The characters in EXA actually aren't that bad. Toma is annoying, but only because his voice is awful. Gadfort and Cyrille may make players want to literally pick up their PlayStation 2 and throw it through their TV screen, but only because of the terrible voice acting. The voice acting absolutely destroys any validity the characters have. It would be hard to pick out worse voices for these characters. Some of them don't even make sense; players will often see an NPC, walk up to it, talk, and hear the character speak in a way that's completely opposite from what the player would've expected. There really is no way to describe how bad the voices are.

The game does indeed look this bad... most of the time.

In any case, the characters themselves are just lame, and extremely boring. If anyone who plays this game has played an RPG before, they'll know what to expect. Cyrille does bring some interesting elements into the story, however, but even she won't ever be anywhere near as developed as most characters in RPGs are.

The gameplay itself is set up in a rudimentary way, especially at the beginning of the game. Players send a character, either Cyrille or Toma, along with some random side characters, who generally make very little difference in battle, on a fetch quest. Later, once the Geo-Fortress is awakened, Toma has to find various items to unlock more fortress abilities to defend against the frequent attacks it will endure. Speaking of those attacks, a warning will often interrupt the player in the middle of their explorations to tell them that their fortress is being attacked. This warps characters back to the fortress in order to fend off attacking armies of varying sizes that generally come along with a "boss." These provide a bit of a challenge once in a while, which is nice since the game is easy, but it is extremely annoying to be interrupted in the middle of having fun to simply fight off swarms of enemies, usually with a character you weren't working with.

The battle system in Shining Force EXA is very, very simple, though it is mindless fun when played for short amounts of time. It essentially consists of mashing the attack button three times, holding for a combo, holding again, and repeating. Things are similar for Cyrille, though she has magic that makes her worthwhile as a ranged attacker. When playing as her, gameplay goes something like this: mash magic button, let random melee partner be shield, and once in a while use the cannon. There it is, now each player of this game knows how to beat it; no need to use a walkthrough.

EXA is extremely easy, most enemies will go down with a single hit, while "boss" type enemies may take a couple minutes to kill. There are, however, some enemies on the opposite side of the scale, that are usually sealed in stones that players should only destroy if they want a stompin'. This varied difficulty is quite annoying.

"The player can hit the "square" button on the controller (assuming the player has the defaults set) to use a healiing item, which is nifty." They can also sift through items by pressing left or right on the D-pad. Pressing the triangle button will unleash magic, and up and down on the D-pad switches between types of magic. This is a really easy way to manage items, and should be used more often.

One unique aspect of the game lies in its customization system. Players use mythril, which is gathered in large quantities on their quests, to customize their characters. There is an "Art" system in which characters pay mythril to unlock things such as magic skills, attack power, and HP. This helps give players some sense of control over the development of their characters, and is a really fun addition to the game, though it could have been expanded. Players will also customize their Geo-Fortress, using Core Metals to increase their fortress's abilities. Once again it makes players feel at least somewhat in control of what happens.

RUN AWAY THE FIRST TIME YOU SEE ME

Shining Force EXA's audio is the worst I've ever experienced in a game. The music itself isn't bad, but it is often drowned out by so many annoying sound effects or voices that it just adds to the overall bleeding-ears feeling. The characters' voices are so annoying that players will almost immediately want to hit the mute button or at least turn off cut-scene voice acting (unfortunately this doesn't turn off battle voices). Characters all have a battle cry they say every time they attack. For example: after playing for just one minute, I heard Toma's "HA!" battle cry 47 times. Ouch. There is no redeeming quality here.

The graphics in Shining Force EXA are quite bad. The backgrounds are actually kind of good looking--average, at least--but the characters and enemies look absolutely terrible. The cut scenes, however, are a stark contrast, with cel-shading so good that it looks almost exactly like 3D anime. Unfortunately, the cut scenes are few and very far between, usually occurring only once a chapter, and they generally last for less than a minute.

Overall, there is little to recommend about Shining Force EXA. The customization system is relatively interesting, and definitely a bright spot in the game, and the harder enemies give a certain satisfaction to beat at later points in the game after getting demolished by them the first try, but other than that, the game is pretty much a no-strings-attached button masher. There is a certain joy to be derived out of mowing down hundreds of enemies for hours at a time, but other than that, it's quite bad.