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)~