Shining Force



Shining Force is a series of turn-based strategy games, and is part of a larger franchise known simply as the Shining Series, and was arguably Sega's answer to Fire Emblem.

Shining Force begins in the kingdom of Guardiana, where the main character, Max, is put in charge of the titular Shining Force and charged with stopping an invasion from the rival Runefaust army. The army is controlled by Darksol, a mysterious cloaked man with aspirations to revive the monstrous Dark Dragon and use it to Take Over the World. It's a prequel to the first-person Genesis RPG Shining in the Darkness, which featured Darksol's son Dark Sol (or, in Japan, Mephisto).

Its sequel, Shining Force II, shifts the focus to the kingdom of Granseal, where an even greater demon lord named Zeon (No relation) is sealed off by two jewels. A thief named Slade steals one of them, and thus breaks the seal on the monster. Zeon possesses the king of the neighboring Galam nation, causing him to do all sorts of freaky Evil Overlord-type deeds. This time, schoolkid Bowie and his three friends (Sarah, Chester and Jaha) form the core of the new Shining Force, and are sent to track down the jewels before Zeon can wreak any further havoc on the world. Takes place in the same world as the first game, although at the time there was only a Continuity Nod to prove it. (This game also suffers from the naming problems of the previous ones, referring to Darksol as Dark Sol, and Lucifer as Dark Dragon, an unrelated enemy from Shining Force I).

The Shining Force Gaiden games were released on the Game Gear (the first one never made it out of Japan), but were later repackaged and enhanced for the Sega CD. Of those, the first one stars Prince Nick of Cypress, who has to help Anri (part of the original Guardiana Shining Force who ascended to become Queen) find a cure for her poisoning at the hands of a rogue wizard named Woldol. At first, the people of Guardiana are suspicious of him, but eventually he turns out to be a trustworthy and effective leader, thus gaining their respect.

The second Gaiden game (subtitle: The Sword of Hajya) stars Deanna of Cypress, a swordsman who is placed in charge of the Cypress branch of the Force while the Prince leads an invasion into Iom. However, with the Prince's right hand turned to stone, he is practically defenseless against the superior Iom forces, and can no longer use the Sword of Hajya that he used to defeat Woldol in the previous game, so he gets captured so he can be sacrificed to Iom. In that regard, Deanna and his team have to recover the Prince's lost sword, save the Prince, and help him bring down the Iom army once and for all.

The third Gaiden game, also never released outside of Japan, is entitled Final Conflict and ties the stories of the first two Genesis games together, as well as serving as a prequel to Shining Force II by showing how remnants of Max's team and the survivors of Dark Dragon's army came to Parmecia after his disappearance.

Shining Force III, a game in three installments where only one was exported to the US, has its own page.

Other games in the franchise include action RPGs like Shining Tears, Shining Force NEO and EXA, and the Shining Soul games on Game Boy Advance. A return to the strategy/RPG format has finally arrived in the DS game Shining Force Feather, which of course shows no signs of being released outside of Japan, and Shining Hearts has been announced for the PSP.

Shining Hearts also gets a Anime Adaptation that started airing in as a part of the Spring of the 2012s.

Recently, a letter writing/video-uploading/fan-art showing campaign has been started by the fan community to reunite developer Camelot with Sega in time for the series' 20th anniversary. More information and ways you can contribute can be found here http://sos.shiningforcecentral.com/

"Gyan: Th...THAT??!! Kisaragi: Yes, T...H...A...T! Mayfair: That's disgusting!"
 * Action Girl: While the series is in no short supply, Sheela the Master-monk gains recognition even outside of the fan base; Her ditching of the White Magician Girl persona (with the exception of useful healing spells) to temper her body and eventual opening of her own dojo won her many a fan back in the day.
 * Aerith and Bob: Every now and then a character will have a mundane name (Max, Sarah, Nick).
 * After the End and Magic From Technology
 * The British comic adaptation only, which had Granseal as an island in the distant future of our world, after a nuclear war led to mutations which produced analogues to the usual fantasy races.
 * In the first game, there are several examples of ancient technology in the form of robots.
 * And its remake expanded upon that, by explaining how magic comes from a satellite orbiting the planet. A satellite that the main character can use to fire a freaking laser over an enemy.
 * All Swords Are the Same: Giving a character a different weapon swaps the weapon you see in their battle sprite, but otherwise, the animations are exactly the same. The only exception is the Chaos Breaker, which has fancy fire effects.
 * Annoying Arrows: Archers can easily be replaced by mages (who do 'Glass Cannon' better) or birdmen (who do 'Fragile Speedster' better). May in SFII is the exception, as a Horse Archer with explosive shells.
 * Also, Lyle the Strike Knight in SFI, even though you get him nearly halfway through the game. Centaur movement range on flat ground, 2-3 square archer range, high damage, and decent defense. You have to grind him up some so he has buffed stats before you promote him to Assault Knight, but when you do it is glorious. He ties with wolf warrior Zylo in terms of damage output with the added bonus of long range sniping ability.
 * In II in general, while arrows and Archers are useless, the Brass Gunner is a Mighty Glacier with a ranged attack, and artillery shells do fairly good damage.
 * Anti-Grinding: The experience you get from killing enemies varies depending on your level. Power up high enough and it's hard to find anything that'll give more than 1 EXP.
 * Subverted in Shining Force, so any healing done gets 10 experience points without fail. You have won the moment you can use it 10 times per fight.
 * Subverted even harder in Shining Force 2, and the GBA remake: You no longer had to actually heal damage to get the experience. Comes at the same rate. And Aura spells, which heal more than one character at a time, can give a healer 25 experience points.
 * Thoroughly inverted in Shining Force Feather: not only is grinding easy, but your Cool Ship has dedicated facilities dedicated to it as well, which can be upgraded to allow you to fight increasingly higher-leveled enemies.
 * Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only have 12 characters in each battle. This can sometimes lead to having to make painful decisions over who gets bumped from the team when a strong new character comes along.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Cursed weapons. Despite sporting a far higher attack than even mithril weapons, they carry negative drawbacks that make them undesirable. These include ebbing away at the wielder's hit points, nerfing the wielder's strongest stats (Defense for Warriors, Movement for Knights; etc.), and even paralyzing them during an attack. Worse yet, they cannot be removed without the aid of a costly purification from a priest or a high-level detox spell.
 * Back from the Dead: Woldol, the Big Bad of Shining Force Gaiden, returns as an end-game boss in Sword of Hajya. If you've only played the Game Gear port, his appearance won't make much sense to you.
 * Badass: Plenty of examples.
 * If you didn't read the above Annoying Arrows example with Lyle (SFI), then let this statement be an example: Once you put Zylo onto your team, chances are you will never remove him.
 * Bare-Fisted Monk: Gong from SF I, whose combination of Healing Hands and decent combat capability means he usually levels much quicker than the standard Squishy Wizard-type White Magician Girls. He's also the first optional character to join the team in the series.
 * Battle Couple: The birdman Amon and her husband Balbaroy, from the first game; Janet and Elric, two elven archers, in the second game.
 * Beef Gate: The Kraken of Shining Force II, whom can be challenged once the player receives the raft, but is best fought when the the player is required to fight it to advance. Also counts as That One Boss for some players, as it is one of the hardest bosses in the game.
 * Big Damn Heroes:
 * Brainwashed and Crazy:
 * Also the Muddle spell can do this to your fighters. Though it says your characters are "confused" or "in a daze", the spell basically lets the AI hijack your characters and make them waste their MP or go after whoever they can kill.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: If your save file is corrupted in Shining Force II, ominous music plays while the witch informs you that it's corrupted. Yes, they designed the game to play appropriate music for losing your file.
 * Bring My Red Jacket: Sir Lemon [AKA the Red Baron before he finally exits the Heel Face Revolving Door] can revive himself from death after a battle, and wears armor that is precisely the color of blood -- because it's painted with the blood of his dead enemies.
 * But Thou Must!: Most egregious moment is in II, where Thou Must go kiss the Princess Elis, the Damsel in Distress who you've known for maybe all of two minutes, and later get the implied Standard Hero Reward. Sarah, the Unlucky Childhood Friend, is heartbroken and runs off, leading Kazan to go "comfort" her. Needless to say, many fans prefer the girl who's stuck by you the whole game and loves you dearly to the princess who barely gets one line in the game.
 * This is also used to force the player to forgive bosses after they're defeated, no matter how much of a Dirty Coward or Complete Monster they are.
 * Can't Drop the Hero: It never lets you. And when the hero dies, it's a game over. But because of this, it leads to the hero typically being many times stronger than the other characters. See One Man Party below.
 * Catfolk: Dantom, a tiger-person boss.
 * Also Gyan from the Gaiden games.
 * Circus of Fear: Rindo in Shining Force. One of the boys from the town gets lost inside a circus, and so Max and the gang have to defeat an army of Monster Clowns to rescue him.
 * Chess Motifs: A battle in Shining Force II takes place on a chess board. The pieces move like regular enemies though.
 * Cognizant Limbs: The Kraken boss in Shining Force II and Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict.
 * Combat Medic: The Master-Monk class. Depending on the game and character, they're either Jack of All Stats or a Glass Cannon. Also Khris from the first game, who despite being a straight White Magician Girl on paper, outdamages the actual Combat Medic Gong at higher levels.
 * Comic Book Adaptation: In Sonic the Comic, see above.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Yes, it's a turn-based game, but the turns seem to be given at random, and it's not uncommon for an ememy to get two turns to kill your character in peril before that character gets one turn to move away or heal themselves. And in boss battles, the boss can get as many as three turns before you even get one, just enough to kill a character who before was at full health.
 * Semi-random, the Speed stat plays a big factor. That doesn't mean the bosses don't have ungodly high Speed stats, though.
 * The AI totally knows when it's going to be able to attack twice against one of your characters though, and will prey on whoever it can kill in one turn.
 * Ever noticed how often the enemies are left with just 1 HP, thereby allowing them to get in one last attack before they die? Yeah.
 * Clown Car Base: The tank that the Shining Force is kept in, in Shining Force II.
 * Crutch Character: Kiwi in Shining Force II, who can also be Lost Forever. Although his defense is stellar right from the start, making him a useful Meat Shield if nothing else, defense has no effect on magic, and his Hit Point gains are always tiny, making him increasingly useless despite the ability (once promoted) to fly and breathe fire.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: Usually not the case; "Dark" or "Evil" items are generally cursed and damage their user in exchange for their awesome power, but when part of a Yin-Yang Bomb, the Sword of Darkness in I and the Jewel of Evil in II are not evil (the words "dark" and "evil" are practically interchangeable most of the time, perhaps due to translation issues).
 * Death Seeker: Lemon from Shining Force II. However, it later turns out he's half-vampire, and can't end his own life by conventional means.
 * Defrosting Ice Queen: The whole story of Blanc Neige in Shining Tears. And, no, Her ice powers didn't defrost.
 * Disc One Final Boss:
 * Damsel in Distress: Princess Elis in SFII is pretty much the perfect cliched stereotyped example. All she needed was for Zeon to tie her to the railroad tracks.
 * Doomed Hometown: The destruction of the first Granseal palace and town in SFII.
 * Downer Ending: Subverted Trope, the ending of the first Force game, where it is rather convincing until.
 * Still a bit of a downer though, because
 * However he.
 * Dronejam
 * Enhanced Remake: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon introduces three playable characters, Narsha, Zukia, and Mawlock, adds a couple battles with them, fixes balance issues (Although several of the added stuff, including Supernova as well as the three new playable characters can be game breakers if used right)
 * Equipment Spoiler: Subverted in Shining Force II, where Taros can drop his sword, which can only be used by the Giant class. No Giant ever joins the team.
 * Camella can also drop her Iron Ball, of which absolutely nobody can equip either. The only use for both items is to sell them.
 * Extended Gameplay: The battle with all the major bosses after the credits for SFII.
 * Expy: Fenrir in Shining Blade is essentially an expy of Doggie Kruiser.
 * Face Heel Turn: in Shining Force II,
 * Fake Difficulty: In Shining Force II, there is a boss called Taros that can only be defeated by the main character, who is the only one that can damage it with a special sword. This scenario repeats itself in the second Gaiden Game, "The Sword of Hajya". Prince Nick, whose right arm is turned to stone and rendered unusable for the majority of the game, shows up in the confrontation with the Final Boss. The only thing that can break the invincibility seal on the boss is the titular sword, and he is the only one who can use it to its full extent. And if Iom happens to kill Nick before he gets a chance to use his sword, which in this battle can easily happen, you'll have to start all over again because it becomes Unwinnable.
 * Fake King: In The Sword of Hayja, a king gets sacrificed to Iom, and one of Iom's minions take's the king's place.
 * Fire, Ice, Lightning: Or rather, Blaze, Freeze and Bolt/Spark.
 * Flunky Boss: Pretty much every boss in the games is this.
 * Fragile Speedster: Archers and birdmen, the latter of whom can fly. Also Slade in SFII.
 * Frickin' Laser Beams
 * Furry Confusion: Shining Force II has an anthropomorphic rat character named Slade, and later in the game there is a boss that is a real rat.
 * Game Mod: For starters there's Shining Force 2 CD-I, a fan-made YouTube Poop-themed mod where the characters are replaced by characters from The Legend of Zelda CDI Games and Hotel Mario.
 * Geo Effects: Terrain plays a role in giving a defense bonus, as well as a movement pentalty.
 * Glass Cannon: Mages/Wizards, archers, and occasionally certain centaurs.
 * Guide Dang It: Recruiting the more obscure characters can get silly sometimes, but the first game takes the crown: the ninja Hanzo is hiding in one of the game's towns disguised as a bush, and will join if you inspect his leafy disguise. In the US version, there's . In the Japanese edition, he looks like every other bush in the game, none of which have anything to gain by examining them.
 * Half-Human Hybrid: Every single Knight-class character in the first two games is a centaur. There are also Wolf Men, birdmen (in eagle, stork and owl varieties), half-giants, dragonmen and... whatever the heck Grantack is. Guntz seems to be half armadillo. In Power Armor. Just because.
 * Headless Horseman: In the first game, Dullahans are headless centaur knights that you start to encounter from the march to Dragonia onwards.
 * Heel Face Turn: Jaro (if you don't attack him) and Lemon in SF II, and Graham in SFG II. Also in the original Shining Force.
 * Heroic Mime: Max in Shining Force I. In the remake, he's "upgraded" to Laser-Guided Amnesia. Played with through Bowie in Shining Force II, in which he has a few brief one-liner acknowledgements, but is typically mouthpieced by his Exposition Phoenix Peter and Sir Astral.
 * Hero Must Survive: Central to every game. You are given a hero character who acts as the leader of the force. If they die, you lose and are sent back to the last priest.
 * Hidden Dwarf Village
 * Hobbits: Halflings are a common race, typified by Lowe from the first game.
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: Hanzo in the first game,  in the second once promoted.
 * Interspecies Romance: It's implied Mae has a thing for Max in the first game. Mae is a centaur.
 * It's Up to You: In SF and SFII, the battle is lost the instant Max (or Bowie in the sequel) gets knocked out, even if there's one minor opponent left.
 * Joke Character: Jogurt in the first game, the penguins in the third. Jogurt can only inflict Scratch Damage, and if by some twist of fate he happens to kill someone, he receives an item that can have any other player character turn into him.
 * Kill Sat: In the remake of the first game, this powers a line of spells exclusive to Max.
 * Kleptomaniac Hero, Found Underwear (Appears in II)
 * If You Know What I Mean: In the third book of Shining Force CD, after you get past the second battle Prince Nick and Gyan encounter a harem of sorts, who's members encourage them to rest by saying "Why don't you relax? You can even try THAT with us."


 * Landmark of Lore: SF II contains a hidden airship that has the same outline as the Nazca lines.
 * Let's Split Up, Gang!: The Shining Force gets separated for a while in The Sword of Haija and you must work through a few battles with only six characters.
 * Light Is Good: In Shining Force II two of the main Amplifier Artifacts are the Jewel of Light and the Jewel of Evil, not Darkness.
 * Lions and Tigers and Humans, Oh My!
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: Usually about thirty per game, some of whom are Optional Party Members, and can be Lost Forever if you're not prudent. You're also left with a choice of who to use since you can only have 12 characters at a time attending a battle.
 * Lost Forever: A few characters, and often items you miss. The Game Gear version has an interesting subversion for items, where you can simply buy items you miss from the shop under deals. They cost a lot, which would be annoying, except the game soon ends up as Money for Nothing.
 * Also in the Genesis version of II.
 * The first game for the Sega Genesis has this in spades, due to the game being very linear with little backtracking. If you missed recruiting a character or performing the steps you need to for them to show up later, you've lost them for good. Thirteen out of the thirty characters in the game are optional and while most of them are hard to miss, on a first play-through the player will have no idea that they've screwed up and missed out on some of the more useful and powerful force members until long after the fact.
 * Lost Technology: All over the place.
 * Luke, I Am Your Father: In the first game, . Similarly in the Game Gear version,
 * Magikarp Power: Bleu, the baby dragon in the first game; Arthur, a Centaur also from the first game; and Slade, the rat thief from the second. Arguably, Domingo in the first game as well - a low level mage that turns into a Meat Shield at higher levels, despite being otherwise portrayed as the typical Squishy Wizard.
 * The Man Behind the Man:
 * Meat Shield: Domingo's status as this bears repeating. He eventually gets one of the best HP and defense in the game. And the best evasion. So if a character can hit him, they generally only do Scratch Damage, and he has enough HP to weather it all. He's also one of the highest priority targets to the computer, above most healers and other magicians, and below Max, The Hero. This means that if you put Domingo and almost any other character on either side of an opponent, they'll always go for him, allowing the other to hit them repeatedly from behind.
 * Megumi Hayashibara: Neige, in the game. In Tears X Wind, her lines were recorded by someone else (Ayako Kawasumi, AKA Saber)
 * Mirror Match: In Book 3 of Shining Force CD.
 * Mithril: In the second game you'll find Mithril in different places, and if you hold onto them for the whole game near the end the Dwarf blacksmith will forge powerful Mithril weapons for your force.
 * Amusingly enough, Mithril is the name of the currency in Feather, which you get from every single enemy you kill. However, since it seems to take the form of blue crystals, it's probably not the same thing.
 * In Shining Force EXA, Mithril is used to power up your weapons and armor.
 * My Country, Right or Wrong: This is the only reason General Eliot fights you in the first game. In the second, Lemon is this way when he obeys an obviously Brainwashed and Crazy king who commands him and his army to slaughter the citizens of a city that was their ally.
 * Name of Cain: Kane in the first game.
 * Non-Linear Sequel: Shining Force II to the first Shining Force game, barring a single reference to Max and Guardiana. The Game Gear games however avert this and continue the story of the first game, with Anri as queen of Guardiana.
 * One-Hit Kill: Try not to let a final boss use De-soul, by far the cheapest magic attack possible as it can suddenly kill anyone even at full health, on the leader of the force.
 * One Man Party: The flipside to Anti-Grinding -- your heaviest hitters are going to hit the level plateau really quickly, and your support characters... aren't.
 * Healers are an exception, as they gain a fair chunk of XP when they heal someone. Also, back-row characters can be leveled up by farming injured enemies.
 * Making Sheela and Karna (if you promote her to Master Monk instead of Sarah) absolute wrecking machines. High Attack + Aura + Boost = A character who will level up very, very, VERY fast.
 * If you wait long enough, you can have both Sarah and Karna Master Monks, since there is a second vigor ball hidden in one of the trees behind the dojo.
 * One Steve Limit: Averted. The name "Max" applies both to the protagonist of Shining Force and the protagonist of Shining Force Neo; the name "Arthur" can be either a centaur knight in SF or a human knight in Shining the Holy Ark; and so on.
 * Opening Narration: Shining Force CD has a voice-over explaining what had happened between the first Shining Force game and that one.
 * Our Centaurs Are Different: For the most part, they tend to be knights.
 * Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Though beards are apparently optional; in the first game, Gort has one but Luke/Lug does not.
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: If by "different", you mean "Zylo will kill practically everything he comes across".
 * In the second game, Gunther the werewolf starts out looking like just a hairy man, but after he gets a promotion he starts looking more like a wolf.
 * Powered Armor: Guntz's suit of steam armor and Kokichi's flying machine, both from SFI.
 * Rare Candy: The food items, like Quick Chicken boosts dexterity, Power Potions or Power Wines boost attacks, Defense Potions or Protect Milk rarises defenses, Bright Honey increases mana (MP), and Life Bread boosts HP.
 * Random Encounters: Shining Force I has no random battles whatsoever. Every battle is well distinguished from the others.
 * Redemption Demotion: Lemon in SFII is significantly stronger when you fight against him (in fact he's almost a That One Boss) than he is when he joins your team. Handwaved by the fact that he's no longer being controlled by a demon spirit, but still.
 * Also from SFII, Jaro, whom also becomes weaker when he switches sides mid-battle, for the same reasons. Luckily though if you leave him alone in the battle until he switches sides you'll never have to fight him, so most players won't notice the demotion.
 * Redemption Equals Death: in SFII, and  in the original, though the latter is partially a Heroic Sacrifice.
 * Redheaded Hero: Max in the first game.
 * Respawning Enemies: They occur in the Gaiden games; if you're extremely patient, you can simply have each of your party members keep killing them until everyone's leveled up far beyond what they were meant to at that point in the game. Of course, this might be why they don't show up often in other Shining Force games.
 * Played straight, though, if you escape or lose a battle; all the progress made up until that point is reset, and all the enemies are respawned. In a few key battles, the hero's Egress spell can be a means for power-levelling.
 * Reverse Mole: in SFG II.
 * Rope Bridge: In SFII one of the battles takes place on one.
 * Samurai: Musashi, a secret character from the first game and Shining Force CD, inexplicably renamed Rush in the latter's US version.
 * Save the Princess: In Shining Force II. A rare Gender Flip occurs in The Sword of Hayja where you must save the prince.
 * Schizo-Tech: Swords, axes and arrows coexisting in a world with lasers and robots.
 * Sealed Evil in a Can (All over the place.)
 * Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: In SFII when the Shining Force gets shrunk at Mr. Creed's residence and put onto a desk with an entire community of people who had the same thing happen to them. (The Shining Force gets away eventually of course, but for the other potential party members they must remain there until pre-departure on the Nazca ship, but it could still be like And I Must Scream as the others would be harder to level up at this point). The NPCs who have made a kingdom of their own are actually thankful to Creed for their Desktop Kingdom.
 * She Cleans Up Nicely: A lot of the female characters get surprisingly hotter when they get a promotion. This is most blatantly the case for Master Monks in SFII, who go from priestly garb to Stripperiffic belly-dancer wear when they promote.
 * Also Tao and Anri in the first game who, if you look hard enough for them, can be equipped with bikinis. Narsha also gets a bathing suit in the remake.
 * And in Shining Force EXA, this can be applied to Cyrille depending on which armor she has equipped.
 * Shining Goodness
 * Shoot the Medic First: A good policy for both sides, however, this is taken to an extreme by the enemies in the first game. Starting from the beginning, they will aim directly for your magician Tao, and once she dies (which will be often), they will aim for all your other magicians and healers.
 * The healers and magicians have lower defense and are often easier to kill, and the AI loves preying on anyone it can kill quickly and in one turn. It goes for the other Shining Force games as well. They usually won't exclusively go after Master Monks in the second game because they can take hits and defend themselves.
 * Shout-Out: Kiwi's promotion lets him fly over water and breathe fire. In short, he becomes Gamera.
 * Also, the rat boss in SFII is named Willard.
 * The Something Force
 * Spell My Name with an "S": Happened in Shining Wisdom, because Sega (who had most Shining games) had the license to use the names but the game was licensed by Working Designs, who had to rename everything that appeared in another game; for instance, Parmecia became Palacia.
 * Also Luke/Lug, Kyantol/Cantaur...
 * Spiritual Successor: Golden Sun.
 * Spiteful AI: Even when death seems imminent, the enemies seem to at least die happy when they know they used their last move to kill one of your weaker characters rather than focusing on the main character (who might have survived the hit) like they had been.
 * Squishy Wizard: It can depend on the character and how leveled up they are, but it's generally not a good idea to put your wizards or healers on the frontlines. If they run out of MP they might as well be a Meat Shield since their physical attacks rarely do much (again, depending on the character).
 * A notable exception is the hidden character Domingo in the first game, who has a ridiculously high Defense stat despite being otherwise entirely an offensive spellcaster. Indeed, due to the enemy tendency to attack him over other targets, he winds up being a very effective tank for the later half of the game. No, really.
 * Standard Evil Empire Hierarchy: In the first game
 * The Emperor: Ramladu
 * The Right Hand: Kane
 * The General: Elliot
 * The Guard: Balbazak
 * The Oddball: Mishaela
 * The Man Behind the Man: Darksol
 * Standard Hero Reward: SFII's ending shows.
 * Steampunk
 * The Strategist: Nova in SFI, Sir Astral in SFII, Lowe in SFG, and Mayfair in SFG II (the last two were playable characters before becoming advisors to a different Shining Force team).
 * Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Sir Hawel, the first mage available in Final Conflict, is killed off by mooks near the beginning of Shining Force II
 * Summon Magic: A variation of magical attacks in later installments. This is the specialty of the Sorcerer class of Shining Force II, an alternate promotion of the Mage class.
 * Sword of Plot Advancement
 * Tank Goodness: The Brass Gunner class from SFII, which has better movement range and defense than a Sniper (standard promoted Archer). Slightly subverted in that a Sniper is actually has more firepower than a tank, judging by attack stat gains.
 * Team Pet: Kiwi in the second game. In the first game, there's an extremely large number. Save for one (Bleu, who is plot-mandatory), all of these characters are easy to miss.
 * Too Awesome to Use: Shower of Cure can become this, as well as level 4 magic attacks (you want to save your MP so you can keep attacking of course).
 * Took a Level in Badass: Most characters will once promoted.
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change: After SFIII, every last game in the series save for the Updated Rerelease of the original Shining Force has been an action-adventure RPG in the vein of the Seiken Densetsu games. Mostly critically panned, the games range from playably mediocre (Neo and EXA, the first Shining Soul) to actually fun (Shining Soul II).
 * Though technically, Shining Force I was an Unexpected Gameplay Change, as the first game in the series was a dungeon crawling RPG called Shining In The Darkness. This genre was revisited with Shining the Holy Ark.
 * Updated Rerelease: Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon on the Game Boy Advance, as well as Shining Force CD, which was a remake of the two Game Gear Gaiden Games.
 * Upgrade Artifact: In SFII, certain items allow a few of your party members to promote to different classes than their normal evolution.
 * Useless Useful Spell: Status-infliction spells in the earlier titles, due to their unreliable accuracy. They become far more useful in the third game, however.
 * Averted in the remake; though. Status-infliction spells aren't very useful...but as for Narsha's status buffs? They easily veer into Game Breaker territory.
 * Desoul is perhaps the most traditional example. Essentially, the equivalent of Final Fantasy's Death spell, it almost never works. That is unless an enemy uses it on you. Generally speaking, unless you're using Blaze, Freeze, Bolt, Heal, Detox or Boost, most other magic falls into this category.
 * The Vicar: The promoted class of healers in most games.
 * We Cannot Go on Without You: losing Max at any point forces you to restart from the last save point. This is quite odd, in that it's the case in every battle, even when he has no apparent importance whatsoever. Because Destiny Says So indeed.
 * White-Haired Pretty Boy (and girl): Keiner in Tears, who is an Aloof Big Brother of the already aloof Neige. Also princess gone ice mage Anri from the original, as well as Ernest, a knight.
 * White Magician Girl: Most of the games have at least one of these, a female healer who usually (unless promoted to master monk) has no real offensive power besides maybe a Blast spell.
 * Worthy Opponent: Elliott from the original, and in SFII.
 * Yin-Yang Bomb: The Chaos Breaker, an Infinity Plus One Sword of Plot Advancement. Also the Dragon Rings in Tears
 * The Jewels of Light and Evil in SFII, though they have no effect on gameplay. The Shining Force swords in EXA also have a similar effect.
 * You Dirty Rat: Slade the Rat is the cause of everything that goes wrong in SFII. Though it is mentioned that he was more of a Robin Hood-type Loveable Rogue who simply had no idea what he was unleashing when he stole the jewels of Light and Evil. He does later join the Shining Force and redeem himself.
 * Redeem himself? He becomes one of the best members of the force, barring Bowie and Peter. He's also the only member, when promoted, to be able to slice things in two without damage rolls (except a boss) if he lands a critical.
 * Your Mom: In Shining Wisdom: "Your mama's so ugly she looks out the window and gets arrested for moonin'!"