Shining Force Gaiden: The Final Conflict is the third in the Game Gear's Shining Force Gaiden series, and (I assume) the stunning conclusion to the trilogy. The second game came out in English as Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya, and the first two actually had English releases as a Sega CD remake called Shining Force CD. Until 2005, however, this final chapter was Japanese-only.

So how is it? Well, like the previous Game Gear titles, it's a series of fantasy strategy battles set to a plot in the Shining Force universe. Unlike the Genesis titles, there are no town-exploration scenes, so you spend most of your time just fighting battles or watching cutscenes. If you haven't played the first two, be warned that you may feel like you're being thrown into the middle of a story without any idea who anyone is, or at least I did. This seems to be more the fault of the game than the translation, though.

The gameplay itself seems like the usual solid Shining Force tactical fantasy combat, with your archers and centaurs and robots and mages. So don't delay, finish the saga now!

For too long this project was but a legacy of great intention, but thanks to the perseverance of translator Moogie and the inhuman abilities of hacker z80 gaiden, we finally have a complete English patch! Aside from the occasional misused comma, Moogie's translation reads very well, and if anything needed to be trimmed, it sure doesn't look it. The fine script also owes much to z80 gaiden's hacking work, which is clean and pristine and I dare say obscene. It's the first English release of a Shining Force game since 1998, so sit back and enjoy!

The game and translation seem to work well in both MEKAW and Kega Fusion, but not in Dega.

Shining Force Gaiden - Final Conflict (Japan).gg - NOINTRO
CRC32: 6019FE5E
MD5: 35EF27F6B4B4DDC4A6AD6C78DB8C890B
SHA-1: 0D4BC152E7AE70457FA74F593E064403CD24AB72
SHA-256: 4705256CC1A242AAB7FEA170369EB64723F796E27C6EDFE0F93A674A8BA00F42

View in The Vault