I'm going to break my own rule for rating games and go with a 5-star for Shining the Holy Ark because it feels right for me personally. But to avoid giving off a false impression of the game, let me start by addressing the two major flaws in this game.

First, this is a Saturn game. If you're unfamiliar with the console, this thing was an absolute pain to develop for. The technical limitations of the hardware show up frequently throughout this game in the form of drops in frame rate and audio glitches, though the latter only showed up for me in the last third of the game. Second, there is exactly one puzzle in this game that you probably cannot solve if you aren't looking at a gameFAQ. To be fair, the only time I looked up anything for my playthrough was for this puzzle. The rest of the puzzles, while somewhat challenging, are more than doable.

With that said, Shining the Holy Ark is a gem of an RPG. A first-person dungeon crawler, I found myself looking forward to hearing that sweet opening intro music every single day after work for the last few weeks. The first thing that jumped out to me is the art style. I'm a sucker for pre-rendered graphics whether it be Resident Evil or Donkey Kong Country (Shining the Holy Ark leans more toward the DKC style in terms of cartoonish coziness), and these did not disappoint. I particularly enjoyed the enemy designs and battle intro animations which, to my pleasant surprise were far more varied than I expected. If you vibe with the visual stylings of Golden Sun, you will not be in the least bit disappointed here.

While not approaching the same level of variety, I also found the soundtrack enjoyable to listen to. Each track is placed appropriately for its setting, and the battle music especially was a standout for me.

The gameplay loop of Shining the Holy Ark is addicting. As I mentioned earlier, dungeon crawling is the name of the game here, and you'll spend 90% of your time navigating the mazes of the different locations, making decent progress, going back to town to heal or buy better equipment, making a little more progress, going back, right up until that awesome moment where a cutscene plays, the boss music starts up, and it's time to lock in. I thought the dungeon designs were excellent with each one having a (usually not over-bearing) gimmick that switches up the crawling enough to keep you interested.

One important thing I want to note because I know some people are turned off by them - this game does have random encounters. I love the way they are handled here. At the start of each encounter, as your foe literally walks, jumps, or pops up on screen from behind a corner or from the distance, a minigame starts where you have to select a "pixie" that corresponds to the direction from which the monster appears. For example, if the monster walks on screen from the right side, you must select the pixie that corresponds to that direction, press the action button, and you will deal bonus damage at the start of the fight. You're probably better off looking up a video to see how this is executed because it is a bit hard to explain. My overall point is that the random encounters did not really bother me as much as they might in a game like Skies of Arcadia. They feel less like an impediment to your exploration and are integrated into your field of view a lot more smoothly.

To keep from rambling even more, I loved Shining the Holy Ark. This is the kind of game that sticks with you for all the right reasons. I'm so glad I decided to pick it up, and heartily recommend it to anyone looking to try out a dungeon crawler, interested in the Sega Saturn catalog, or if you are already a fan of Camelot and their different fantasy IPs.