Shining The Holy Ark

by Sega

Product Features

• Features up to eight characters; all of the characters have special skills; battle medieval monsters; use weapons and magic; choose your own path through the game
• Players: 1
• Controller: Gamepad, Joystick

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004SW24
• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,434 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

SHINING THE HOLY ARK is an anime style RPG. You play as the character Arthur and will gain up to 7 more characters. You can play only have 4 in the group at one time but can swap out the characters except Arthur. Moving around is 1st person perspective of Arthur in a 3d environment.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Shining gem among rare, unique RPGs, March 4, 2010

By 

Son of Tiamat - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Shining The Holy Ark (Video Game)

A while ago I purchased a Sega Saturn just so I could play two rare RPGs that stand out in the Satrun collection: Shining the Holy Ark and Albert Odyssey. Both games were mentioned a decade ago in an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly 2 (Star Fox 64 is on the cover). The magazine is lost, regretably, but the two Saturn RPGs mention therein still stuck in my mind for years.

Most RPGs play alike, but every so often you'll get one that is truly unique and the more so better for the fact it stands alone in it representaion; RPGs like Earthbound, Lufia and the like. This is definetly one of those games. It's a first person RPG in which everything is done from the hero's point of view. Battles, towns, dungeons, not the world map though but who cares. This is a true dungeon crawler in the sense that you never know what's going to pop out around the next corner. The monsters in the game are pretty scary sometimes and the music creepy, adding something like a suvival-horror element like Redsident Evil 4 (but not that extreme or intense). As RPGs go it's contruscted nicely enough to not be mind-numbing. Battles are consistent but not too frequent. Gold and experience aren't hard to acquire and the interface is nice enough.

One interesting system are the pixies (yes, piexies) you can find and then use to attack enemies pre-emptively before engaging a battle. There are five types, each for a different angle in which the monsters approache you (Pixies for monsters coming from the front, fairies for monsters coming from above, Succubi for monsters forom the left, Incubi for monsters from the right, and lepruchans for monsters coming up from the ground) and ten of each hidden somewhere in the game. Cycling through pixies with the L and R shoulder button while walking around and trying to find the right one for the applicable monster attack adds an unexpected edge-of-your-seat element that increases the fun factor. Sometimes swarms of these pixies can take out a weak enemy before you even have to fight it, an element not seen since Earthbound.

*edit*
One cool element I forgot to mention the first time are the unique critical hits characters can score. Critical hits are governed by two stats, Crt. and Teq. Crt. affects the frequency of critical hits, like Guts in Earthbound, but Teq. affects what kind of critical hits are used. Critical hits are more than just random, powerful attacks in this game, they also showcase the characters' mad skills. Higher Teq. means more types of critical hits used. The main character, Author, will start using a kind of flame-slash critical hit and at higher Teq. levels will use an Ice-slash, a lightning slash and a double-slash. The ninja character, Rody, will actually use an Izuna-drop as one of his critical hits! The dragon, Basso, will breath-fire, or use a shoulder charge.
*edit*

The biggest factor that drew me to this game is that one of the playable characters is a dragon. He's buff, he's badass (and he's also adorable if you're a dragon-lover like me). This dragon warrior wears armor and wields and axe and occasionally attacks with a critical breath-attack. When he finally joins your group you find him in, of all places, a haunted house filled with ghosts and vicious, carnivorous monsters. The dragon, Basso, is found terrified beyond rational thought (aww!) especially by one particular demon who attacked him. One of the characters is also a wolfman ninja (hell, yeah!), but he's much harder to get. It's interesting to note that both Albert Oyssey and Shining the Holy Ark both have dragon characters. Also, in both games only humans can do magic. Animal characters have only special attacks. Interesting coincidence considering both games were done by different companies but were both for the same system.

Being a dragon-lover, both games having dragons in them is the reason why a bought a Saturn in the first plae.
Shining the Holy Ark is definetely the better of the two in my opionion.

A Saturn is definetly worth getting if you're into classic gamming. Otherwise, if you're not the hard-core type you might want to do more research on the games before you jump up and buy one.

*edit*
It's also worth mentioning that Motoi Sakuraba scored the music for this game. He was the one who did the music for Star Ocean: The 2nd Story, as well as all the games in the "Tales" series and also Golden Sun.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reason to buy a Saturn, July 23, 2007

By 

James - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Shining The Holy Ark (Video Game)

Shining the Holy Ark is a great RPG. I have experience with the Shining series on Playstation 2, and believe me Shining the Holy Ark on Sega Saturn is in a far superior category of game than my experience there.

Shining the Holy Ark is a fun, somewhat cutesy style game, but with entertaining monsters, an action packed turn based combat system, and compelling game world. This game is easy to understand and jump into right away, shown in a first person perspective for most of the game. The only slight distraction is that when you rotate your perspective in the towns, the CPU speed doesn't seem to be able to keep up with the rendering and lags a little. This may just be on my system; my Saturn may have been overheating.

Overall, I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys any type of RPG or fantasy adventure game.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Coolest game ever!, July 30, 2001

By 

Justin (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shining The Holy Ark (Video Game)

This game is one of the coolest game I ever played. It extends my imagination to the greatest. This labyrinth style game also have hair-standing monsters. It is a true and cool RPG.