Recently I have been thinking about Shining in the Darkness.

I never played it when it first came out, but I love to go through series back to their OG titles and often that leads me to dungeon-crawlers:-) - Phantasy Star, Wizardry, etc. A lot of games I’ll just hack so as to speed through them more quickly, but dungeon-crawlers I like the slow pacing & grinding - it helps calm my mind, especially like during seasons of the year when I may have trouble sleeping:-).

The UI is really crappy - like looking in the inventory doesn’t even show which items are equipped or not - but probably for its time it was revolutionary, or something. Anyway it’s functional and that’s sufficient. Oh and the graphics are not on par with modern games, obviously. But it’s old, so… who cares? :-P

What I like most about it is that tripartite balance between the three hardcoded characters. There is something about that… - like Kirk + Spock + McCoy in Star Trek - that somehow speaks to the human condition. In this case your main character does the deep cuts necessary to win the boss fights (even barehanded he does far more than the others when you get them, he’s so strong!), and your mage support Pyra can really dish out the broad damage to a group (especially with the cursed whip, the only really worthwhile cursed item in the game for long-term use) or even all enemies, and your healer Milo splits the difference with his own magic spells + multi-targeting weapon. Milo can become your MVP with sufficient leveling and the Boost spell from Pyra - and he’s so speedy that I’ll give him the Sword of Light if Pyra’s whip + that can kill things for zero MP at end-game.

Dragon Warrior/Quest had a similar concept - 3 hardcoded character slots, each with pre-defined names (not sure about the main one?) and back-stories for them; where the main guy was a straight warrior, then a Prince as a hybrid attacker+spellcaster, and finally a Princess offering more spells, though the latter two would swap as to whose was more powerful throughout the game iirc. Anyway, Shining in the Darkness may not have been unique, but they just did it so very well that it highly stands out in my mind in this aspect.

Shining in the Darkness also offered SUPER high resell value for items - something like half or even three-quarters of the value? So rather than my usual tactic of skipping over items to purchase so as to save gold overall, in this game I would intentionally slow myself down and buy every single one of the gear items, and thus experience gear that otherwise might never see any use at all in the game. I think it is more enjoyable that way.

I think I really enjoy the idea of a leveled-up Pyra being able to use her whip to great effect. She thereby breaks the trope of “oh I’m a weak wizard-man/woman and can only cast spells, maybe do nothing at all from the back row when I’m out of MP”, and that adds a dimension to the game of deciding when to use a spell vs. using the whip to hold off on using your MP for as long as you can (despite MP-draining floors!:-P). Likewise using her cursed whip offers its own set of trade-offs: more power at first, for less control if the enemies did not die after the first turn - which if she was not a spell-caster would definitely not be worthwhile, but since the effect only happens after she chooses to use a physical attack, again offers up a whole new element of strategy to the game. Milo’s multi-attack weapons have similar trade-offs - if he’s a high level and Boost + Slow are/or used, it becomes REALLY powerful, plus being able to hit+kill up to 3 enemies in normal mobs also helps a great deal - and too the use of a “shield” that boosts attack power at the cost of defense.

Running contrary to that is the idea that while you may be able to mop the floor with all the common mobs, when you open up a chest and get a “boss” type monster, you have to be REALLY prepared! It is the maximum difficulty of an area that matters most, not the minimum or average. But even here… that facts leads you to behave more cautiously overall, which then ironically wraps around to encourage boldness in the short-term, as in go in and do a bunch, then get out and return, not try to limp along and then have your ass handed to you unexpectedly.

Perhaps I enjoy the reminder that while it is good to excel in life, it is also necessary to find balance, maybe with the support of others, or even just within ourselves:-). And this game was all about balance, in every aspect of it, which I very much appreciated.