Shadow Hearts: Covenant

"A more in depth battle system, but a much weaker story"

I enjoyed Koudelka for the PS1 and really liked the original Shadow Hearts for the Playstation 2. I had heard nothing but amazing things about Shadow Hearts 2. How it had the best combat system and the like. Oddly, I never heard a word about the story except that the characters were rather odd but in a good way.... To each their own I guess but....

Shadow Hearts 2 picks up 6 months after the bad ending of the original game. I won't say more than that about the first game. Yuri meets up with a girl named Karin and they are trying to stop some secret society from doing something evil. A really basic plot but it's full of many problems. Where does one start with these problems? First of all, Yuri is the only returning character that is playable. Everyone else is new and I must say the new cast kind of sucks. Some are decent like the wolf and ugh.... Anyway, the game has the two worst characters in gaming history. Lucia who has a total of 5 lines in the game. Honestly, why is she there? Oh and the other is Anastasia... Such a terrible character. I will admit that the ending ties things up nicely and I hope the up coming Shadow Hearts: A New World redeems this series. Oh and for the record, the change in Yuri's personality feels wrong on main levels and near the end of the game the characters do way to many flips to come off as believable. Odd since the game forces 20+ minute long cut scenes of useless dialog, I would have thought the characters would be better developed...

The graphics are better than those in the other titles but it does have problems. The dungeons are kind of boring to look at and due to horrible camera angels and the fact that you can't move the camera; a lot of doors that are required to advance are blocked from view. Cut scenes look really good but they aren't used a lot. In game graphics are decent. A lot of interesting enemies. Main characters look good enough but sometimes during talking scenes hair pokes out of clothing and that kind of thing.

The sound in the game is a terribly mixed bag. The music is decent, I don't get the up roar over the ending theme, I found it to be rather bad compared to most J-pop music. The sound effects are average. The wolf sounds wrong but other sounds are about right. This game has horrible voice acting. Seriously, it is bad and you're forced to hear a lot of it. Why couldn't they keep the voice actors from the first game?

The control in the game is fine. Battle control is right on. Dungeon movements are fine and all of that. No problems at all except lack of camera control.

Game play needs to be interesting in a RPG. It also needs a good plot. Sadly, this game only got one of those right. Imagine any ole RPG. Now, take away a world map and spice up the battle system and you get Shadow Hearts 2. Okay, you get a world map and select the area off of it. As you advance new areas appear. You know the deal if you've played the first Shadow Hearts or if you played Final Fantasy X. Now, not all places are dungeons, some are just towns.

The areas in the game are a decent size. Towns are mostly small but a few are bigger. Not a lot to do unless you're into talking to everyone. I found the city in Russia to be too large and really bland and empty. Dungeons are either really linear but have a puzzle or a maze like structure. I found some of the dungeons to be annoying because it was constant turns and everything looked the same. Game does offer a lot of dungeons though...

The game has an odd focus on puzzles. Most are really simple and require a basic knowledge of zodiac, word puzzles and colors. If you're color blind you may find the later puzzles a bit tough. I found the puzzles to be fairly easy. The key puzzle on the ship felt more tedious than hard. No puzzle really came off as harder than another.

Now, the fighting system. It's all turn based. Top of the screen shows who goes next but it changes depending on what you have your character doing. Everyone has a special type of skill. Yuri can transform, wolf can do something, Karen uses Ninja skills or something, and you get the idea. Everyone but Yuri can use magic which feels a little unfair but that is why you carry items, plus items take less time away on the move thing at the top and sometimes allow for two moves at once. I found myself keeping the same team I had from the start...

Okay, when a character can attack, you just select your move of choice. A ring pops up and it has 1-5 hot spots on it. They are orange (I think? I can't remember) and they have a sliver of red. Hit the red and do more damage. Now, you need to hit all of them to do more than one hit. So you can do from 1-5 hits. Miss the first and you're out of luck. Miss any and it ends there and you attack however many times you hit the spots. It's really easy and it's the same from the first game but now things have been spiced up!

Okay, the characters still have equipment like weapons, armor and what not. More in this game than the last. Let's touch base with magic first. Magic is used from crests. You find these or get some from a few bosses. No crest is doubled that I know of. Each character, except Yuri, has a special something or other that allows X amount of these to be equipped. They have levels and stuff to judge off of how much they take up. Magic is performed the same way as any other attack.

Before I was talking about equipment but now there is something new. You can equip stuff to your battle ring. Add more spots on it, make it wider which makes it easier to hit, make the red zone bigger. You can also add poison and a few other things as a side effect and they kick in every now and then. This makes things interesting and some characters really need them as they only have one spot from the start while others have 2-3.

Now comes the biggest addition to the game. Combos. I didn't use these much because I found them kind of annoying. Select combo and then connect your guys. Now, you attack with one as normal, at the end of the ring (can't miss a spot) you hit the button that flashes. Doing that keeps the combo going. Next character will pop up and continue the combo. It keeps going until the last person lands their hit or until you miss a spot. Problem is, the enemy may interject and knock your combo out and I may be wrong but I think it can cause someone to miss a turn.

I think that covers the basics of the way the game play. It's really simple but allows a lot of customization. I preferred the simpler version in the first but this does work, even if it does make the game easier....

Replay value is something the original game lacked. It had two endings but very few side quests. Triple the side quests and keep the two endings and you get Shadow Hearts 2. There really is a lot to do. I did some of it because it made the game a smidge bit easier for me but there was a lot I skipped. Game took me just over 19 hours to beat (19 hours 8 minutes and some odd seconds). This would have been MUCH shorter if there weren't so many long, tedious and pointless cut scenes. Seriously, there are many many cut scenes that are over 20 minutes and they don't tell you much.

The game didn't feel right to me when I first started and maybe it was because they went with the bad ending from the first game. However, the game really dropped when you get to Russia and didn't redeem itself at all until the end. I like what the ending does and it makes sense but makes this game feel like it wasn't needed. The battle system is more customizable but to be honest the story was terrible. I wanted a really entertaining story like the first one but instead I get something that doesn't seem right due to the characters. Yuri is very different here than he was in the first game and I don't mean just the voice acting. His personality is completely different. A shame too because that was part of the charm of the first. People seem to love this game though... I just can't bring myself to recommend this game. I'd honestly say skip it unless you are in desperate need for a RPG and it's cheap and you can't find anything else. Stick with the original...

Story - 5/10
Graphics - 8/10
Sound - 5/10
Control - 9/10
Game Play - 7/10

Final Score - 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/25/06