Grade: A
Ranking in Sega Genesis Top 50: 26th
Publisher: Sega
Year: 1994
Genre: Child Labor
Shining Force 2, much like its predecessor, proves once and for all that the best people to handle a dire situation are almost always whoever happens to be standing nearby. Skill, training, experience… those things are all well and good, but when it comes right down to it, proximity is really the most important quality for a hero to have. Never mind if he looks like he’s about 10 years old and is armed with a stick.
Hey, before we head off with PETER, would it be too much to ask if I could go the armory and get a real sword? It would, huh? Well, ok then, hopefully those devils that are taking other the world will be discouraged by a good bonk on the head.
This is the protagonist of Shining Force 2. Let me give some advice to all the up-and-coming rulers of RPG kingdoms: do not send 4th graders on quests to save the world. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: if the kid gets killed, the world will end, so you don’t have to worry about writing an apology note to his parents. But that’s exactly the kind of “glass is half empty” mentality that is constantly putting the world at risk in the first place. Let’s have a little optimism and maybe send someone who has a chance of surviving. I mean, it’s not like it’s hard to find qualified heroes – the little kid seems to stumble into at least one in every town he visits. Then again, he’s a child, so his judgment of who a “qualified hero” is might be a little off, too. Not sure I’d run into battle with a dagger-wielding giant rat or my pet bird.
Shining Force 2’s story revolves around two gems, the Jewel of Light and The Jewel of Evil, which seal the doorway to the Evil World. You can probably already guess where this is going, and yes, the jewels are stolen. Not by an evil guy or anything, either – just some jewel thief who apparently wasn’t very big on research. One thing video game characters never seem to learn is 
that you probably shouldn’t use valuable objects as a means to seal away evil. Gigantic jewels, golden axes, fancy ninja swords – those are the kinds of things that if you just leave them lying around in the open, somebody’s eventually going to walk off with them and unleash hell. Maybe next time use one of those extra vases or crates that seem to be stacked in everyone’s houses to seal the evil gate. Or if that’s not possible – you know, if the evil power or whatever you’re sealing away is really materialistic and DEMANDS to be imprisoned in only the finest of gilded cages – at least maybe post some guards nearby or put up a sign saying “Hey, don’t steal this or we’ll all die.”
Why would someone steal the Jewel of Evil anyway? It can’t be worth much, you know, being an evil jewel and all.
The most honest way we could describe Shining Force 2 is to say that it’s almost exactly like the original Shining Force, except that the first Shining Force is just slightly better. We’re well aware that a lot of Shining Force fans – probably a majority, actually – disagree with us on that point, and prefer the sequel to the original. It’s not hard to see why – Shining Force 2 has more 
characters, more battles, a more fleshed-out narrative and overall is just a larger game than its predecessor. But a fair amount of that “extra stuff” felt like filler to us. There are sections of the game’s storyline that feel like it could have been cut out entirely without really impacting the narrative, and were probably included as a way to lengthen the game and add a few more battles. Battles which, in more than a few cases, weren’t all that memorable anyway. By contrast, the original Shining Force seems a bit tighter and better designed.
Having said that, if we were restricting our list only to games that we liked better than the original Shining Force, we would have had to cut it from a Top 50 to about a Top 5 or so. Which, in hindsight, might not have been such a bad idea, since we’d maybe be done by now.
He’s just jealous – it’s the Beastie Boys.
Ultimately, I suppose this reveals some irony in the way our Top 50 was set up. Shining Force 2 was too good on its own for us to shrug our shoulders and say 
“Eh, just lump it in with the first one, they’re both pretty much the same thing.” But by breaking it out, we also put it into an indirect competition with its predecessor and, not wanting to place them too close together, SF2 ends up just barely missing out on the top half of out list. Had this been the only Shining Force game ever made, it would have been a shoo-in for the Top 10 (you might have noticed that its letter grade is higher than the other games in this part of the list). Instead, it will have to settle for being one of only two franchises with multiple entries on our Top 50. The only other series to pull off that feat was Sonic, so at least it’s in good company.
Two centaurs, a bird, a rat, and a chick with blue hair. Oh yeah, we got this.
Availability: Luckily, experiencing Shining Force 2 for yourself isn’t an expensive proposition. Admittedly, Genesis copies of Shining Force 2 are somewhat hard to find, and the prices can get pretty high. But unless you’re either a collector or a Genesis purist, you can just pick up a copy of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for the PS3 or Xbox 360. It’ll probably cost about the same as buying a copy of SF2 online, and comes with BOTH Shining Force games, as well as a decent number of other games that made our Top 50. Alternately, Wii owners can get this for the Virtual Console for $8.
Really, any game where you can yell at a bird is automatically worth eight bucks.
Revoking the Sega Seal of Quality 
