PAGE 30 GAMBIT enemies . And sometimes , a level or two can mean the difference between victory and defeat .
Which leads me to the controls . As you may have guessed from the paragraph above , they can be a little much . What you may not have guessed is how screwed you are if you ( like me ) happen to be using a direct input controller . x360ce will not fix the left stick and button scramble you experience .
And it ' s not a priority to the dev , either ; you ' re left having to figure it out yourself . It took me a few hours to actually find a fix , due to the way discussion searches work on Steam . Sadly , I lost the link . But since I ' m a good guy , I ' ll leave the fix for PC at the following link : http :// bit . ly / 2q9pIrI .
Aside from that , there are a lot of odd control choices at work . The ' A ' button is jump in the field . It also lets you interact with NPC ' s . And , it lets you initiate combat with enemies with a kick as context allows i . e . when you ' re around them . Chests , however , are opened with X , which also lets you capture game animals , as well as initiate combat with a punch as with ' A '.' Y ', opens the party menu , and nothing else .
' B ' does nothing . Start ( or equivalent ) opens the start menu , which outside of combat does nothing that the Party menu does not do . Why it doesn ' t just open the party menu is beyond me . As is why the face buttons aren ' t utilized better in the field ; there are obvious functions that could , say , be moved to ' B ' and therefore simplify things .
Graphically , the game is pretty . It ' s an excellent example of what going in with a well designed , non realistic aesthetic will do for a game . It ' s , therefore , a shame that it hates AMD graphics cards . The devs have improved it since launch , but I still wind up turning off all the pretty stuff like foliage and realistic shadows just to get a reasonable framerate . This is probably among the top reasons why you will get a better experience on PS4 or Xbox One .
Sound wise , the soundtrack is pretty good . Moreover , they actually included it in the copy they sent us ( it was a preorder bonus , along with the manga ; they went the full nine yards , there ). I can ' t stress how rare and kind that is . The English voice-over is decent , as well . Take that with a grain of salt , though ; I grew up with stuff like this setting the bar . Moreover , if you ' d rather hear a conlang instead , there is DLC for the Maherian language replacing all spoken dialog .
My one major , non nitpick-y criticism is that the game crashes at the worst times . This is , far as I know , contained to the PC version . But it always happened right as I felt I had started to gain momentum , and it took the wind out of my sails each time . After the third or fourth time , I was done , despite only being 6 or so hours in . I couldn ' t afford to wait for the unspecified problem to get patched . To add insult to injury , it usually happened after a difficult fight .
Overall , Shiness : The Lightning Kingdom is a decent game . My problems with the PC version aside , it does a lot of cool things . There are a few things that I don ' t like , but I ' d chalk that up to this being the dev ' s first game . Which makes what they did accomplish far more impressive . I would , However , recommend the console versions over the PC version .
- Bryan Simmons