Ask Hazem Hawash of the French game studio Enigami about influences on the upcoming role-playing game Shiness, and he’ll list off some of the most beloved RPGs of the 1990s: Skies of Arcadia, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy VII. The influence of anime is also unmistakable, from its character designs, to the voiceover performances, to the copious cut-scenes and cel-shaded visual aesthetic. “It’s a melting pot of all the fantasy we like in lots of different media,” Hawash says, and even in the small slice of action afforded by a demo, the storyline signs of iconic franchises like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings are unmistakable. Shiness ticks off all the boxes you expect from a retro-nostalgic role-playing game in the year 2017.
And then, when the first battle begins, and you anticipate a variation on classic RPG combat, you wind up brawling with beasts in a third-person arena like some kind of Power Stone homage.
That’s the big twist at the heart of Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom: instead of turn-based menu parsing or even real-time sword-twirling, you can just run up and punch a monster in the nose. Your party, which can have up to three characters at a time, includes fighters with a variety of styles and techniques, including the ability to use magic. Like the tag team feature of a Marvel vs. Capcom game, you can freely swap between them as the fight rages on. The fight system even features one of the most time-honored RPG traditions, as different attacks have specific elemental properties that will do more or less damage depending on an enemy’s particular elemental sensitivities. (In other words, don’t ice-punch a monster made of ice, my friend.) Despite its familiar RPG trappings, once the gloves are off, Shiness feels nothing like the old RPGs Hawash praises.
