Most of the Shining games since SF3 have just been cash in on the name, they don't even play the same. Sega have just been using the name to sell any old RPG and all of them have been utter rubbish and have cause the series to tank. All the original game were made by the same two guys who started at Climax and then set up Camelot, who in recent year did Golden Sun. They had a bust up with Sega during SF3 and refused to work with them again.
To be fair, I didn't have a problem with any of the newer Shining game. Once I was comfortable with the fact that they were mostly Diablo clones, I really liked the variation on that theme. Shining Force EXA replicated a mechanism from paper RPGs that you don't see a lot in the electronic world, where you have to manage two separate adventuring parties at the same time. It had a running clock going while you were grinding, in that if you took too long to get through an area your B-team back at the base would be attacked by a wandering random encounter. That's something that I haven't seen in any other game of the genre. The conflict was partly over distribution, wasn't it? In the waning days of the Saturn Sega didn't have a lot of choice as to what to publish or how much of it to distribute, and that rubbed a lot of developers the wrong way at the time. You would think that with all the time that's passed (and with all the upper management turnover) that everybody would find a way to get together peacefully again.
Two of the best sega games I've played recently (based on old franchise): Streets of rage Remake Wonder Boy in monster world RPG. Sad to tell both are fan games.
