Shiness, the lightning kingdom’s takes us back in time to the days of playstation 2 rpg stories. While Shiness shows us why stories have evolved from those days, it also reminds us of why they were great.
Plot
In the world of Mahera, there are floating islands known at Meteoras. The elemental forces of nature that govern the Metoras are known as Shi. There are three races that inhibit the Metoeras, Wakis, Shelks, and Humans. Legend has it is one Metoras that is known as the land of life – a mythical place where wishes come true. The legends states that the only beings that know how to get to the land of life are mythical spirits of the earth, called Shiness. Shiness can only be seen and heard by precious few people – one of them being a young Waki named Chado. Chado and his friend Poky are searching for the lands of life when their airship crashes in a Metoras. Soon, they come across a princess and her guardian who have escaped from a royal city – with the royal army hot in pursuit. Thus, Chado and Poki are pulled into a conflict between two warring nations. You may have noticed there are a lot of terms thrown around in Shiness and they aren’t well explained at first. You’ll likely spend the first couple hours trying to remember what characters names are, which kingdom is which, and what monster races are called. There’s also an unfortunate over reliance on padded events. For example, one of the first tasks into the game is to get rid of “dark shi”. But to do that you need to know where its coming from. But to find out where it’s coming from you need to repair an elevator to reach someone, and so on and so forth. The main conflict in Shiness is interesting, but suffers pacing issues due to the padding. To top it off. The ending also didn’t have the closure I was hoping for.
Writing
Every character in Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is bursting with personality. I loved the way in which the writing doesn’t take itself too seriously, and always makes room for a joke. Getting arrested for being in violation of chocolate code XY4 is so ridiculous it’s impossible not to laugh. It’s not all humor though, there are a few touching moments throughout the game to balance the scales. While all the silliness in Shiness is a great throwback to the days of the Playstation 2, it also harbors some of the problems with writing of games at that time. The most prominent problem is that sometimes the writing sounds stiff, like it was never read out loud.
Voice Acting
Shiness takes a halfway approach to its voice acting. The fact that an Indie game has voice acting at all is quite the feat – and for the most part it is good. However, the majority of the game is not voiced, instead using textboxes. The scenes that are voiced, can sometimes leave a bit to be desired. Chado’s voice is more cartoonish than needed and some of the non-main characters do not have great voices.
Immersion
I am in absolute love with the world of Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom. In an age where all games need to be dark and mature, Shiness takes an opposite approach with a colorful vibrant world. The comic book style art style is beautiful – and that also goes for the stylish comic book cutscenes that replace traditional cutscenes. On top of that, the lore of the world is so rich that every possible corner is bursting with Imagination; So much so that the developers created an entire language to use specifically in Shiness. You can download a language pack to replace the entire voiced English scenes with the fictional language “Maherian”. It’s not like some half-baked concept either – it sounds like a real language.
Conclusion
No matter how you look at it, Shiness’ story is a throwback to a simpler time. There are pros and cons to that approach, but if you’re hungry for an updated ps2 era story – look no further than Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom.