Densha de D Shining Stage: The end of the line—for now (2025)

There was quite a gap between 2013’sRising Stageand this; it’s hard to find exact dates butShining Stageappears to have made its debut in the back half of 2020, around seven years later. This sizable break shows in all the positive ways you’d hope it would, and the game now feels much more polished and solid than ever before. The graphics have been given their most significant overhaul sinceBurning Stage‘s debut, noticeably improving the train models and trackside details once again while still finding the time to add new special effects and relight everything in a new way, carriages and streetlamps alike gaining an artistically exaggerated glow. My personal favourite is the way the train tracks now reflect the artificial lights around them, this new effect creating slender silver ribbons that snake off into the dark—which is another thing that’s had a visual upgrade: night feels like a more natural evening environment now, rather than a darkness primarily used as a clever way to obscure the gaps of the old game’s landscapes (not that it didn’t work), it’s got a new sense of depth to it that makes these nocturnal battles feel just that little bitmore exciting.

There’s an excellent range of settings to complement these changes, ranging from the convenience of general presets to the ability to fine-tune the intensity of smoke effects and decide just how far the horizon extends into the distance. Thanks to these thoughtful options, nobody’s PC has been left behind by these new additions because there’s no major framerate impacting feature that can’t either be reduced to more manageable levels or turned off entirely.

As great as those choices may be, they’re far from the only new tweaks available. Proper Xbox controller support is finally included as standard, displaying menus and station names in English (just to be clear: everything else remains in Japanese) is as simple as flicking a single toggle, and the sound mixing options are so detailed you’re able to control the strength of the audible rain SFX separately from the train sounds, music, dialogue, theSeimens VVVF, and more. Heck, even the museum area has been upgraded with a choice of not only weather (clear or rainy) but also location—either the usual city backdrop or a dreamily grassy area. Shining Stage feels like a complete and confident package before you’ve drifted around a single corner.

Shining Stage introduces a whole heap of noteworthy changes to the driving experience too—or perhaps more accurately, brings a few old ones back. The first stage didn’t take a few hours and several increasingly frustrated attempts to clear this time around: in fact I’m not even sure it took ten minutes—and that’s on my first go. The same can be happily said of all the other battles too, each one finally pared back to the reasonable lengths and challenge ofLightningand Burning Stage’s duels, rather than the wobbly unevenness ofClimaxor the well-intended yet ultimately monotonous bloat of Rising.

The general difficulty’s also greatly reduced, which helps everything hold together much better. You’re never made to listen to the same dialogue until you’re able to deliver lines before the characters do (the otherwise excellent cast are as chatty as ever), redo a race after accidentally going full speed down the wrong battle-ending track, or bump up against the game’s invisible walls one time too many, revealing just how heavily scripted some sequences and events are. The battles that are in here really do feel (and for the most part, genuinely behave) like races, where being fast and drifting around those sweeping corners well is the key decider of whether you’re going to win or not, over and above executing One Weird Trick at a specific point (although there is still one like that—thankfully it’s quickly cleared after a lot of helpfully heavy telegraphing without any fuss).

As hot-blooded and serious as these “fights” are, many aspects of them are just as—no, perhaps evenmoresilly than before. There are at least two separatemagical train transformationsin here (you can see one in the linked video above—do watch out for the flashing lights towards the end), both of which left me grinning from ear to ear, and numerous comically interrupted countdowns and other minor scenes really did make me laugh out loud. Densha de D has never been afraid of embracing its own inherent ridiculousness, and I’m happy to see Shining Stage continue this trend with such enthusiasm.

The controls used to send your trains skidding towards (or away from) a rain-soaked Shibuya station are exactly the same as they were in Rising Stage. It’s the one thing I’m glad they kept from that game, as single track drifting is still a joy. If I could pick one fault—speaking purely as someone who’s played through five of these games now and is perhaps a little deeper into the train drifting weeds than most people are or should ever be—now would have been a great time to do a little fine tuning. Single track drifting is great fun and a fabulous idea, but it’s always the safest option, and there are no downsides to doing it. I would have liked to see “traditional” multi track drifting offer a much greater speed boost in exchange for the increased risk that comes with sliding your train across both tracks, or for single track drifting to keep you stable no matter what but in exchange you’ll never exceed your train’s natural speed limit—some sort of trade-off like that.

To the game’s credit drifting is a feature rather than the sole focus of the ride, and the train driving experience is fleshed out and “true” enough that, even in a game based on the series that invented the gloriously daft concept ofmulti-track drifting, confident, attentive,masconmanipulation is always enough to see you win. And now we’ve got shorter tracks back it’s easier to see this for yourself in the series’ staple Test Run mode—a single player run through any stage without any cutscenes or special conditions to clear, and a free choice of train—than it has been for a long time. It’s always good fun to take a train and see how it handles a course, how far you can push it on the downhill segments or through tight, drift-free,tunnels.

And that’s… that’s it, I suppose. I’ve actually been feeling a bit sad as I write this—there may have been a few bumps in the road along the way but even so, I don’t want Densha de D to end. The series had me at “drifting with trains” and I’ve had such a great time with it. Still, at least the series has (currently) finished on a high—and there’s a reasonable chance it might still continue. Not only has there not been as much time between now and Shining as passed between Shining and Rising, butDensha de D 54 (Shining Stage covers up to chapter 43) went on sale last December. There’s more than enough material for any future games to catch up on, and I sincerely hope they do.

Further reading:

  • Densha de D: Lightning Stage
  • Densha de D: Burning Stage
  • Densha de D: Climax Stage
  • Densha de D: Rising Stage
  • Densha de D: Shining Stage

[I wouldn’t have been able to cover this incredible series without the help I receive through Ko-fi! Please consider leaving a donation if you’ve enjoyed these articles!]

Densha de D Shining Stage: The end of the line—for now (2025)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Nathanael Baumbach

Last Updated:

Views: 5626

Rating: 4.4 / 5 (55 voted)

Reviews: 94% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Nathanael Baumbach

Birthday: 1998-12-02

Address: Apt. 829 751 Glover View, West Orlando, IN 22436

Phone: +901025288581

Job: Internal IT Coordinator

Hobby: Gunsmithing, Motor sports, Flying, Skiing, Hooping, Lego building, Ice skating

Introduction: My name is Nathanael Baumbach, I am a fantastic, nice, victorious, brave, healthy, cute, glorious person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.