Shadow Hearts: From the New World

"The series does it again"

The shadow hearts series to me has always stood out from other rpgs. If its the graphics or the story; this series always seem to do things different. "Shadow hearts: From the new world" while identical is not a direct continuation of the second of the series. It is an entirely new game, but with similar gameplay.

One of the things that the series always does right is the graphics. Not only on the characters, but the environmental graphics as well. It actually makes you feel your in that town or dungeon. Of course the graphics on the characters themselves are also very impressive. Excluding the main character, every character in this game looks great.

The main character is Johnny Garland. He is completely different from the main character Yuri from past of the series. It is very hard to replace such a character as Yuri. They fail to make him better then yuri, but he isn't all bad. He has his own likable personality. The story is Johnny the anmesiatic heir to his dead father's fortune, does not want anything to do with it. who wants. He now Hopes to learn something about his own lost memory. He then decides to turn to a detective, and open his own agency. Of course most of his jobs he took were boring to him. He then wants to do more serious work. Eventually he finds a serious job, and of course it was a little bit more then he bargained for.

What this series always does right is the gameplay. Even though it feels so much like the rest of the past games; the gameplay just never feels old. The difficulty in the game seems harder, But again like the rest of the past series you will get grow accustomed to the difficulty. Even though it isn;t so much of a bad thing; This game's gameplay is almost the same as shadow hearts 2. Scratch off the new storyline,characters, and improved graphics; then you have basically the same game. The battle system has changed slightly, but it still has the good old ring system. If you are really good and quick this will work in yoru favor, if not it can really injure you.

The sound in this game's music just like everything else is very similar to the past games. Of course it is still enjoyable. The battle theme is great, and all of the voice acting is all well done. One of the most interesting thing about the music is that it shifts in a new direction later on in the game.

Basically if you enjoyed shadow hearts 1 or 2, then you will have no problem liking this game. My only complaint besides the main character is the fact that there is barely no change at all to this games gameplay. Some might still enjoy it like I have, but other may grow tired of the same formula.

The good: 20-30 hours of gameplay with a fun story and tons of sidequests.

The bad: Same old stuff just different story, the main character just doesn't even come close to replace the past hero of the series

Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 8/10
Storyline: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/06