Shadow Hearts

"Absolutely unmissable. If you haven't played it yet, you need to - simple as that."

I'm not going to mess around with a lengthy preamble here - if you haven't played Shadow Hearts yet, and you probably haven't given how poorly it sold in the US, you owe it to yourself to get your hands on a copy and immediately feast upon the gooey greatness that resides within.

FEAST UPON IT! Because if you don't, your life will forever be nothing more than an empty, hollow shell and when you finally die and go to heaven or wherever, people will point at you and laugh, calling you 'that guy who never played Shadow Hearts' for all of eternity.

And can you blame them? You'll have missed out on one of the finest things in life, and this review is here to hopefully ensure that it never happens.

Story

The game begins in 1913 in an alternate version of Earth's own history. A CG cutscene introduces us to the world of Shadow Hearts and sets the scene for things to come with a newspaper article detailing the bloody slaying of an English Priest in Rouen, France. His body was savaged and torn apart 'as if by a beast', and his twenty year old daughter Alice Elliot has gone missing.

It then shifts forward to autumn of that same year. On board a train heading to Fengtian in China, that same daughter is being brought there under close guard by the Japanese army. Unfortunately for them, an English gentleman calling himself Roger Bacon shows up and, with demonic familiar in tow, proceeds to brutally murder the lot of them and take Alice as his hostage. This doesn't last long, however, as the 'Rude Hero' of the piece then makes his appearance and, in one of the greatest introductions in videogame history, narrowly saves the girl after losing (and regaining) an arm, getting blown through several carriages, smashing through the roof of the train and almost getting himself killed. All in a day's work for our demon hunting hero.

It's as action packed and as bloody as it sounds, and thankfully the pace never really lets up from beginning to end. It's a rare treat when the first town in an RPG is full of bloodthirsty demon worshipping cannibals who want nothing more than to eat your face, and yet that's exactly how it goes. If this all sounds a bit dark and heavy handed, that's because it is - the game is full of dark doing and misdeeds, ancient rites, bids for world domination through demon summoning and the like coupled with a carefully constructed story that comes together masterfully. The world is in danger, as is almost always the case with these things, but with this notably more sinister style of storytelling you actually get the feeling that some seriously bad things are actually going to happen - a distinct change from the happy go lucky style many other RPGs tend to go for.

Despite all the violence and bloodshed, the tone of the game is lightened remarkably through the actions and dialogue of your party members. Much of the dialogue is expertly written, and ranges from deadly serious to seriously insane - occasionally within several sentences of one another. This helps give it a charm and even a sort of realism noticeably absent from many other high budget, plot heavy Role Playing Games and proves that you can, in fact, have a deep and seriously delivered core storyline sprinkled with hilarious conversations and sheer outright lunacy without ruining either the malevolent sense of horror that runs throughout or even making the occasionally off the wall jokes look out of place.

It should also be noted that the hero of the piece, Yuri Hyuga, is quite possibly the greatest RPG character of all time. He's a monster hunting borderline psychopath with a truly bizarre sense of humour and the ability to fuse into the monsters he kills on his travels. He's not above making jokes about killing demonic children, laughing off threats about his imminent death and consumption, and doesn't think twice about punching orphans clean in the face as soon as they start whining. He's not exactly your average hero, but then he isn't supposed to be - he's just a very angry guy with a heart of gold who's been taken to the edge and back one too many times. The fact that he's being shadowed around the world by his greatest nightmare probably isn't helping much either. And he hears voices. Seriously, he does.

Come to think of it, it's a miracle that he has a sense of humour at all - most people in his shoes would probably become homicidal in no time.

All this isn't nearly enough to get our lad down, however, and he's soon giving some serious consideration towards, um, squeezing Alice's feminine bits within a very short timeframe. He's not particularly shy about expressing his admiration towards her; let's just put it like that.

The rest of your party definitely have their own charm as well. Alice is one of the very few 'overly nice' main female characters I can tolerate without wishing someone would stab her through the chest with a massive sword, and not only that - she's got a wonderful personality to boot! She's not as annoying as hell! How Sacnoth pulled this one off, I'll never know, but they've managed it with style.

Margaret, local super spy extraordinaire entertains with her acrobatic gunplay, insane specials, a ridiculously short skirt and death threats towards children. Keith Valentine comes out of eternal slumber to save some peasants, teleport around the place and shake off some boredom he's been feeling over the past few millennia. ZhuZhen staves off osteoporosis in order to act as the badass old man of the group, sealing away demonic portals left right and center, and Halley... well, Halley gets himself punched clean in the face by Yuri for being an irritating little scumbag. Even so, his background story is leading up to another fantastic arc in the storyline, and that makes the little swine more or less tolerable.

In all, the story in Shadow Hearts is not only competent, it's arguably one of the best ever told. What I've mentioned here doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what the game is about, and rightfully so. Spoiling the storyline of this game would be nothing short of a criminal offence. Perfectly written and expertly delivered, it really is one of a kind and shows a maturity far beyond the more common and kid friendly 'shoot for your dreams' stereotype so beloved of the genre. Shadow Hearts pulls no punches, it basicallly smacks out all your teeth instead and aims for the throat, culminating in a highly enjoyable storyline the likes of which is rarely seen in a videogame.

Even more rarely, in fact, because practically nobody bought it.

Gameplay

This series has always been applauded for its successful attempts to inject life into the standard RPG battle system, and the main reason for that is due to the Judgement Ring system. Many of the actions you perform in battle, and even some of the actions you perform in towns and dungeons, require you to utilise the Judgement Ring in order to be successful. The most standard of these rings is a circle with an indicator that sweeps a full 360 within the ring, requiring you to aim for little coloured pie slices within the circle and carefully hitting the button as it sweeps over them. Hit them correctly and you'll attack as you'd hope, miss and your turn will come to a screeching halt.

Spicing this system up a little is the critical zone near the edges of the hit areas. These are sections that you can hit for bonuses to your actions - more damage, better healing abilities, longer lasting benefits. With good timing you can make things much easier for yourself, with the added catch that these sections are situated in a slightly awkward place on the hit segments. Miss them, and you'll quite likely mess up your entire turn. It's a great way of adding additional concentration to your standard Turn Based battle system, and repeatedly aiming for and hitting the critical points can become very addictive, very quickly. It may seem a little tough for some players at first, but quickly becomes second nature.

What else does this mean? Well, in standard Role Playing fare, the enemy can often cause status effects on your characters such as poison, slow, paralysis and the like - in this game they can also affect your ability to use the Judgement Ring. It's a little difficult to hit it perfectly when they cause your indicator to sweep at twice the speed, or halve your hit zones - nothing that the proper item can't cure, though.

It's not quite as complex or as enjoyable as later entries in the Shadow Hearts series, however. It's still better than many competing battle systems from other games, but several distinct improvements came into it in the later games - the Judgement Ring's critical areas look slightly indistinct in this version, battles only allow use of three party members and you can't chain attacks which was a wonderful addition introduced to Shadow Hearts Covenant and more or less perfected in From the New World.

Regardless of how it compares to later entries in the Shadow Hearts series however, the Judgement Ring system in this game still compares extremely well to any other Role Playing Game out there that you might care to mention. Through deft use of the Judgement Ring you're not just selecting attacks and watching them play themselves out in Shadow Hearts, with some decent reflexes at hand you'll be interactively ensuring that your attacks land as often as they can and do as much damage as possible. This additional level of required skill often leads to the random encounters satisfying the player rather than simply becoming an annoyance as you trek around dungeons stuffed full of nasty things filled with the desire to find out what Yuri and his party taste like.

Although two of the dungeons in particular drag on a little - both of which employ maze tactics to throw you off - the random encounters rarely become annoying, and as a whole the game is a veritable delight to play through.

It's also a little shorter than your average RPG, but I've personally finished it more than five times to date and loved each and every single play through. Clocking in at around twenty five hours a pop with all the sidequests complete, it all adds up to a game I've played a lot and gotten a lot out of in return.

Graphics

Easily the weakest link that this game has to offer, the graphics are just marginally above the general quality of that found on the original Playstation console. This isn't entirely surprising, as it was originally intended for that platform and then later bumped up onto the PS2 during its development cycle.

As a result, possibly the best word to describe the graphics would be 'functional'. They do their job, but they're not so pretty that they could cause passers by to randomly lose an eyeball in wonder. Characters are rather blocky and animate stiffly, spells are fairly unimpressive to behold and the environments are all made up of prerendered backdrops.

What the graphics do manage to convey, however, is a truly wonderful sense of atmosphere. It's already been mentioned that this game is darker than most, and the dungeons and towns you trek through are often able to produce a palpable sense of evil and malice. It's not all relegated to doom and gloom, however - there's a lot of variety in the environments Yuri and his party come across, and some of the places you'll visit are full of life and bustling with activity. Some of the ruins you'll visit are beautiful rather than the dreariness you may expect from them, and as primitive as the graphics are these days, they still do their job relatively well in portraying the world the way the developers wanted you to see it.

There's a wonderful world to discover in Shadow Hearts, and you'll romp all over China and Europe in your travels, so it's a good thing that many of the locations have their own special feel to them - from muddy villages in France, to the stony exterior of England's capital of London, to the bloody streets of a cannibal filled, demon worshipping village.

Sweet.

Sound

Composed by two of the greatest composers in the videogame business, Yoshitaka Hirota and Yasunori Mitsuda, it's no real surprise that Shadow Hearts features a varied range of excellent musical tracks. It's possible that the main battle theme in China, 'Brain Hopper', may not be to everyone's taste (it's highly regarded by many Shadow Hearts players, though I'm not quite so sure about it) but there are a lot of excellent musical pieces in the game. From the bouncy pace of 'Vitamin Metropolis' to the sad, heartbreaking theme of 'Alice' and the haunting main theme of 'Icaro', there's a lot of variety and talent put into the music in Shadow Hearts. 'Near Death Experience' is an excellent theme to do battle to, and 'Star Shape' may just be the best piece of dungeon music I've ever heard in an RPG. They positively sparkle with energy in many cases, and combine to make a very unique and eminently listenable to soundtrack.

In stark contrast to the OST, the dubbed western voices are hideously, mind bogglingly terrible in the extreme, and are nothing less than a premeditated aural assault against all of mankind. Obviously the kind of dubbing session thrown together by kidnapping tramps off the street, beating them senseless and then threatening them with further violence if they don't record those lines, it grates on the ears of all who are subjected to it. Overdone accents, mistimed lines and the Earth-shatteringly bad Sea Mother Sequence will force their ways into your ears and burrow deep into the section of your brain marked 'recurring terror'.

Fortunately there's only about five sequences in the game with voice acting, so at least it's not on the level of Shining Force Neo's localisation which, while slightly better that Shadow Hearts' voice efforts (if you can believe that), had your ears bleeding throughout the entire game.

These dubbings also crop up in battle, but there's an odd mix here between some characters having their Japanese voices left in and others having brief snippets of English put in instead - or even a mixture of both in some cases. It's not really off putting though, which is a relief.

And hey, there's plenty of beautiful music in here to sooth those ruptured eardrums, young man!

Overall

In conclusion, I can't possibly recommend this game enough. Not even if I told you to sell your entire family into slavery to get your hands on it, which is basically what you have to do these days in order to pay the ridiculous - but still worthwhile - price it's currently selling for on Ebay. My only possible hesitation in telling everybody to go ahead and snatch it up would be that some players simply may not be able to look past the shell of those incredibly outdated graphics and into the masterfully crafted game that lies within the core, and that would be a crying shame.

This, my friends, is an RPG. And it's the best one you've probably never played.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/06