much better:
But, at least it got an attack off before dieing:
I went all out for the last hit, by using the Tiamat Summon:
And that closed out battle 1.
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Overview: The 3 Yashas aren't too powerful individually, but with all three of them together, this can lead to some potential problems. Add to that the Assassins that accompany them to make things a bit worse. The Yasha on the left can cast Spark LV 3, a spell that has a wide area of effect and fairly damaging as well. The two other Yashas, the one in the middle and on the right can both cast a special ice storm spell that also has a wide area of effect and comes with a nasty status effect, one that binds a character to the space they are standing on until the end of their next turn.
The Assassins also have their own magic, Freeze LV 3, which has good range and is quite strong too, and Confusion LV 1. The Confusion spell has 1 of 3 outcomes, nothing happens, the status effect illusion, or the status effect confusion. Illusion causes physical attacks to miss more often. Confusion makes a character uncontrollable, and possible outcomes are targeting themselves and doing nothing, targeting enemies, or targeting your own force. These effects can be cured with the antidote spell, or they just simply wear off.
Battle Area:
Assassins:
Yasha(Left side):
Yasha(In Middle):
Yasha(Right Side):
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Strangely, this battle went a lot smoother than I would of thought. Even though there was a little of trouble early from the Assassins throwing a little bit of everything at me, normal attacks, Freeze Lv 3 and even Confusion Lv 1, little else notable happened.
Assassin casting Freeze LV 3:
Medion using one of his special attacks against an Assassin:
Hedoba getting hit with a Confusion LV 1 spell, notice the icon in the HP box for her, the eye like symbol, that's the illusion effect I mentioned earlier:
The team split in two on both sides with the 4 Assassins taken out:
I decided to heal before moving on to the 3 Yashas by casting Aura LV 4, recovering full HP to all characters:
At this point I moved the team in and used lots of area effect spells, Spark LV 3, Inferno LV 2, and even Freeze LV 4. When the Yasha's turns came up, they decided not to use any of their magic spells at all and decided on just normal attacks and the occasional special here and there. Also, when I moved in, two additional Assassins moved in as reinforcements.
Syntesis using Spark LV 3 on Yasha:
Hedoba using Freeze LV 4 on Yasha:
Julian using Inferno LV 2 on Yasha:
Yasha getting a special attack on Medion:
I had Hedoba move in to use Freeze LV 3 to take out the two Assassins after a failed attempt with Soul Steal LV 2 from Syntesis, Soul Steal LV 2 will deal damage if it does not kill immediately:
Final attack on the last Yasha standing to end the battle:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Note: I will be listing the health of bosses that have their HP displayed as ???/??? like the one above. This occurs anytime the HP total exceeds 599 or more.
Overview: The Rainbloods are known as the chess piece army, and the story makes them seem more powerful than they actually are. Three of them: Pawn, Rook and King rely solely on weapons. Pawn and King both have a weapon range of 1 and make use of an axe and a sword respectively. Rook uses a spear with a weapon range of 1 to 2. Interestingly enough, the King has a very high Agility stat of 104, which allows him to get his turn first every new turn cycle.
The other three: Bishop, Queen and Knight can both use weapons and magic. Weapon types are ankh, mace and rod, which have a range of 1. Magically, the Bishop has three spells at his disposal, Tornado LV 3, the weakest of the elemental spells, and has a small area of effect, Thanatos LV 1, a summon spell that I believe is dark element damage, and has a small area of effect, and Confusion LV 2. Both Queen and Knight have the Blaze spell, the Queen has LV 3, and the Knight has the more powerful LV 4 version.
Battle Area:
Pawn:
Rook:
Bishop:
Queen:
King:
Knight:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Seriously, the Rainbloods showed barely any signs of life, getting drowned in magic spells, and then their retaliation was two meager attacks against the party.
Medion starts the battle off with Inferno LV 2:
More Spark LV 3 from Syntesis and Masqurin:
I figured I would go all out here, and have Gracia cast Shining LV 2 on the Rainbloods. This magic requires a certain amount of MP to cast, then its attack strength is based on how much MP Gracia has left, then drains his MP to 0. A powerful spell, but not really all that practical:
Except here, Gracia kills four of the Rainbloods off with the spell, taking out Pawn, Rook, Bishop and Queen all at once:
Even before the end of the first turn cycle, the Rainbloods are reduced to a force of 2 units, King and Knight, uhhh, yeah, their doomed.
Synbios casts Spark LV 4 on Knight:
I even had Grace get a bit of damage in with Zephyrus LV 2:
King gets a little bit of damage on Arthur:
Syntesis takes down Knight with Soul Steal LV 2:
Masqurin with Blaze LV 4 on King:
Hedoba landing the final blow to King using Wendigo LV 2:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Overview: The four High Priests of Bulzome are rather important individuals in the main game's story line, but they were never fought all at the same time, that is, until this battle.
As far as their weapons go, they all have a range of 1. Basanda uses a scythe, Goriate has a fan, and both Fiale and Dessheren make use of a rod.
Magically, Basanda can use both Thanatos LV 2 and Blaze LV 3. Goriate has his own unique attack magic called Wind Storm LV 2, which has a large area of effect, and is also fairly powerful. Fiale has Wendigo LV 2 and Spark LV 3. Dessheren has 3 spells, Freeze LV 3, Phoenix LV 2 and Proserpina LV 2, both are summon spells.
Battle Area:
Basanda:
Goriate:
Fiale:
Dessheren:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Another straight forward affair, once again, sent half of my force up each side and unleashed lots of spells and attacks. The battle lasted about 3 turn cycles before it was all over. Only healed once using Aura LV 4.
Masqurin and Syntesis get things started with Spark LV 3:
Medion with Inferno LV 2:
Barnard pounds Basanda with an arrow:
Once again, I decided on having Gracia cast Shining LV 2:
The four High Priests of Bulzome throwing their own version of pain towards the Shining Force.
Basanda with Thanatos LV 2:
Goriate with Wind Storm LV 2:
Dessheren with Proserpina LV 2:
Fiale with Spark LV 3:
The finishing blows to these four bosses.
Julian takes Dessheren down with a blade ice special.
Goriate eating a special attack from Arthur:
Basanda getting sliced and diced by Synbios:
Medion shattering Fiale:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Bulzome HP: 2,400 Great Priest(Blue) HP: 800 Great Priest(Red) HP: 600 Great Priest(Green) HP: 800
Overview: Despite slight variations in stats, the three Great Priests are essentially identical. They all have the same type of weapon, a unique ring that has a range of 1, and the spells Aura LV 3 and Inferno LV 2.
As you can see above, Bulzome sure has a lot of HP. In addition to this, Bulzome gets 2 attacks per turn, and automatically can restore up to 30 HP at the end of every attack. The attacks that Bulzome can use are Demon Breath, both strong and has a large area of effect, a laser attack, that deals damage divided down evenly based on the number of targets, and a normal attack, that is single target only.
Battle Area:
Great Priest(Blue)
Great Priest(Red)
Great Priest(Green)
Bulzome:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
I kept the team back a certain distance when attacking the Great Priests so Bulzome couldn't target the force.
Two of the Great Priests making use of Inferno LV 1:
A Great Priest taking a fair amount of damage from Julian's attack:
Another arrow to the face:
Gracia's Blessing LV 2 spell. An interesting spell as it can target both allies and enemies. When an ally is targeted, the spell recovers HP, and targeting an enemy causes the spell to deal damage:
Thor LV 2 summon:
The Great Priest's fancy ring weapon deals 1 damage, terrifying:
One of the Great Priests goes down for the count:
Medion was absolutely unstoppable in this battle, getting this special off 4 times in a row:
At this point I held off going after Bulzome until recovering all lost HP from the previous attacks with Aura LV 4 and waited till Bulzome went through his 2 turns.
First two hits on Bulzome:
Eye Laser Beams, every game needs this:
How I set the force up, placing Julian, Medion and Synbios in the front for direct attacks, Syntesis, Masqurin and Hedoba behind them casting Blaze and Freeze LV 4 The archers Barnard and Kate on the sides, Gracia with Blessing LV 2, and Arthur with Freeze LV 3. Both Grace and Isabella are away from the boss ready to cast Aura LV 4 any time when needed:
Bulzome slaps Julian in the face, for minimal damage:
Bulzome attacks with Demon Breath:
Hedoba finishes off Bulzome with Freeze LV 4:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Dark Dragon(Left) HP: 1,200 Dark Dragon(Center) HP: 2,000 Dark Dragon(Right) HP: 1,200
Overview: The final boss of Shining Force I, Dark Dragon, comes back again to face off with a different Shining Force packing a new Sprite and in 3D graphics.
All three heads of Dark Dragon have a normal single target attack that they will use on occasion. The Left head can cast Blaze and Tornado LV 3, the Center head has Demon Breath, and the Right head can cast Freeze and Spark LV 3.
Battle Area:
Dark Dragon(Left):
Dark Dragon(Center):
Dark Dragon(Right):
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
This battle proves to be not a big deal at all, but hey, its a classic battle from the first game, good stuff.
Medion gets off yet another special attack:
Dark Dragon BBQ anyone?:
The Left head of Dark Dragon casts Tornado LV 3:
The Right head of Dark Dragon making use of the spell Freeze LV 3:
Both of the team's archers, Barnard and Kate finished off the Left and Right heads of Dark Dragon respectively reducing the boss to just one head, the Center one:
The Center head of Dark Dragon stands alone here after the first two heads are dispatched by the team:
Overview: Iom is a boss from Shining Force CD for the Sega CD.
Both the Left and Right heads of Iom have similar stats, with a difference of 300 HP. They both function in the same way, as their attacks are a normal attack, a special attack that can possibly paralyze a character, and Demon Breath.
Iom himself has normal and special attack, Demon Breath and also a laser attack that looks similar to Gracia's Shining spell, but it's purple in color.
Battle Area:
Iom(Left):
Iom(Right):
Iom(Center):
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Overview: Zeon, in my opinion, is probably the hardest boss in the Premium Disc and here is why.
First off, Zeon has the usual normal and special attack. Except the special he is able to use is one called Regret Hit, which has the effect of bringing a character's HP to 1. The danger here is that Zeon gets two attacks, meaning that a Regret Hit followed by a normal attack on the same character means that character is guaranteed to die.
Secondly, he has a modified version of the Tornado spell, that also has the ability to either inflict Poison or Confusion on any character targeted. There are two kinds of Poison in Shining Force III, the 10% and 30% damage versions. Of course, his is the 30% version, and that's a considerable amount of HP to lose at the end of a turn.
He also has Demon Breath as well.
His HP also auto recovers up to 30 HP at the end of each turn as well.
Battle Area:
Zeon:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Positioning is crucial in this battle, or some unfortunate and easy deaths of your allies can be the result. Remember that attack I mentioned earlier, the Regret Hit, well, Zeon is unable to make use of it if no one is standing in the first three squares right in front of him.
That's why I have everyone positioned on the map in this fashion:
This forces my front line fighters, specifically Synbios, Medion and Julian to use magic as their main form of attack.
Here I have Julian and Synbios using Spark LV 4 as there primary form of attack:
This is the enhanced version of the Tornado spell that Zeon has, which also causes the Poison status, which is shown as the skull icon in the characters health box:
The Poison status effect can sure amount to some pretty considerable damage, with Barnard taking 40 damage from the effect at the end of his turn:
I tried making use of Antidote LV 2 a few times, but with the increasing number of characters continually getting poisoned, it didn't prove all that useful, so I turned to just healing with Aura LV 4 over and over instead:
Here, we can see Zeon making use of Chaos gate, a spell that is a bit stronger than Demon Breath. No status effects from taking damage from the spell though:
Poison continued to pose problems, 42 damage here:
Zeon once again using Chaos Gate:
Thor LV 2 proved to be a very effective way to deal damage to Zeon, as you can see here, 102 is quite impressive, but I did see damage all the way up to 130 during the fight:
Synbios uses a Hope of Light from his inventory, a rare item that recovers full MP to all characters on the map regardless of distance, as long as they are still alive:
After dealing a massive amount of damage to Zeon, his HP cracks below the 599 mark:
The final two attacks that Zeon got off:
Zeon is finally defeated after quite a long battle:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
One of these days, I'm going to finish my SF3 playthrough.
Its just such a long task to get through the entire thing (all 3 disks+premium) that I took a break, and its always hard to get back into things after a break.
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Never underestimate the power of stupidity in numbers. ~War13104 Never stoop to the level of idiots. They will drag you down and beat you with experience.
Overview: Time to finish this! Yup, Dark Sol is the final boss of the Premium Disc. While Dark Sol is tough, he's not quite as difficult as Zeon, despite Dark Sol having 2,000 more HP than Zeon.
So, onto his attacks, just like any other boss in the Premium Disc, he has a single target normal and special attack. Except, he doesn't possess the Regret Hit attack like Zeon does.
Dark Sol can also use Chaos Gate as well.
Magically, Dark Sol can make use of Spark LV 4 and Confusion LV 3. The spell Confusion LV 3 is exclusive to Dark Sol, because there isn't another character, enemy or boss in the game that can learn or make use of the spell. It's basically an extension of the LV 2 version with a wider area of effect. Dark Sol rarely makes use of this spell, and Spark LV 4 is used much more often.
Dark Sol has 2 attacks per turn, and recovers 30 HP and 10 MP at the end of each turn, so, there is no way to permanently exhaust his MP.
Battle Area:
Dark Sol:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Meow1000 wrote: Its just such a long task to get through the entire thing (all 3 disks+premium) that I took a break, and its always hard to get back into things after a break.
I know what you mean. Even finishing each scenario in 40 hours, means 120 hour playthrough, and then factoring in the Premium Disc adds in more time on top of that.
I know that a playthrough I did took about 190 hours total for the 3 scenarios.
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
The start of scenario 1 pretty much has more actual storyline than every other SF game combined.
~90 battles (not counting the premium disk) is over twice as many battles as SF2 had. There's more relevant text before the first fight than all of SF2. There isn't a dedicated overworld like SF2 has, but an insane number of items hidden around. Its town hoppy like the game gear ones, with a lot more meat to the towns than any other SF game.
There's an item hidden inside a WALL in one of the towns. I did find an old but fantastic guide for these items so its 20 less hours I'll waste!
Its basically the masterpiece of the series, its just a shame what was done to it makes it so hard to play. And its long, really long - Each scenario is basically a full game. If you try to play them back to back to back.. It hits a point where its just arduous. I'll probably need 3-4 goes at it to finish everything.
And this isn't even including how the gameplay was changed to include support systems, FE like weapon triangles, and whatnot.
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Never underestimate the power of stupidity in numbers. ~War13104 Never stoop to the level of idiots. They will drag you down and beat you with experience.
Oh and that specific wall was unmarked, and to get one of the earliest characters you have to walk through what appears to be a solid wall to get to him.
"Wtf" on that one.
They made some things a little TOO ridiculous.
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Never underestimate the power of stupidity in numbers. ~War13104 Never stoop to the level of idiots. They will drag you down and beat you with experience.
Yeah, the character recruitment in this game had very specific requirements that's for sure. Not to mention the window of opportunity for specific characters was rather small as well.
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
Most optionally recruited characters have a window of opportunity that spans of all the time spent between two battles. There is one you have to talk to in the middle of nowhere before the first battle in the entire game AND give the right answer to to have any chance of recruiting him.
I think they just went a bit excessive on things.
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Never underestimate the power of stupidity in numbers. ~War13104 Never stoop to the level of idiots. They will drag you down and beat you with experience.
Before I even start the battle, the task at hand is to take care of all of the Poison statuses that have been inflicted on the team. Moving from one battle to the next does not automatically cure the Poison effect. The total number of characters with the Poison status totals to 8.
I have both Isabella and Grace using Antidote LV 2 to neutralize the Poison effect all of the effected characters:
After taking care that, I had Grace use Aura LV 4 to recover lost HP from the lingering effects of the Poison status:
With that taken care of, I can move on with the actual battle itself.
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
The final battle really begins here. Dark Sol puts up a good fight, but it stays manageable throughout.
Masqurin gets the first attack in, by casting Blaze LV 4:
Dark Sol casting Spark LV 4, this spell got many uses from him throughout the battle:
The spell Confusion LV 3, rarely used by Dark Sol, but as his second attack? Not something I expected:
This battle made use of the usual setup, once again Julian, Synbios and Medion in the front, all of the magic users in the middle, Hedoba, Gracia, Masqurin, Syntesis and Arthur, the archers Barnard and Kate on the sides, and the healers Grace and Isabella in the back. I went with low MP cost spells such as Blaze LV 4, Freeze LV 3 and LV 4, and Blessing LV 2 for attacks, and Aura LV 4 to heal:
Dark Sol casting Chaos Gate:
Synbios with some nice punishment with his sword:
Dark Sol's special attack:
Just a front shot of Dark Sol's character model:
Dark Sol taking more damage, from one of Julian's special attacks:
Dark Sol's HP dips below the ??? total to 561, down from his massive 7,000 HP:
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
A promotional video played at the very end starting here, and displaying the date even, very convenient:
A run through of dates of the various Shining Force games, leading up to 1997, the year Scenario 1 made it's debut in Japan, the US saw this game in 1998, which unfortunately was too late, cutting off Scenarios 2, 3 and the Premium Disc from appearing here:
A dialog about Shining Force series started here, don't ask me what he said though:
An image from Shining Force I:
A CG render of the Walcuray weapon that appears in a few battles of Scenario 3:
An early test of the graphics engine used for the game in wireframe mode:
A scene using the graphics engine with textures in place:
Oh, and the SEGA logo at the end:
And this concludes my playthrough of the Shining Force III Premium Disc!
Also thanks to everyone that followed along with this run of the game!
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Warning, the self-destruct system has been activated, all personnel should evacuate immediately, 5 minutes to detonation.
