Shining Wisdom/The Holy Ark

[andyedessa]

I've been looking at trying to pick up a copy of both these games but thought I'd get your advice first as they both seem to come up at the pricier end of Saturn games.

I've heard good things about Shining the Holy Ark but mixed things about Shining Wisdom. What are your opinions?

Cheers

Andy

[superdeadite]

Holy Ark is a must play. Fantastic game! Wisdom is rather so-so, very love-it or hate-it honestly.

[Willja]

Had Shining Wisdom forever and never got round to playing it but Shining The Holy Ark was a fantastic game.

[Yart]

I played Shining Wisdom for a bit and got bored. :/ Takes too long to get into it.

[syn]

If you liked Shining in the Darkness, you'll love Shining the Holy Ark!

I'm one of the people who enjoyed Shining Wisdom but this one can wait to be played after Holy Ark.

[grolt]

One is a 2D action RPG and the other is a 3D dungeon crawler. Both are well made, so really, it comes down to a matter of preference genre wise. I'm planning on moving on to SHINING WISDOM next, but I've been stuck on SHINING THE HOLY ARK for awhile now. The documentation online is pretty dodgy, you have to fill in a lot of the blanks and it can get confusing sometimes. It would be nice to have a better guide somewhere out there.

So far I'm enjoying ARK, although I have to say story-wise it's about as vanilla as they come. Still, that's pretty forgivable since it looks and plays so well. I really like the pixie battle system - like with PANZER DRAGOON SAGA, it works quick timing in with traditional turn-based combat to make for both an intense and cerebral experience all at once. My complaint in regards to the battles, though, is that you rarely get to use spells to really attack an opponent's weakness. Almost all magic hits for the same, and even then magic and regular attacks almost even out, so really it's more strategic just to attack the whole time and save magic for mid-battle health refills. Nitpicking aside, ARK is yet another example of all those quality RPGs that were quietly released with little attention. For my money, though, DARK SAVIOR still reigns supreme.

[grolt]

Just finished Shining the Holy Ark after logging 50 hours even into the game. Quite the journey...I honestly didn't think I'd like all the dungeon crawling, but it's put together so well and it looks so good that I really was hooked. The dungeons have some great puzzles in them, some could stump algebra teachers, even! The story got a bit better near the end, but it's still pretty rudimentary. I will say though, the finale was wonderful - without spoiling anything, I'll say it was really awesome to be able to roam around Enrich before the arbitrary credit sequence. You got to talk to everyone and each had a nice closing remark that really gave the game a deep closure while so many other RPGs just go the easy route with a text crawl. The final moments were totally epic. Definitely worth all the added effort!

I was about to pop in Shining Force III to follow, then I went to Shining Wisdom and now I think I'll go the Landstalker route. It's gotta be Camelot, but I just can't decide which one next!