A straightforward hack and slash action RPG, Shining Soul II may not be the Shining series’ finest moment but it remains a highly enjoyable game in its own right.

A decent multiplayer action-RPG is hard enough to find on any console, but especially on GameBoy Advance, but with a few friends Shining Soul II stands out as a rewarding and exciting adventure that would be right at home on DS or PSP these days. Collecting speech bubbles, consoles and Sega logo letters is a dream come true, although deciding who gets them is often more violent than the combat itself. 

The range of characters, equipment and skills prevent SSII from becoming too repetitive, the difficulty level is well judged and the next level up always comes just in time. I’ve already written fairly extensively about it in Truly Under-rated Games: Shining Soul II and Sega’s DS Surprise: Best Case Scenario, so all that’s left to say is that it’s Sega’s strongest action RPG and, in my eyes, one of their finest (yet overlooked) games in the past five years.