Shining the Holy Ark (Saturn) Playthrough [1 of 2]

A playthrough of Sega's 1997 role-playing game for the Sega Saturn, Shining the Holy Ark.

This video is part one of a two-part playthrough, showing from the beginning through the battle with Rilix. You can find part two at    • Shining the Holy Ark (Saturn) Playthrough ...  

Shining in the Darkness, a first-person RPG for the Sega Genesis, kicked off the Shining series back in 1991. It was fairly popular, but after striking gold with Shining Force, five years would pass before Camelot (then known as Sonic Software Planning) would return to the Shining OG's design blueprint with Shining the Holy Ark.

Shining the Holy Ark starts off quite unlike any other RPG I've ever played. A group of mercenaries have followed a renegade ninja deep into a mine, and just as they're catching up with him, an alien spacecraft crashes through the ceiling. Everyone is critically injured in the accident and the aliens take possession of their bodies to heal them, but since this is an RPG, evil is afoot and these events end up setting in motion the wheels of fate.

Such a bizarre premise. I love it.

Since it's a dungeon crawler, the story rarely takes center stage, but the plot does a great job at driving the game forward at a pitch-perfect pace - a massive improvement over Shining in the Darkness's. In fact, Shining the Holy Ark improves on its predecessor in pretty much every way imaginable.

Instead of Darkness's single town and dungeon, Holy Ark's adventure spans an entire continent filled with several unique areas to explore and NPCs to chat with.

The battles come fast and often, but they move quickly and are balanced in that, so long as you're thorough in your exploration, grinding for levels isn't necessary most of the time. It'll certainly ease a few of the harder battles, but if you aren't running from fights, there won't be any ridiculous difficulty spikes that'll stop you cold in your tracks.

You'll eventually end up with eight people in your party, and you can swap them out mid-fight without penalty. This means that you always have access to everyone's abilities. I generally find that Arthur, Melody, Basso, and Doyle make for a well-rounded enough of a party to make swapping unnecessary, but it is a really handy option if you like to experiment or if you find yourself taking a nasty beating.

There are faeries hidden throughout the world that remind me of the djinn in Golden Sun. Any that you've recruited can be summoned at the beginning of a battle for an initial strike. The advantages they provide make them well worth searching for.

Something else that reminds me of Golden Sun (and the GBA Mario sports games) is the fantastic presentation. The framerate struggles a bit in the last couple of dungeons, but the prerendered CGI sprites are well animated and memorably designed, and it's always fun to see which creepy enemy is going to appear next. The music is classic Motoi Sakuraba throughout, and the sound effects are punchy and clear.

Shining the Holy Ark is an excellent RPG, and it's friendlier and more accessible than just about any other first-person dungeon crawler that I've played without being a total push-over. Tile-based dungeon crawlers were pretty old-fashioned by the late 90s, but this one really nailed it. If not for Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining the Holy Ark would be my favorite RPG on the Sega Saturn.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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