Shadow Hearts

"A fairly above average RPG, but has plenty of great ideas and potential."

Shadow Hearts, the spin-off to the not so well received Koudelka. Shadow Hearts can be a fairly above average RPG most of the time, but has some good nice ideas and plenty of potential. It has a unique added system to the battle system to ensure it's not all boring (and stops you from tapping X to just keep attacking in the easy battles), a decent story line, and some crazy humour. So then, let's get on with the review!

OK, first, here is the story. The game starts when a mysterious man starts killing loads of guards on a train, and is trying to kidnap a girl on the train. Before he can do so, a Rude Hero appears and fends the man off, saving the girl from him. It appears he can hear a strange voice in his head, guiding him with what to do, and told him to save her. Yuri, the rude hero, along with the girl, Alice, meet up with many other people on the way of their journey, and eventually, end up trying to save the world from the mystery man. The story line at first is quite ridiculous, the first half of the game has some pretty random stuff going on, and not much story is developed at all. Once the game moves over from Asia into Europe though (the second half), the story does get pretty interesting. There is a lot more to the background of the story instead of what actually happens during the course of the game though. The story does get quite interesting toward the end, although the classic heroes save world formula is still there.

Ah, the battle system. What may appear to be just a normal turn based battle system is different. Shadow Hearts introduces, the Judgement Ring. This determines your actions, and indeed, if you do them. For example, when you make a character attack, before doing so, the judgement ring comes up on screen. The ring has a small hand which spins around the ring clock-wise once. In the ring, are different areas, where the player must press X to hit the area successfully. So, if you want to attack, you press X in the three coloured areas that are on the ring. Miss them, and you don't attack (you will still get any hits you got though). There are also extra small coloured areas at the end, which makes the action slightly better. Getting all three for example in an attack will make them stronger, or when using an item, it will make the effect more stronger. While this may seem some kind of a gimmick at first, it's a pretty cool addition, helping it stray from being an average RPG. Also, along with normal status effects, this game has them for the ring too. Enemies can make the hand go even faster, they can make the coloured areas invisible, they can halve the size of the coloured areas, and some times, it can get pretty nasty. You can also use items to your own advantage, you can give your self a 100% hit chance (just press X three times), and other items like halve your coloured areas but make the attack stronger for example. Apart from this, the turn-based battle system should be familiar to RPG fans. The person with the highest Agility goes first, and so on. There is one other new thing though. Your characters have SP. This stands for Sanity Points. Each character loses 1 SP every turn they take, and when their SP hits 0, they go berserk. This isn't a good thing, they start attacking enemies, and team mates, they end up wasting MP on abilities and start using all your best items. You can get many items to heal SP though, and many characters will have different amounts of SP, depending on what their character is actually like in the game. The SP stat adds a little more to the battle, especially later on in the game. Many of the last couple of bosses use attacks which will hurt you, and your SP, and on one particular boss, your SP is more important than your HP!

There are also some other different things to Shadow Hearts. First, I shall explain the Malice system. When Yuri is in your party (pretty much all the time), winning battles will get your malice up a little. When the malice hits red, Fox Face will start chasing you, and he is pretty much kick-ass. To get rid of the malice, you must travel to the graveyard, and defeat an enemy to get rid of it. The graveyard is a little more useful too, with Yuri's fusion system. Yuri is an Harmonixer, meaning he can fuse into monsters. When you win a battle, a little point goes toward the elements of what the enemies you defeated were. So, if you defeat a light enemy (just one), then your light points go up by one. Once they're full, head over to the graveyard and you can fight the fusion so you can use it. Then just equip it on Yuri and you can fuse into it. This takes up a large amount of SP, although the fusions are well worth it.

There is a lot to do in Shadow Hearts. The actual story isn't too long, clocking in at around 20 hours, with your party's average level being about 50 for the last boss. The game is split into two parts, Asia, and Europe. A bad thing in the game is that once you go to Europe, you won't ever see Asia again. Also, Asia follows a very strict path, in the fact you basically don't go back to many areas, meaning any side-quests and needed items in Asia, you HAVE to get before you leave the area, because once you're too far, you aren't getting them. This was kinda annoying, as the best fusion in the game requires the Erotic Book which I missed in Asia. Saying that, there are a fair amount of side-quests to do. You obviously have ultimate armour and weapons to collect for every one for example, there are two secret fusions, and level three fusions to get. There is also the lottery. When you talk to a lottery member (you need a ticket first) you can play the lottery. Basically, it comes up with the judgement ring, with loads of different colours being different items. When you press X the hand spins around a little more, and if you get it on an item, you win it. Once the game is finished, you can start a new game plus, where Yuri starts with all his fusions from the last game. If you want to 100% Shadow Hearts, you will most probably need to play it through twice, because many things can be missed. There is also a good or a bad ending to get, so you may want to get both if you're interested.

Now, the graphics. Im not sure, but I think the graphics were originally designed for the original Playstation, because they aren't too good. The actual areas are just slightly high-res 2D maps (slightly better than PS1 but not PS2 great), with 3D characters. The battles are in full 3D though, with a 3D background, albeit with some blurry textures. Overall they're OK, but not the best on PS2 (at that time). The music is fairly good, and only gets better once you're in Europe. The battle music even changes when you get to Europe, losing the Asian theme of the battle music used when you're in Asia. Some music is pretty upbeat, energetic and great, where as the rest of the music is pretty different to it. Either way, the sound track isn't perfect, but it's better than the graphics.

PROS:

Nice new judgement rings makes battle system better.
A nice plot, keeping the player interested.

CONS:

PS1 quality graphics.
Many side-quests and extras are easily missed.

THE RATINGS:
Graphics: 6.0/10
Audio: 7.5/10
Story: 8.7/10
Game Play: 8.3/10
Life Span: 7.5/10
Difficulty: 7.5/10
Multiplayer: N/A
Overall: 8.3/10

My Two Pence:

Overall, the game play and the story are most probably the best things about Shadow Hearts. The fun battle system, the crazy setting and humour, the interesting story, they all help to make this game fun, and worth any RPG fans time. Highly recommended, especially since it's pretty rare now.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/11/07