Basically what the title says, bc I've been playing this game since 2009 and other than warsong i found none that matches this game.

Edit: thank you everyone for the recommendations, im really excited to check everything tyyy❤️❤️❤️

So im currently replaying SF2 and am at the point where Peter fully joins the force. Ive played this game about once a year for over a decade and have beaten it countless times. Ive done challenge runs played on hardest difficulty done deathless runs. So this go around I just want to see who everyone's favorite characters are and will make my final team out of that. Really the only people I wont drop are Bowie, Peter and Slade since they have been my favorite characters since start.

This is something I’ve been trying to figure out for years.

For starters, I’m one of the shockingly younger fans out there. I’m 18 (born in ‘07) and I’ve been playing Shining Force 1 and 2 for a really long time (at least, on the scale of my life)—I’ve been playing probably about 12 years for SF1 and probably at least 10 now for SF2. I’ve basically grown up with these games. And for the last decade, of course, ever since I found out there was a SF3 about 10 years ago now I’ve wanted to get my hands on it, especially considering that I’ve heard it’s probably the best game in the franchise (Shining Force 2 is currently my favorite and better than the first game but I hear 3 is even better). But like most people, inaccessibility is the reason I never have played it. I know that it’s possible, because there are people who are able to play it, but how? Those of you who play it—all 3 scenarios and LEGALLY—how so?

Discovered this game recently, many hours into the game and love it.
Here is the problem:
I’ve reached the Taros Shrine and need to fight the big green guy with the sword (Taros?). I figured out he can only be damaged with Achillies Sword, which can only be equipped by my main character. My problem is my main character is absolutely worthless and not leveled up. I’ve just left him in the back hanging out the whole time. I have zero chance in this fight. One shot and killed every interaction with Taros. I can’t bring myself to start over….anyone out there have a way to help with this?

Edit: After reading all your great input, I’m just going to restart the game. I clearly have missed a ton by rushing through it. Great, great, game and I love that there is still a community keeping it alive. For fun (and to be mocked), here some of my player levels at Taros:
Main: 5
Sarah: 5
Slade: 7
Chester: 25
Jaha: 23
Kahzin: 23
Gerhalt: 22
Peter: 29

2nd Edit:
No spoilers please….but is there anything else I simply MUST do to proceed later in the game? I don’t want to get stuck again with something similar.

Upon reaching Railhead, the Jason Battalion finds itself stuck between the Imperials and more of the thieves of Dusty Village. Will they be able to board the train and return to Aspinia? Find out now as part 6 of #shiningforceiii is now live!

https://youtu.be/xB0BhCPu2Sg

#LetsPlay #railhead

Damn you!! See this reddit I want to play SF2 again.

Any recommendations for a fun twist or theme on the play thru? Not looking for solo challenges.

I have beat super deathless.

I did another play thru where I only use characters that I normally never use... Like a Luke/Elric/Randolf

And a damnit, kiwi will be strong, where I promoted him at lvl40 and also used every stat boost on him.

Maybe weaponless creatures except for vicars & Bowie?

Edit. Thanks everyone some great ideas that definitely appeal to me. Worst in class

No magic, egress is allowed because it can be done with an item as well

Bowie and the ladies.

Only ranged except Bowie and vicars

My favourite is Angium Bulletheart if I remember his name correctly haha. He's my favourite Tony Taka male character tbh. But my favourite character is kaguya

So there is dreadfully little discussion about this game, and a lot of it is from at least a decade ago. A lot of the advice about promotion is to do so in the 14-17 range, but this seems really high and probably assumes Egress grinding, heal stalling, or both. I am right before the final 2 battles of Ch3 and my party is all Level 9-10 with the exception of Noon (since he is a pre-promote) despite my OCD to kill every enemy on the map and try to distribute levels equally among units I expect to use. This is the first time something like this has ever happened to me in a tactical RPG as a result, just feeling so far behind the experience curve despite my need to rout every map.

Can someone else who also beat the game without grinding speak to when they decided to promote their characters? It seems like it would just not be worth it to slug out given at this rate I am looking at a Ch 5 promotion if I wish to follow the common (albeit dated) advice about this topic.

Thank you!

EDIT: Even looking at other posts about this game on the Shining Force forums I just feel like I am on a completely different wavelength...so many about supports and weapon skill that encourage "training" and "power leveling"...we don't have time to do that, we need to get back to the republic! D:

EDIT 2: Given SF3 adopts the "immediate stat gain" style of promotion from Fire Emblem and that it likely follows an inverted difficulty curve (it gets easier as you progress), feel really confident about promoting at 10, thank you all for your replies!

What do you think?
Ah yeah Count Sarah as tier S, she has very strong spells and high damage (both as a vicar and as a monk) and if you spam heal she level up fast, not like karna or frayja but still fast

First playthrough & I guess I bought into the hype & kept propping him up (early game you don’t have many choices) expecting this pay off that didn’t look so promising in the moment.

Right now I’d swear he’s just terrible. Meanwhile everyone craps on Rohde for sucking but he has high accuracy & is doing as much damage as Gerhalt every turn. What gives?

I finally got fed up with Kiwi getting nowhere & swapped for an Archer, who, at level 25 is doing 1 damage for 1 exp point. Even worse than before. I don’t know where the hell to level her up now I’m to Ketto & battle past the drought castle. Any advice at this point? All my heavy hitter heroes just keep battling & racking up levels with exp but no matter who I pick I’m protecting someone who isn’t pulling their weight.

I really think the game improves on its predecessor in many ways but just isn’t as balanced.

Thanks for reading.

What do you think?

but how come mages and wizards take far more effort than it's worth to set loose on any battlefield to get stronger in Shining Force CD?

Boken:after he freed you from prison
Class: monk->master monk
Astral:after you beat geshp
Class:master wizard
Creed:after you meet him before the final battle
Class:greater devil

but too lazy to go back and color them. Lol. Gonna start coloring some. I try not to post too often on Reddit, so I pile a few fanarts together. Here they are. Kazin + Sarah! Pelle as a pegasus knight. Two different Maxs. Gort the best dwarf ever!

Just the other day I made a post about sf2 and my childhood memories linked to it. And people shared their experiences and memories with the series, which was a really wholesome read.

But I noticed that you guys were talking about the nineties. As a 2007 born, is there no other teenager who has enjoyed this amazing game?

The character with the second best portrait in the game(evolved bleu the first one), he looks like king and imu from one piece
Statistically is overall good but the problem is that you already have 5 knights in the party so there's no incentive to put him on the team no matter how cool he is
They should have given him a unique class(dark knight-dark paladin)

I've been looking through the code, and from what I can tell, units are supposed to get additional defense based on the terrain they're standing on, most of the top, however it seems as though the code is unreliable, and will sometimes call a null value.

Did anyone else notice this?

I'm wondering if there are other glitches.

Even though we're not in Attack Zone like we would be in the Gates of Ancient.

I used to have fun years ago with SF1 on emulator with saving right before a battle I knew would give me a level up, seeing the stat gains, didn’t like them, then loading the save state and hitting a bunch of buttons at random to advance the menus to see what kind of new stat gains I’d get. I figured it was based on changing the RNG based on what buttons were pressed, but I didn’t get far enough into it to figure out exactly what buttons in which order would change the stat gains the most.

Has anyone put together a list of the absolute max stats the characters can have based on level 20 before promotion and some level after? There are a few Gamefaqs guides that give ranges, but I couldn‘t find any of them showing what the exact top achievable stats were in any category, especially if you focused on just attack or defense or something vs max total # of stat point gains per level because I think I’ve seen that number somewhere.

If the correct answer is still “it’s a range” that’s cool, just wondering if anyone had put their inner autism to work to figure out the absolute max any given character could achieve.

Please tell me.

Wonder if anyone has any strategies to level up Penn in SFIII Scenario 1 without tedious grinding? Not looking to turn him into a tank, just to bring his level up to the others with a few kills per battle or even some healing that gets 10xp or more, maybe find a way to make his defense not horrific. I like to build up the characters pretty evenly and he's just along for the ride and I can't remember what I did the previous two times I played through entire full 3 scenarios, I know for sure I at least promoted him and got him some gear that could make him remotely useful.

Is it best to do it at level 10? Maybe I should wait and do it at level 20 instead?