Shining Force III is a tactical role-playing game released for the Sega Saturn. In Japan, Shining Force III refers to a collective three separate game releases - Scenario 1, Scenario 2, and Scenario 3, released across late 1997 and 1998. Each scenario follows a different perspective of a character in an overarching narrative across a shared game world and gameplay mechanics. In North America and Europe, only the first entry, Scenario 1, was translated into English, and was simply titled Shining Force 3 for its release in mid-1998.
The title was the last in the long-running Shining series to be developed by Camelot Software Planning, and the last to be developed for Sega hardware, as the series would go on a hiatus until the mid-2000s after Sega's exit from the hardware industry. The game was generally well-received, albeit with relatively limited sales due to its release late in the Saturn's lifespan. In years following its release, it has not ever been re-released, though unofficial fan translations for Scenario 2 and Scenario 3 were later produced.
Gameplay
Like earlier Force games in the Shining series, Shining Force III is a turn-based tactical role-playing game. Battles take place in square grids, and each unit occupies one square. Each unit can move up to a fixed amount of squares along the battlefield, determined by its Move statistic. Depending on its location relative to enemies and to allies, a unit can also perform one action: attack, cast a spell, use an item, or search the area. Some commands, such as equipping or dropping items, do not count as actions. The order of turns is determined by the unit's agility score and a random seed.
As is typical for an RPG, units become stronger by fighting enemies or by performing other actions in battle, such as healing allies. These actions give the units experience points (EXP), which allow them to gain levels.
Each character has a class, which defines a set of abilities for that unit and determines the spells and equipment they have access to. A character can be promoted to another class at any level between 10 or 20. Upon promotion the character's level resets to 1 and statistics are reduced by a fixed amount, although they begin higher if the character had been promoted at a higher level.
Battle goals for the player are fairly simple: kill all enemies, kill the enemies' leader, or advance to a town or landmark. The enemy side wins if they kill the player's leader (Synbios in Scenario 1, Prince Medion in Scenario 2 and Julian in Scenario 3), or if the player chooses to escape the battle by casting Return. Even if the player army is defeated, the player can recover allies and retry the battle. The Force keeps any experience that is obtained, regardless of the battle's outcome. Thus, there is no game over, and the player's army gets stronger even upon its defeat, although the leader's death results in the player losing half of their money.
Characters which fight together develop stronger friendships, which causes their battle stats to increase when the two characters are close to each other.
Shining Force III also possesses an exploration mode that occurs outside of battle. This gameplay mode is essentially a Japanese-style traditional RPG, along the lines of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, although there are no labyrinths and few puzzles to solve. In this mode, the player's army is represented by its leader, who is able to walk around, interact with people, find treasure, buy equipment and items, outfit the army and choose which of the army's members will be used in battle.