In typical style the main character Yuma Ilvern is an angsty young man who becomes a reluctant hero, what is different about this though is that Yuma can transform into a dragon during battle. Media.Vision has even dropped in the trope of the character with a terrible name, in this case it’s Agnum Bulletheart, an axe-guitar wielding hot-head who specialises in fire they’ve really gone all out on the cliches. It’s really unoriginal in that regard, all these people fawn over a guy who displays little to no redeeming qualities what-so-ever, it’s such a tired character type. You’ve got the terribly forward one, the shy one, the one who doesn’t really understand how people form relationships, the lolita, the token other dude and the stoic love interest. That’s one of the worst moments and it will stick with me, because once it happened I took to our Slack channel to express my amazement to the team, but outside of that there are many more times when the dialogue is terrible corny or cliche, especially in the common anime trope of the harem, which this game lays on so terribly thick. ‘I cannot believe that he was bait for a trap.’

‘Careful guys, something doesn’t seem right.’

‘Heh, you think I’m running away? Why don’t you follow me and find out?’ I mean, there’s some seriously terrible dialogue in Shining Resonance Refrain, here’s an example, and I paraphrase slightly but it goes a little like: Shining Resonance Refrain is absolutely laden in dialogue that lays things on too thick, gives the game away, makes the characters look incredibly dumb or just makes you shake your head dumbfounded, it’s a masterpiece of poor writing, but is it a strength? JRPGs are great aren’t they? Grandiose stories of far flung worlds locked in conflict and saved by youngsters who seemingly can’t talk in anything other than cliches.

Shining resonance refrain