Shining Force Gaiden series

[midnightrider]

I don't see a topic for these games otherwise.

I say "series" and not "trilogy" because you have to include Shining Force CD, which seems to have a couple extra Game Gear-like Shining Force games exclusive to it(books 3 and 4), which combines characters from the first 2 Shining Force Gaiden games.

Release dates in conjunction with the Genesis and Sega CD games:
Shining Force - 03/20/92
Shining Force Gaiden - 12/25/92
Shining Force Gaiden II - 06/25/93
Shining Force II - 10/01/93
Shining Force CD - 07/21/94 (according to GameFAQs, in this case, the U.S. release was 1 day before the Japanese release)
Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict - 06/30/95

To the best of my knowledge, this is how these games connect to each other and the Genesis games(no major spoilers):

Shining Force Gaiden shares some connection to Shining Force, as it seems to take place in the future. A mistranslation error in Shining Force's localization see's the dwarf warrior Lug renamed as Luke, which gets a bit confusing as one of the character in Shining Force Gaiden II is named Luke, while another dwarf warrior in Shining Force Gaiden is Lug's son, with both games being on Shining Force CD. A number of Shining Force characters have children as playable characters in Shining Force Gaiden.

Shining Force Gaiden II has connections to Shining Force Gaiden, as some playable characters from SFG are playable once again in SFGII, and one even serves as SFGII's priest.

Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict has more of a connection to Shining Force II, than it does to Shining Force, or either of the other Gaiden games, but actually seems to be in the past. It's cast includes a couple of characters who died during the course of Shining Force II's story, and even a major playable character that returns from the original Shining Force.

Shining Force Gaiden is only in English as Book 1 of Shining Force CD, and Final Conflict was also only released in Japan, but has had a fan translation: http://www.romhacking.net/translations/876/

As far as the Shining Force Gaiden games go, the most info I can find on them stems from whatever Wikipedia can tell you about them, and these pages:
http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/sega_cd/sfcd/
http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/gamegear/sfgfc/

http://fantasyanime.com/shiningforce/sfgg.htm
http://fantasyanime.com/shiningforce/sffc.htm

Otherwise they don't seem to have as much info out there as the Genesis games do. For example, character information on these games aren't as thorough as the information you can find on the characters of the 2 Genesis games, where I pretty much had the idea of my final party before I even started playing those games.

[Black_Tiger]

Have you looked at Shining Force Central?

http://www.shiningforcecentral.com/

[midnightrider]

Yeah, but there doesn't seem to be much exclusive info on this series.

Edit: On the flip side though, they do have a summary of the story of the first Shining Force Gaiden, if one isn't going to play Shining Force CD and wants to jump into Sword of Hajya(SFGII).

[Chimaera]

I'm actually in the middle of playing through and reviewing the Game Gear Sword of Hajya for this site! Yeah, the names kind of threw me off for a bit, but I did a bit of research at those sites as well. I'll be sure to iron everything out before I submit my review, as the chronology of this series can sometimes get confusing with a few major translation errors.

[maxi]

If you want to play chronologically, without spoilers:

1- Shining Force (I would suggest the GBA remake instead, because is a huge improvement in the combats and the story is indeed completely explained in-game);
2- Gaiden 1 and 2 (Sega CD remake is also better), they pass 20 years latter of SF1 and have a lot of characters returning;
3- Final Conflict, which have a couple of characters and story facts related to SF1 and a lot of things related to SF2 (is the game that makes all the bridge between the two entries), plus introduces a major character of Shining in the Darkness;
4- in the Darkness, happens just before the events of SF2 but has no impact in any other game after it;
5- Shining Force 2, closes all except a couple of things without much importance to the Saturn games.

Is also widely believed Landstalker occurs in the same universe. This is because of some things in Time Stalkers for the Dreamcast and also his prototype version confirmed by Climax to be a SF sequence using the name Shining Thief, but since the game has no connection alone with the others cited so whatever...

[Chimaera]

I'd never heard the Landstalker theory, although it would make a lot of sense (the graphical styles are pretty similar). Thanks for the info!

[midnightrider]

Landstalker and Shining in the Darkness were both developed by Climax.

The Japanese title for Time Stalkers is Climax Landers. Nigel and Pyra(the mage character from SitD) are playable characters. So is Lady from the non-localized Lady Stalker on the Super Famicom. Pretty sure Sword and Marion are made up for the game, so the only one I'm not sure of is whether Rao came from another game or not. It's a good game, but it gets overlooked by the fact that it's more a dungeon crawler than an FMV story, like RPG players were used to at the time(basically the same criticism's as the Evolution games).

[maxi]

I like it as a Pokemon type game. As a RPG is indeed weak, but better than the two Evolutions.
Rao is another new character, but there's Jogurt from SF making a cameo too.

[Jeckidy]

Got Sword of Hajya on 3DS Virtual Console for a mere four bucks and love it. I've played the others and they are good too, so I'm no stranger to the series. I'm up to the mountain/vine stage right now.

[JungleStrike]

Got Sword of Hajya on 3DS Virtual Console for a mere four bucks and love it. I've played the others and they are good too, so I'm no stranger to the series. I'm up to the mountain/vine stage right now.

Sword of Hajya is awesome. I think that was the first strategy RPG I ever played. Great game.

[Daria]

The Shining games developed with Climax are really very different beasts than the Camelot series - even though they worked together on the original two titles. As far as I know (and this was based on discussions we had on Shining Force Central - I tried to pull up the original pages from Climax's website when I made my LandStalker video but the links were dead. So all I have to go on is our reactions and not the source.) Anyway LandStalker (Shining Rogue) was intended as a direct sequel to Shining Force 1, with Max as the playable character. If you'll remember SF1 ended on a cliff hanger with the Force thinking he was dead but instead he and Adam turn up in an unnamed village. When Climax split from Sonic Software Planning (Camelot) they changed him to Nigel and SSP began work on Shining Force 2.

Also there's some audio in LandStalker that is shared with Shining Force: sound effects and a few musical riffs.

[retrospiel]

The Wayback Machine at Archive.org could be of help when looking for old sites: http://archive.org/web/ - Just copy+paste the dead URLs and see where it gets you. Fingers crossed you can find the pages you were looking for.