Shining Beyond – 2020 First Impressions and Thoughts

Man I love RPGs. Like, I’m fond of other game genres as well, but RPGs always hit me right in the feels. They take me back to a time when I’d boot up my old PS1 or Gameboy and play Legend of Dragoon, the old Final Fantasy games or Pokemon Yellow.
We’ve come a long way since then, granted, but I always find myself drawn to them. Shining Beyond was no exception.

This is your traditional RPG. You take on the role of one of the most basic characters in a video game – Jake, a generic brown haired warrior.
You’re thrown directly into some cutscenes, then you’re greeted by a ridiculously drawn out tutorial. Something I’ve never been fond of in my games. Mainly because I know what I’m doing like.. 97% of the time.
Now, granted, the cutscenes themselves were pretty well animated. I was surprised to see not only the characters look as good as they did, but also the special effects within the cutscenes themselves.

The game follows the traditional Mobile RPG formula: There are various Chapters, with each Chapter having a selection of Missions to take to complete the Chapter in question.
Each mission has you fight several waves of enemies in succession, with some story-related elements found between specific missions. The missions were pretty easy, as most RPGs tend to be.
The game utilized auto-combat, which meant that I could pretty much tackle the game hands-off–and no, not for the reason you might expect!
I know there are plenty of incredible looking waifu’s available within the game – seriously, there are. When browsing the waifu’s you could collect in this game I was quite surprised.
They had quite a few assets in place that definitely have a direct effect on the PLOT. Not that I’ve ever really seen anyone complain about that, right?

The story was pretty well translated, and the characters’ special abilities all looked pretty good. Character models, both within the battles, and the portraits for cutscenes were very well done.
Graphically – the game looked great.
Honestly, the only issue I had with the game was the auto-combat, but I feel as though that’s an issue I have with a lotta games, right? I’m just not a fan of auto-play. I prefer to play through games on my own and I know a lot of you do as well.

Overall, this was a solid title to play through. I don’t know specifically how good or bad the Gacha rates are, but with the large selection of characters you can recruit, the great quality graphics, and the solid story-telling, this isn’t a bad game to waste some time in.