And so came to an end my time with Shadow Hearts. In truth, this game is actually the reason I started playing Shadow Hearts this summer to begin with. Looking into who wrote the Mana Kehmia games after playing them earlier this year, I was surprised to see that they actually share their main scenario writer (Toshiyuki Suzuki) with this game, and it was even his first lead scenario writing credit as well! That was simply too much for my curiosity to bear, and I set out to play these games from the first one (minus Koudelka, as you can see ;b). It took me about 43.5 hours to play through the Japanese version of the game and get the good ending on real hardware.
Unlike the other two Shadow Hearts games, we’re not following Yuri anymore. This story follows Johnny Garland, a young man working at his own detective agency to try and discover the truth to his mysterious childhood. On a particularly supernatural case, he fatefully crosses paths with Shania and Nahtan when they save his life from a mysterious monster. Johnny quickly becomes bound to their quest as they try and find the cause of the mysterious portals that give form to these monsters (as well as why Johnny can suddenly turn his simple dagger into a light saber X3).
During my time with Shadow Hearts 2, I couldn’t help but feel time and time again that the story would’ve been a lot stronger had they not tried to continue Yuri’s story but simply made a whole new story in the same setting, and From the New World finally gave me exactly that. Where Shadow Hearts 1 is a game about the struggle to overcome (or not) depression and despair, and Shadow Hearts 2 is more a story about accepting (or not) that you just can’t change the past, From the New World is a story about identity and why people fight for the things they fight for; why do they do what they do? Johnny and Shania’s relationship and goals are contrasted with the antagonists in a far better and more refined way than Yuri and the antagonist of Shadow Hearts 2 were. While it’s still a bit of a messy story and it muddles its themes here and there, I think this is a much better follow up to Shadow Hearts 1 than 2 managed to be.
That’s not to say that FtNW isn’t without its own interesting quirks and foibles though. As the earlier light saber comment perhaps implied, this game is cranking up the campiness meter a fair bit compared to earlier games. Where Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 have their fun with anachronisms and pop culture references, FtNW goes even more so. FtNW even manages to use real world people in its story in a way far better done than 2 did, whether for comedy or otherwise. I personally thought the comedy in this game was way better than 2 ever managed (and I even often described it not as a more comedic Shadow Hearts 2, but a Shadow Hearts 2 with actually funny comedy), I can see the references making this game feel of a different sort to its predecessor (especially because a lot of the references in 2 are easier to get for a Japanese audience, where FtNW had a lot more stuff easily noticed by a global audience).
The elephant in the room, however, really is how FtNW handles its depiction of the “new world”, that being North and South America, and particularly the First Nations peoples in its story. Shania and Nahtan are both First Nations peoples, so they’re a major part of the story from the word go, and I would say this game has a complicated relationship with how it depicts them. On one hand, this game honestly clears a lot of bars for representation that a ton of other media (from Japan or otherwise) doesn’t clear. For starters, it actually calls them “Native Americans” and not “Indians”. It also lets them be real characters in the story. Nahtan and especially Shania are characters with motivations, arcs, and flaws just like anyone else, and even the scads of First Nations NPCs you interact with get to be characters too. They’re not just boiled down to “Mystical Natural Connected Plot Knowers” like so many other video games (particularly Japanese ones) and media treat them. They’re never standard enemies in dungeons, and violence towards them (particularly that by white characters) is treated with the horror and gravity it deserves. This is not a game completely ignorant of the nature of the peoples that it’s depicting, and that was honestly very refreshing to see.
However, on the other hand, this is (like a lot of other games and media) ultimately not terribly concerned with accuracy or respect in regards to the more finer details of its representations. I may be very white myself, but I’ve read up enough on this stuff (not to mentioned talked with native friends about it) to know that you don’t need to look much farther than their character designs to get the idea that this means that we end up with some stereotypes that are not always negative but are certainly far from inspired. Nahtan being a hunter (his side-quest being cryptid hunting, no less) who is a strong, stoic man of few words, for starters. For Shania’s part, she’s the fusion-using character in this game, and her first fusion is the Thunder Bird (a very important religious symbol and not the kind of thing you just portray in a video game as a cool powerful monster).
All of the story important women are (as Shadow Hearts tends to do, thankfully) adults, but they’re all very sexualized in this game. This means that the particular degree of sexualization that Shania receives isn’t unique to the standards of the game (or even the series), but she is nonetheless still falling into the trope of sexualizing native bodies. Heck, one of the first dead give aways to this is that while Nahtan does have brown eyes, Shania’s eyes are bright blue (and this is never mentioned or pointed out at all. It’s just a casual aspect of her character). While FtNW thankfully tones back the homophobia a lot from 2 (though it is certainly still there) as well as the more explicit racist stereotypes, the aspects of simply not caring about the accuracy of what they’re depicting covers FtNW from top to bottom. While it’s not from malice (if anything they’re trying quite a bit harder than what I’d consider typical at the time to be respectful), there’s still a ton of rough stuff here simply by nature of being too ignorant of the subject matter to actually portray it properly, and while it didn’t bother me terribly much, I can certainly see it making others uncomfortable at the very least.
Mechanically, this is also a huge improvement from Shadow Hearts 2 that gives that system the fine tuning it really needed. They actually made FtNW on a really tight time schedule compared to Shadow Hearts 2, but with the level of polish the mechanics have, you’d honestly never guess it. We still have the Judgment Rings, the sanity points, and the positional combat, but we’ve polished that all up very significantly. Most importantly, combos are now handled regardless of position, so they’re something you’d actually want to use a lot more because they’re so much more intuitive. Now, as you take and deal damage, you build up Stock Points, and 1 point of stock can be spent to do a combo or do a double turn (taking two turns now at the cost of your next turn being pushed back, a lot like the Bravely Default games later would). The thing is, not only can you do this more easily, but enemies can too, and denying your enemies stock is a major part of boss fights in particular that just makes the whole system far more fun and engaging. The spell crest system has also been replaced with the star chart system, which while very similar is handled far better, and it’s a system actually worth using this time. The whole game is just balanced and fine tuned a lot better than 2, making for a far more fun play experience overall on every level, as far as I’m concerned.
For presentation, FtNW manages to achieve a much better happy medium than Shadow Hearts 2 did in regards to making it look less like a fancy PS1 game but also keeping a lot of the aesthetic styles that makes Shadow Hearts what it is (as well as having music just as good as always~). So while we still have a quite anime-based art style, we also have character and especially environment design that makes it feel a lot less generic than a lot of Shadow Hearts 2 did. Additionally, and imo most importantly, we’ve gone back and made enemies far more gruesome and monstrous, far more like they were in Shadow Hearts 1. We finally have big, awful fleshy horrors to fight again against instead of big cartoonish looking monsters, and it makes for a much better and far more “Shadow Hearts” experience as a result.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. While I certainly think that (even if you were to set aside the more problematic elements of the narrative) From the New World is yet another Shadow Hearts game that doesn’t manage to surpass the original narratively, this is a much more worthy successor to the brand than Shadow Hearts 2 was. It honestly boggles my mind why people like Shadow Hearts 2 so much when I’d argue it’s so easily the weakest of the trilogy, quite frankly XD. But regardless, while I think that this game certainly has its warts and negative aspects, it is an excellent game that manages to stand out from the pack of excellent PS2 RPGs. It may not be as good as Shadow Hearts 1 in certain estimations, but it is absolutely a game worth playing just as much (and you don’t even need to have played the earlier games in the series to appreciate it)~
Unlike the other two Shadow Hearts games, we’re not following Yuri anymore. This story follows Johnny Garland, a young man working at his own detective agency to try and discover the truth to his mysterious childhood. On a particularly supernatural case, he fatefully crosses paths with Shania and Nahtan when they save his life from a mysterious monster. Johnny quickly becomes bound to their quest as they try and find the cause of the mysterious portals that give form to these monsters (as well as why Johnny can suddenly turn his simple dagger into a light saber X3).
During my time with Shadow Hearts 2, I couldn’t help but feel time and time again that the story would’ve been a lot stronger had they not tried to continue Yuri’s story but simply made a whole new story in the same setting, and From the New World finally gave me exactly that. Where Shadow Hearts 1 is a game about the struggle to overcome (or not) depression and despair, and Shadow Hearts 2 is more a story about accepting (or not) that you just can’t change the past, From the New World is a story about identity and why people fight for the things they fight for; why do they do what they do? Johnny and Shania’s relationship and goals are contrasted with the antagonists in a far better and more refined way than Yuri and the antagonist of Shadow Hearts 2 were. While it’s still a bit of a messy story and it muddles its themes here and there, I think this is a much better follow up to Shadow Hearts 1 than 2 managed to be.
That’s not to say that FtNW isn’t without its own interesting quirks and foibles though. As the earlier light saber comment perhaps implied, this game is cranking up the campiness meter a fair bit compared to earlier games. Where Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 have their fun with anachronisms and pop culture references, FtNW goes even more so. FtNW even manages to use real world people in its story in a way far better done than 2 did, whether for comedy or otherwise. I personally thought the comedy in this game was way better than 2 ever managed (and I even often described it not as a more comedic Shadow Hearts 2, but a Shadow Hearts 2 with actually funny comedy), I can see the references making this game feel of a different sort to its predecessor (especially because a lot of the references in 2 are easier to get for a Japanese audience, where FtNW had a lot more stuff easily noticed by a global audience).
The elephant in the room, however, really is how FtNW handles its depiction of the “new world”, that being North and South America, and particularly the First Nations peoples in its story. Shania and Nahtan are both First Nations peoples, so they’re a major part of the story from the word go, and I would say this game has a complicated relationship with how it depicts them. On one hand, this game honestly clears a lot of bars for representation that a ton of other media (from Japan or otherwise) doesn’t clear. For starters, it actually calls them “Native Americans” and not “Indians”. It also lets them be real characters in the story. Nahtan and especially Shania are characters with motivations, arcs, and flaws just like anyone else, and even the scads of First Nations NPCs you interact with get to be characters too. They’re not just boiled down to “Mystical Natural Connected Plot Knowers” like so many other video games (particularly Japanese ones) and media treat them. They’re never standard enemies in dungeons, and violence towards them (particularly that by white characters) is treated with the horror and gravity it deserves. This is not a game completely ignorant of the nature of the peoples that it’s depicting, and that was honestly very refreshing to see.
However, on the other hand, this is (like a lot of other games and media) ultimately not terribly concerned with accuracy or respect in regards to the more finer details of its representations. I may be very white myself, but I’ve read up enough on this stuff (not to mentioned talked with native friends about it) to know that you don’t need to look much farther than their character designs to get the idea that this means that we end up with some stereotypes that are not always negative but are certainly far from inspired. Nahtan being a hunter (his side-quest being cryptid hunting, no less) who is a strong, stoic man of few words, for starters. For Shania’s part, she’s the fusion-using character in this game, and her first fusion is the Thunder Bird (a very important religious symbol and not the kind of thing you just portray in a video game as a cool powerful monster).
All of the story important women are (as Shadow Hearts tends to do, thankfully) adults, but they’re all very sexualized in this game. This means that the particular degree of sexualization that Shania receives isn’t unique to the standards of the game (or even the series), but she is nonetheless still falling into the trope of sexualizing native bodies. Heck, one of the first dead give aways to this is that while Nahtan does have brown eyes, Shania’s eyes are bright blue (and this is never mentioned or pointed out at all. It’s just a casual aspect of her character). While FtNW thankfully tones back the homophobia a lot from 2 (though it is certainly still there) as well as the more explicit racist stereotypes, the aspects of simply not caring about the accuracy of what they’re depicting covers FtNW from top to bottom. While it’s not from malice (if anything they’re trying quite a bit harder than what I’d consider typical at the time to be respectful), there’s still a ton of rough stuff here simply by nature of being too ignorant of the subject matter to actually portray it properly, and while it didn’t bother me terribly much, I can certainly see it making others uncomfortable at the very least.
Mechanically, this is also a huge improvement from Shadow Hearts 2 that gives that system the fine tuning it really needed. They actually made FtNW on a really tight time schedule compared to Shadow Hearts 2, but with the level of polish the mechanics have, you’d honestly never guess it. We still have the Judgment Rings, the sanity points, and the positional combat, but we’ve polished that all up very significantly. Most importantly, combos are now handled regardless of position, so they’re something you’d actually want to use a lot more because they’re so much more intuitive. Now, as you take and deal damage, you build up Stock Points, and 1 point of stock can be spent to do a combo or do a double turn (taking two turns now at the cost of your next turn being pushed back, a lot like the Bravely Default games later would). The thing is, not only can you do this more easily, but enemies can too, and denying your enemies stock is a major part of boss fights in particular that just makes the whole system far more fun and engaging. The spell crest system has also been replaced with the star chart system, which while very similar is handled far better, and it’s a system actually worth using this time. The whole game is just balanced and fine tuned a lot better than 2, making for a far more fun play experience overall on every level, as far as I’m concerned.
For presentation, FtNW manages to achieve a much better happy medium than Shadow Hearts 2 did in regards to making it look less like a fancy PS1 game but also keeping a lot of the aesthetic styles that makes Shadow Hearts what it is (as well as having music just as good as always~). So while we still have a quite anime-based art style, we also have character and especially environment design that makes it feel a lot less generic than a lot of Shadow Hearts 2 did. Additionally, and imo most importantly, we’ve gone back and made enemies far more gruesome and monstrous, far more like they were in Shadow Hearts 1. We finally have big, awful fleshy horrors to fight again against instead of big cartoonish looking monsters, and it makes for a much better and far more “Shadow Hearts” experience as a result.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. While I certainly think that (even if you were to set aside the more problematic elements of the narrative) From the New World is yet another Shadow Hearts game that doesn’t manage to surpass the original narratively, this is a much more worthy successor to the brand than Shadow Hearts 2 was. It honestly boggles my mind why people like Shadow Hearts 2 so much when I’d argue it’s so easily the weakest of the trilogy, quite frankly XD. But regardless, while I think that this game certainly has its warts and negative aspects, it is an excellent game that manages to stand out from the pack of excellent PS2 RPGs. It may not be as good as Shadow Hearts 1 in certain estimations, but it is absolutely a game worth playing just as much (and you don’t even need to have played the earlier games in the series to appreciate it)~
Guitar dude..... moe.....
People always say that FTNW is not as good as Covenant but no one talks about how freaking good FTNW is. Great pacing, amazing dungeon design, creative scenarios and a pretty good party, it's lovable how memorable all of them are. Even have the best OST of the trilogy and the game flows so well between a humoristic approach to a more serious tone in their narrative. The system is a bit complex at the start but feels good the get the hang of it as time goes by in the game. Amazing achievement.
So this the end (or some might say demise) of the Shadow Hearts series.
Most of what people complain about is true. The plot is barely existent, there are almost none of the horror elements left and the characters are paper thin (except for Ricardo maybe and I might make an argument that Shania at least IS a character compared to anyone else).
However, it's still a Shadow Hearts game. The combat is fun, building your team with the different characters is still super wonky and exciting and this time around the boss fights are really well designed and might make you work around certain strategies or mechanics. And the dungeons are still nice. So playing this is really cool.
It's just sad, that the horror and history are gone. Some of the locations could work quite well for horror actually, like the secret underground lab at Arkham university, Alcatraz prison, the ship graveyard, old native American temples and the deserted, quasi haunted manor where Johnny grew up in. The Lovecraft elements could have also worked really well, to create some atmosphere.
Instead, especially in the first half, the game goes rather for rollercoaster ride approach through the Americas, than a concentrated plot that is interested in building atmosphere or working some twists or revelations.
The plot suffers for this too, as there is not much happening for a big part of it, except for the VERY random party to chase after the antagonists for more than half the game.
(Then there is also the rather unpleasant depiction of native Americans and how sexualized Shania and her fusions are. I mean Shadow Hearts has always had sexy designs, but yikes. Although I do think her fusion look cool in a way)
When you look at it however, the themes of Shadow Hearts, are still there.
Johnny and Shania both have to overcome their trauma and their loss of loved ones. It just too bad theat everything is so bare bones. I know the game had difficulties in development so I wouldn't wonder if just a lot of stuff was cut, it's just too bad, that this was the lasting outing from the series.
This game still has a special place in my heart however. The imagery, visuals and places still invoke a lot of creativity, the combat is fun and so are the dungeons and when you except that this is not as deep or thrilling as the other games, than you might still have a good time. It is still another Shadow Hearts game, a series that went away way to fast and that I dearly miss.
Most of what people complain about is true. The plot is barely existent, there are almost none of the horror elements left and the characters are paper thin (except for Ricardo maybe and I might make an argument that Shania at least IS a character compared to anyone else).
However, it's still a Shadow Hearts game. The combat is fun, building your team with the different characters is still super wonky and exciting and this time around the boss fights are really well designed and might make you work around certain strategies or mechanics. And the dungeons are still nice. So playing this is really cool.
It's just sad, that the horror and history are gone. Some of the locations could work quite well for horror actually, like the secret underground lab at Arkham university, Alcatraz prison, the ship graveyard, old native American temples and the deserted, quasi haunted manor where Johnny grew up in. The Lovecraft elements could have also worked really well, to create some atmosphere.
Instead, especially in the first half, the game goes rather for rollercoaster ride approach through the Americas, than a concentrated plot that is interested in building atmosphere or working some twists or revelations.
The plot suffers for this too, as there is not much happening for a big part of it, except for the VERY random party to chase after the antagonists for more than half the game.
(Then there is also the rather unpleasant depiction of native Americans and how sexualized Shania and her fusions are. I mean Shadow Hearts has always had sexy designs, but yikes. Although I do think her fusion look cool in a way)
When you look at it however, the themes of Shadow Hearts, are still there.
Johnny and Shania both have to overcome their trauma and their loss of loved ones. It just too bad theat everything is so bare bones. I know the game had difficulties in development so I wouldn't wonder if just a lot of stuff was cut, it's just too bad, that this was the lasting outing from the series.
This game still has a special place in my heart however. The imagery, visuals and places still invoke a lot of creativity, the combat is fun and so are the dungeons and when you except that this is not as deep or thrilling as the other games, than you might still have a good time. It is still another Shadow Hearts game, a series that went away way to fast and that I dearly miss.
Realized with completely new characters, Shadow Hearts: From the New World offered an even more ridiculous brand of humor that carried very little of the series' original spirit. A major contender for the most bizarre JRPG cast of all time. The previous game's mechanical bloat was simply redistributed across the battle party, while a few tweaks at least made its linear combo system more viable in regular battles, although the dungeons were disappointingly simple this time. Besides the eclectic character roster, much of this game feels rather pedestrian, and too often seems like a weird collection of leftovers from Shadow Hearts II.
Holy cultural appropriation, Batman!
Really felt uncomfortable with the depiction of the Native Americans and I don't think that a sombrero-wearing, heartthrob-musician-Mexican guy is the best you can do in terms of characterization, my dear Shadow Hearts...!
The weakest of the trilogy but the gameplay is fun at least. I found Lady and Killer to be far more interesting and that is not a good look on me and/or the game. Maybe it's because they are color-coded.
Nice soundtrack again, though.
Also, you have a fat mafia cat in your team. And a gothic-lolita-vampire.
I preferred the cat.
Really felt uncomfortable with the depiction of the Native Americans and I don't think that a sombrero-wearing, heartthrob-musician-Mexican guy is the best you can do in terms of characterization, my dear Shadow Hearts...!
The weakest of the trilogy but the gameplay is fun at least. I found Lady and Killer to be far more interesting and that is not a good look on me and/or the game. Maybe it's because they are color-coded.
Nice soundtrack again, though.
Also, you have a fat mafia cat in your team. And a gothic-lolita-vampire.
I preferred the cat.
Al que no le gusta es un friki
Full Analysis of the game if you'd like to support my YT endeavors!
God I wish I liked this game.
From the New World is the type of game that just so so so clearly needed more time to cook. After years of silence the devs have pretty much confirmed that things like the director being replaced had occurred midway through development. Hell they only had about maybe a year after Covenant to get this game out with that happening as well. So I don't wanna be super hard on the dev team for clearly trying their best.
Like for positives, the gameplay is the best in the series hands fuckin down. The stock system making it so you can't just combo shit every turn genuinely adds a nice layer of strategy to fights that you have to consider and makes getting combos hit way harder than they did in Covenant, the fact that magic is so customizable and in your hands with charts and stellars that are able to be swapped around with all of the characters just feels like such a great idea and evolution of the crests from Covenant as well.
The music fuckin slaps, absolutely the best in the series with tracks like Malice and From the New World living in my mind completely rent free.
The vibes and art direction are top notch, the content in this package is absolutely packed. It's impressive the kind of shit you could do at the time within a year and reusing assets, ideas and animations to get by the best you could. If I'd played this as a kid like I'd wanted to years and years ago now, I probably would've had more of a soft spot for this for the sheer amount of time you can invest in this very very fun to play game.
Unfortunately that just ain't how I played and experienced this though. From a narrative perspective (which I care about far more in RPG's where that's clearly the focus like it very obviously is here) it falls so so so flat. Characters come and go within this plot and don't really add much to it. The villains are so paper thin and poorly fleshed out that they spend pretty much half of this game standing around twiddling their thumbs while they wait for you. The main party consists of Shania (who should've been the Main Character like straight up it's mostly her story), Johnny (who is never given enough depth for his story to fully work) and the rest of the party which are mostly gag characters except for Ricardo who is such an explicit Desperado reference and taken so seriously and given ANYTHING within this plot that I honestly loved him along with Shania a lot.
Also just wanna say if you wanna see strangely similarish ideas explored on the Johnny side of things with characters that are more interesting and fleshed out you should seriously watch or read Blood Blockade Battlefront which I think manages to capture the spirit perfectly and I kinda wonder if Shadow Hearts was a slight inspiration on Nightow?
I wasn't expecting this game to be like even Covenant levels of solid but this is just so fuckin disappointing to me. Like past gameplay, music and art direction it just completely lets down everything else. For you that may be whatever and you may love and adore this as a gameplay first experience. But for me the stories in these games, even when flawed like the original Shadow Hearts was, were always something special.
It's a bummer that this is how things ended for the longest time. If I'd played this with no hope of Penny Blood I probably would've been extremely bummed upon finishing this. Thankfully interesting things are hopefully on the horizon but man, I wish this game and what it's going for with revenge, especially in regards to its POC subjects, had more time to breath and they had more time to flesh those ideas and concepts out. This game has its comedy but not enough to sustain this entire experience. It straight up feels like after you finish Vegas the game just comes to a complete fuckin halt in the worst ways plot wise. Shania running from dungeon to dungeon going "I'M GONNA KILL THAT WOMAN" as they constantly run from you and nothing is accomplished.
By the end I was just so exhausted. While this game has positives and I'm not gonna deny those one bit, this game is also an exhausting mess that just left me sad by the end with what it could've been.
God I wish I liked this game.
From the New World is the type of game that just so so so clearly needed more time to cook. After years of silence the devs have pretty much confirmed that things like the director being replaced had occurred midway through development. Hell they only had about maybe a year after Covenant to get this game out with that happening as well. So I don't wanna be super hard on the dev team for clearly trying their best.
Like for positives, the gameplay is the best in the series hands fuckin down. The stock system making it so you can't just combo shit every turn genuinely adds a nice layer of strategy to fights that you have to consider and makes getting combos hit way harder than they did in Covenant, the fact that magic is so customizable and in your hands with charts and stellars that are able to be swapped around with all of the characters just feels like such a great idea and evolution of the crests from Covenant as well.
The music fuckin slaps, absolutely the best in the series with tracks like Malice and From the New World living in my mind completely rent free.
The vibes and art direction are top notch, the content in this package is absolutely packed. It's impressive the kind of shit you could do at the time within a year and reusing assets, ideas and animations to get by the best you could. If I'd played this as a kid like I'd wanted to years and years ago now, I probably would've had more of a soft spot for this for the sheer amount of time you can invest in this very very fun to play game.
Unfortunately that just ain't how I played and experienced this though. From a narrative perspective (which I care about far more in RPG's where that's clearly the focus like it very obviously is here) it falls so so so flat. Characters come and go within this plot and don't really add much to it. The villains are so paper thin and poorly fleshed out that they spend pretty much half of this game standing around twiddling their thumbs while they wait for you. The main party consists of Shania (who should've been the Main Character like straight up it's mostly her story), Johnny (who is never given enough depth for his story to fully work) and the rest of the party which are mostly gag characters except for Ricardo who is such an explicit Desperado reference and taken so seriously and given ANYTHING within this plot that I honestly loved him along with Shania a lot.
Also just wanna say if you wanna see strangely similarish ideas explored on the Johnny side of things with characters that are more interesting and fleshed out you should seriously watch or read Blood Blockade Battlefront which I think manages to capture the spirit perfectly and I kinda wonder if Shadow Hearts was a slight inspiration on Nightow?
I wasn't expecting this game to be like even Covenant levels of solid but this is just so fuckin disappointing to me. Like past gameplay, music and art direction it just completely lets down everything else. For you that may be whatever and you may love and adore this as a gameplay first experience. But for me the stories in these games, even when flawed like the original Shadow Hearts was, were always something special.
It's a bummer that this is how things ended for the longest time. If I'd played this with no hope of Penny Blood I probably would've been extremely bummed upon finishing this. Thankfully interesting things are hopefully on the horizon but man, I wish this game and what it's going for with revenge, especially in regards to its POC subjects, had more time to breath and they had more time to flesh those ideas and concepts out. This game has its comedy but not enough to sustain this entire experience. It straight up feels like after you finish Vegas the game just comes to a complete fuckin halt in the worst ways plot wise. Shania running from dungeon to dungeon going "I'M GONNA KILL THAT WOMAN" as they constantly run from you and nothing is accomplished.
By the end I was just so exhausted. While this game has positives and I'm not gonna deny those one bit, this game is also an exhausting mess that just left me sad by the end with what it could've been.
The gameplay in this one is absolutely amazing, it requires a lot of strategy, and even though it's very frustrating at times, it's very fun to go through, and easily one of my favourite jrpgs (gameplay-wise)
The story on the other hand, doesn't even make sense half of the time, you're just playing hide and seek with the main villains for the entire fucking game.
The characters are also terrible. They took the lightheartedness of Shadow Hearts: Covenant and upscaled it 10 times, which made this shit really unbearable to listen to at times. There are some good characters that get more light towards the end, but for all the difficulty in the game, it's not worth it at all.
I think you'd be better off taking this game with a pinch of salt- think of it as a little side project the devs did because they were bored.
The story on the other hand, doesn't even make sense half of the time, you're just playing hide and seek with the main villains for the entire fucking game.
The characters are also terrible. They took the lightheartedness of Shadow Hearts: Covenant and upscaled it 10 times, which made this shit really unbearable to listen to at times. There are some good characters that get more light towards the end, but for all the difficulty in the game, it's not worth it at all.
I think you'd be better off taking this game with a pinch of salt- think of it as a little side project the devs did because they were bored.
This game took what I always felt was the weakest aspect of the series, its humor, and put it at the forefront. While I do think this had the most humorous moments, the ratio of attempted humor to parts that landed is lower, and by the sheer quantity of attempts does it claim this crown.
The cast as a whole is the least likable of the series, and I found it hard to care for most of them. The gameplay, however, remains about as great as it was in Shadow Hearts: Covenant.
The cast as a whole is the least likable of the series, and I found it hard to care for most of them. The gameplay, however, remains about as great as it was in Shadow Hearts: Covenant.
Will get back to.
You can have Al Capone's talking cat, who is a master of drunken fist, beat up The Terminator, except The Terminator is also a cat.