Reasons why Shining Force is better than Shining Force II

[Tor Landeel]

SF2 story sucks in the parts in which the princess is involved.
Everything else is a lot better than SF, especially the adventure/puzzle parts.
Random battles are essential to grind new characters.

[midnightrider]

You always had the ability to use the Egress spell if you needed a character to catch up.

[IrishNinja]

I love this series , I got outbid on SF 3 for saturn a few months back. No copies on ebay now

yeah, missed it twice last year for $60-70, can't find it since for a decent price..it's my one white whale on the saturn! really bums me out...one day, though.

[bultje112]

also by sure to buy scenarios 2 and 3 for saturn and rip them with english patch so you can have 3!!! shining force games and the 3 best ones at that with the best storyline in perhaps any rpg

[bultje112]

Another thing that makes shining force 3 so good is the whole friendship mode

[Mega Drive Bowlsey]

Both Shining Force 1&2 are two of the greatest RPG's ever made. They both had a big part in my childhood and I love them both equally and applaud the differences between them. I'm about halfway through book 2 in Shining Force CD and I love that game too but I admit to feeling very disappointed at the lack of exploration between battles in that title. The excellent tight balancing of the tactics available to you in the battles does somewhat make up for the lack of village/world map wandering however.

[Nightwolf]

To me, the only reason I can think is if you played SF 1 before to SF 2. I love 2, but I cannot felt in love with 1. Also I like much more combat sprites for Sf2 than 1 (and the music man!) Both games are great indeed.

[Flygon]

ShFI crashes less when attempting to ROM hack than ShFII.

It's honestly been tempting more to get II's features ported down to I rather than porting I to II's engine, but it's II that's getting the (very very slowly done) split disassembly.

[Pixelepsy]

I'd be pretty hard pressed to actually say the first one was better than the second.

I love both to death, the first one was the first rpg I ever played. However the more varied choices, difficulty settings, etc. in 2 if anything to me make it slightly better, if I were forced to choose one.

As for CD, I own it yet still have to get down to playing it. I'm pretty sure I'll miss the towns though as those were really interesting to me in one and two.

[IvoSlash]

ShF2 all the way. ShF1 is great, no doubt, but the storyline, and the easy-to-use controls make it best. At least IMO.

[Da_Shocker]

I have played 2 only once years ago not even sure my copy still works. I really really really hated the graphics on the Saturn version. The looked ugly back when I first played it and Grandia IMO looked so much better. Those polygons graphics just don't have the life that SF and 2 had.

[bultje112]

grandia looked better than sf3 yes but with every subsequent scenario shining force 3 graphics improved. me I really like them but I like those of shining the holy ark the most

[maxi]

Holy Ark is, probably, the most competent first person dungeon crawler that I already played. The style of the graphics and layout of the dungeons is so well done that it's impossible to get lost inside any one of them, even without using the map. So many details like water on floor, holes that you can interact and other decorations. The mansion is my favorite part of the game.