No, it's awful.
Anyway, Shining Force 3 trilogy are some of my favourite games of all time (I'm talking short-list here, top 3 or something), but I've only finished the whole story once. Dicking around with translation patches and emulators to play it was hard.
Despite this, I only played SF1 recently and it was pretty good, but not keen to run through it again. Shining Force 2 I gave up half way I think. Can't remember exactly what it was, but it just didn't hold me.
Shining in the Darkness was horrible.
I don't understand how anyone ever enjoyed Golden Axe.
I've never played a Phantasy Star game (apart from a brief stint on PSO on DC, playing offline) and have no intention to play one.
Shining Force 3 is such and underrated gem. Easily one of the best games of the 32 - bit era, too bad it was released near the death of the SS. Finished the three scenarios twice, and I'm counting on doing a third time.
Also, I must confess, I have the same problem as you. I love Shining Force 3, but I don't know why, Shining Force 2 never captivated me enough. Nor Shining Force 1. Except the remake. That one is really solid, the card stuff there is a lot of fun. Shining in the Darkness is awful, indeed, but you should really try Shining The Holy Ark. Amazing game!
On to other confessions:
- Sometimes, I open Saturn and play Sega Rally just for the sake of beating my old records.
- Is this a problem of my own? Sometimes, I don't like to finish games. The fact of finishing it just makes me mad, because I will be ending a great experience. For example, I never ended LOZ: Phantom Hourglass, and that was a great gaming experience. To end Skies of Arcadia for the first time, I waited something like, 4 months, or so. Never finished Chrono Trigger for the DS (but finished it for the SNES when I was 13 years old, though, great game!). Can't remember some now, but there are 2/3 more games.