Shadow Hearts

"Acupuncture?, no thanks."

One of the biggest surprises (I would say the biggest) in terms of rpgs for the PS2 was undoubtedly this amazing masterpiece, a simple yet superb old school rpg that surprised everyone with and interesting and involving plot, a wonderful soundtrack, and a magnificent battle system. Everybody with a little knowledge in video games will learn to appreciate this new “cult classic”.

It is said that this is the unofficial sequel to Koudelka, and obscure rpg for the PSX, I, like a lot of people, after playing this masterpiece immediately ran to buy Koudelka, I own it now but I have yet to play so I can’t say anything about that yet.

Story 10/10:
One day an English priest is brutally murdered, the daughter of that priest, Alice, was being translated by train when suddenly a man called Roger Bacon starts a carnage in the train trying to kidnap her, but Yuri a weird guy that was also in the train manages to rescue Alice, they jump out the train, and the adventure begins.

There are some plot holes, but it is also one of the most original and involving stories in a long time, simply wonderful.

Graphics 7/10:
Dated, no doubt about that, but this is an rpg, graphics are the last thing in importance, and they aren’t bad, just dated. It looks like a PSX game, but who cares?, if you do better go and do something else because video games are not for you.
The character and monsters are a bit simple, but their design is great, specially when it comes to enemies. The characters look very good (excepting that terribly so-so Keith Valentine), they are anime style mixed with I don’t know what, but they look good. The monsters are superb, some of them are really creepy.

The pre-rendered backgrounds are not very impressive, lack some detail and sometimes are too simple, but hey, at least they are not in 3D.
Another good thing about them is fact that the game is not situated in a fantasy world, I’ll never get tired of the fantasy environments, but is good to see something different once in a while.

The cinematic scenes are wonderful, not because of their quality (which is not too high by the way) but for their originally and the shocking images they show, the intro is one of the most impressive I’ve ever seen, everyone that plays and sees the opening sequence says the same thing.

Music 9/10:
With Yasunori Mitsuda as one of the main composers what would you expect?, of course an awesome and very unusual soundtrack, and while not as catchy as most of his compositions it is very involving and fits the game perfectly.

The battle themes are great (or the battle themes to be more accurate), and specially the first one, which is anthological, very mysterious and charming, you HAVE to hear it.
The second theme is nice too, but nothing like the first one, also the last boss theme is superb too, it is very hard to stop humming it.

Sound 10/10:
I never use to pay attention to the sound, for me it is something meaningless as long as it isn’t annoying, but I want to mention it here because it is simply great. All the sounds are amazing, from the slashing of a sword to your foot steps or the little sound all the items do when used everything is marvellous, maybe it is just me but it thinks it is top notch.

Voice acting 5/10:
I want to separate the voice acting from the sound because it is not fair to mix up such a good sound with such and average voice acting. There are only voices during the cinematic scenes, which are very few, and they are not bad at all, but they are not worth mentioning.

Gameplay 10/10:
Shadow Hearts play like any Final Fantasy for the PSX, you move around pre-rendered backgrounds and fight in 3D arenas.

The first surprise of the game in terms of gameplay comes with the battle system, at first it looks like the usual FF, but then you see the “ Judgment Ring”, where you will have to hit some areas of it to perform your attacks, cast spells, use items, etc. Remember the wonderful Super Mario RPG?, it is somehow similar.

The only character that is able to use magic is Alice, the rest of the bunch has their own abilities, and the main character, Yuri, has the skill to become a monster, this is the fusion system, it is a nice feature, but needs to be improved a bit because at the end all the monsters are basically the same but with a different form. Anyway all the abilities the characters had are very original and cool, I’m tired of the typical ice, fire, thunder, etc and thankfully you are not going to find them here.

Fortunately too, in this game you won’t have to upgrade your weapons or improve their parts to make new ones or stupid things like that, here we have the typical weapon and armor shops. In every new town we go to the shop and buy better equipment like we used to do in our golden oldies. Anyway, we can still upgrade our new weapons if we want, to do so we have to talk with this guy whose name I can’t remember, an homosexual acupuncturist, this guy is hilarious, and when was the last time you saw one of them in a video game?.

Another great thing about the game is that is a very mature one, it is not as bloody and violent as some people say, they say that because of the opening sequence, which is pretty violent, but that’s all, no more violence (well, just a little). However, the dialogues and some situations are still very mature, this is GOOD, it looks like the original dialogue wasn’t changed very much thankfully.

Replay Value:
The length of the game is below the average rpg, I finished it for the first time in about 24 hours, but you will probably have to replay it again to find all the fusion abilities and other secrets, still not as much a others, Shadow Hearts is short but very intense.

Conclusion:
Shadow Hearts is not perfect, but honestly, I liked it more than Final Fantasy X, FF X wasn’t very good by itself I know, but as they were released almost at the same time I can’t help but to compare them, this is just an old school classic rpg without any pretension, I think Shadow Hearts was everything FF X should’ve been but it wasn’t.

So, even after games like Final Fantasy X, Shadow Hearts is one of the best rpgs one can find for the PS2 for it’s plot, music, originality, and classic gameplay, Shadow Hearts is one of those games that lets you craving for more.

””My lack of vocabulary and grammatical errors (if there’s any) are because I’m not from an English speaking country, sorry.””

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 10/08/03, Updated 10/20/03