Shining Soul II is an action role-playing game for the Game Boy Advance. It was developed by Grasshopper Manufacture, as the sequel to Shining Soul and part of the Shining series. The game was originally scheduled to be released on February 24, 2004, before it was delayed by two months.

The game is a dungeon crawling hack and slash, playing similarly to Diablo or Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. It features eight playable characters, ten dungeons tied into a storyline, and eight hidden dungeons to explore. The game supports multiplayer via link cable as well as single-player.

The game features eight character classes which can be improved up to level 200. Each is customisable with a variety of weapons, spells, support abilities, and attributes. Different classes who can use the same weapons attack differently from them. For example, the Warrior's spear attack is a thrust, while the Archer throws his spear over a distance. Each usable spell in the game has its own spellbook, and only classes with that spell on their skills list can use the spellbook to cast the spell.

Each character is able to equip up to three weapons and three items for use and switch between them at any time. The player can get 3 extra slots either by equipping the Backpack or Knapsack. Attacks are performed by tapping the attack button or holding it to charge a more powerful attack. Beyond regular equipment, a "Soul" item can also be equipped; it is charged by defeating enemies and unleashed to inflict massive damage on nearby enemies. They come in various elemental types and levels of effectiveness. They are graded on the Roman numerals I, II, III, IV and V, with V being the strongest and taking the longest to charge up.

Characters also have resistance to a number of elements: Fire, Ice, Thunder, Light, Dark and Poison. These can be raised by equipment, but also through endurance: by taking damage of a particular elemental kind, they can increase their resistance to it, but being killed by an attack of that type will decrease the resistance level by a point.

The multiplayer is very similar to that of Diablo. The player characters navigate the dungeon and attack monsters. Players can give items to each other by throwing or dropping them. The party can only move to the next area when every player character has either passed the exit point of the current area or died. Opening the inventory window does not pause the game (in single-player or multiplayer), so some players can reorganize their inventory while others engage in combat. Some classes are more useful in multiplayer, such as the priestess or archer.

Shining Soul II has little connection to the storyline of the rest of the series aside from a reference to the events of Shining Soul in the introduction. However, an alternate universe version of Boken from Shining Force appears as a major NPC, traditional Shining mascot Yogurt is hidden in one of the stages, and a number of dungeons from the original Shining Soul appear as short hidden dungeons.

Centuries after the defeat of Dark Dragon in Shining Soul, the light had become too strong, opening the way to a resurgence of darkness. A crystal in the possession of King Marcel and Queen Yvonne of Klantol, which throughout the story reflects the current balance of light and darkness, turns from shining to cloudy. An alchemist named Gillespie, a member of a dark order, the Chaos Knights, worms his way into the friendship of King Marcel's most trusted knight, Deatharte. Gillespie then disappears, leaving something called "the forbidden fruit" with Deatharte. Driven by curiosity, Deatharte eventually eats the fruit and is corrupted by darkness.