Many years ago during my PlayStation 3 hauls I picked up Shining Resonance which at the time was a Japan only release, and about a few years later SEGA decided to bring a remaster over to the west which was pretty cool. Shining Resonance Refrain is basically the same game as the original, but with an additional mode that lets you have two characters join your party. Those two characters don't impact the story in any way but you will get spoiled on specific parts when you speak to them in-between story segments in the town's hub.
The Shining franchise has been around for SEGA for decades and with Shining Resonance it's now an Action RPG with gameplay similar to the Tales franchise. You can control any character in your party and each have their own abilities and weapons. Your party consists of Yuma, your main protagonist, followed by Sonia, Kirika, Rinna, Agnum, Marion, and Lestin. Jinas and Excella were added as playable characters with the Refrain mode from the start.
A notable theme throughout the story is that each weapon the characters in your party wield are like a musical instrument and together they can form songs through the B.A.N.D. system. This is a special group ability that helps you and your team during battles. These can give you boosts to support your health but also make combat easier against enemies with them losing attack power or defence. There are three slots on the bar that appear on the left corner of the screen and you can refill it simply by attacking your enemies.
One ability that Yuma has is being able to turn into a dragon which is pretty cool. The dragon ability is very over-powered as you can rest easy on your health while you destroy everything in front of you, but early on you can end up in a berserk mode which can cause trouble if you're not careful. That said, the dragon only has two-three attacks and that's about it so there isn't much on the customisation part of the combat. I also have an issue with how the transform setup works as you can often end up opening the B.A.N.D. function instead because this is R1 while the dragon is Hold L1 then R1 which is annoying.
In addition to your usual attack move you can also customise your abilites from an elemental attack, regular special attack to healing. These are called 'Forces' and you have four slots in total to fit each button on the controller (L1 + O/X/Triangle/Square). In addition to this there are various 'Tunings' that you pickup throughout the journey. These are orbs that you can equip for each character that offer various abilities; like extra health, magic power, boosts to your attack and defence and more including extra money, EXP outside your party and more.
The EXP outside of your party is called Image Training and that's going to be be very useful because you can only level up four characters in your party during combat so anyone who isn't fighting won't level up. Image Training will not only resolve that issue but will also level up your Tuning trait to get that maximum of Lv30 (if you want to get all tunings in the game, you'll need Lv30 for at least one tuning per character). One feature I haven't really used is the Bond Diagram, where you can customise your traits, because to be honest I wasn't sure how to use it properly, but you can manage without it.
Throughout the game you have a town hub. The town has a bunch of things going on, from resting in an inn to saving your game and even interacting with your companions. If you talk to your companions after being in combat together for at least 5-10 fights you can speak to them overnight which also gives you an opportunity to hang out with them in town (or date if you're speaking to female partners). If you date these characters at least four times, you will be able to unlock their character ending at the end of the game which once done will still let you revisit the others without having to worry about starting a new playthrough.
Also in town is the Grimoire. This lets you go through mini dungeons filled with enemies which can help you acquire more items and level your characters up much faster. Eggs will help you boost your level before post-game content. Also available in the town hub is a synthesis workshop to create more aspect tunings, a tuning setup so you can switch which major tuning you want for each character, various side quests and also speaking to your characters.
I spent 50 hours going through the game to achieve the Platinum trophy and overall I have some criticisms that I want to bring up. The game does have a difficulty spike especially when you are unexpectedly going to control two characters that may not be in your party and will be super under-levelled if you weren't interested in them and didn't know about this beforehand. I put in extra hours just to ensure that I could get past this point in the game (which occurs in Chapter 7).
Another issue I have is that the combat can be repetitive and its saving grace has been the force customisation so that you can have different magic abilities from time to time, and while the dragon combat is fun it doesn't have enough variety to make it more enjoyable. The character designs I really like but the cutscenes are very akin to visual novels but with 3D models so it does feel rather off. Now it could be a stylistic choice but to me it also feels like a budget constraint as well.
In terms of positives however, I liked the companions in the party as well as one of the villains called Zest who has an interesting attitude and backstory which makes him stand out pretty well throughout the storyline. The English dub I also enjoyed a lot and felt the performances were very good. The only issue I had with the characters was that the main villain was generic and obvious from the start, but the ending to the game was great and enjoyed it a lot. I also felt the Norse mythology aspects did feel out of place but that's just personal preference.
The level design of the maps were pretty good and there's enough variety of enemies especially when the weather changes which adds more unique combat experiences. The monsters also level up to help you gain more EXP throughout the story which is handy because you don't want to end up being under levelled. Music is really good and was co-composed by Evan Call, reminded me of Umineko's soundtrack.
Shining Resonance Refrain is a pretty enjoyable JRPG by SEGA and while many may prefer the older instalments I had a fun time with the characters, the story and the gameplay was decent enough. Platinum trophy is achievable as there's only two missable trophies that can be sorted out quite early on and most trophies will likely be acquired before you even finish the story.
and would highly recommend if you enjoy the previous entries or enjoy rhythm games and / or FF music in general.
Hopefully I can get through it. I have Wild Hunt too that I would love to get round to some day as well. Big fan of The Witcher series. I own and read all the books so it's about time I get through the games.