Edited on August 26th, 2018.
When you look up a list of popular RPGS, you'll come across Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Kingdom hearts, And Phantasy Star....But unless you were a Sega fan in the 90s, Shining Force II probably wasn't on that list. But oh man, it should be. It's an incredible series, and the 3rd installment, Shining Force II, is by far the best available on the Genesis/Mega Drive.
In Shining Force; The legacy of great intention, the previous game, it was your job to defeat the dark dragon, and therefore erase any presence of it's existence. However, you had to settle to lock it away for 1000 years. but hey, thats not bad! At least you wouldn't have to deal with it...until a year later when Shining Force II hit the market.
In this story, you're a kid who's 2 friends, Sarah and Chester get thrust into a quest to rescue a princess and to defeat Zeon (AKA Satan, the devil, etc) With a little help from Volcanon (AKA God, the great almighty, etc) along the way, you meet up with other people who join your quest, forming a group known as the shining force. You go from town to town, fighting battle after battle, working all the way to the bitter end.
Now this RPG is played a little differently than others. It's played like chess. you have a landscape, and you move your characters a few spaces around and attack creatures, kinda like DnD, but not DnD. you also go through some memorable battles (My suggestions are to take out the "Bishops" first. then kill the "king". seriously.) If there's an RPG I can sit down with and play for hours, it's Shining Force II. I cannot believe how fun it is and just how it keeps me playing rather than other RPGs.
Now I mentioned in my headline, this game has a subliminal nod to religion. A lot of RPGs have this (Final Fantasy X basically describes the insanity of religious leaders, Chrono Trigger retells the story of Jesus Christ, and Final Fantasy VI portrays the End Times.) but Shining Force II takes a stab at an act that has been debated by religions the world over for years; Prayer. The game explains that there's a reason God doesn't answer prayers. Long story short, the game basically says that if people pray and God answered every prayer with a yes, people would become lazy and God would be an enabler. So if you're wondering why God won't answer your prayer, maybe you're just lazy. or maybe God just wants to see if you actually care about what you're praying for. Because if you do....maybe God will help you.
The original cartridges for this game are getting tougher to find nowadays (and have a tendency to corrupt save files, I know this personally, my copy of SFII for genesis did that to me in '08.) so if you want to play this game, Score yourself a copy of one of the millions of Genesis compilations that are available (Y'know, Sonic's ultimate genesis collection, The mini-genesis, Wii shop if you still have points left over. Who am I kidding, no one plays with their wii anymore.)
10/10