Shadow Hearts Covenant is the type of game that swings for the fucking stars. So absolutely confident in everything it's going for from combat all the way to the endearingly messy but wonderfully heartfelt storytelling.
A story of people doing their best to make it and find their own happiness in a cold world that just keeps throwing ordeal after ordeal at them. In a world that does nothing but take how do you continue on giving yourself to others? Ya just do. Everything about Yuri's story hits for me in just such a special and specific way. Grief is rough and its easy to get lost in. Support systems are important and can help you from ending up completely losing yourself within it.
I love that it even touches more upon the bad people justifying horrible shit to themselves deal that Koudelka strives at and Shadow Hearts stumbled with and nails it pretty hard here (Koudelka still the GOAT at it tho).
I love everything about this games Trigun ass vibes, the warm summertime glow of some of the locations, how beautiful the world is represented. How endearing mostly the entire cast is. Joachim especially is a fucking standout character. Like this game is absolutely not great with queer rep (the man festival is pretty fucking yikes dawg) but Joachim is like a shining beacon of hope within the messiness of it all. He's such a loveable gay himbo and I absolutely want to protect him at all costs, he gets so many fun bits and jokes, so many wonderful character moments. It's definitely a step forward from the first game even with, again, how bad the man festival specifically is (though it's at least thankfully optional).
The music yet again slaps hard as fuck. Complimenting every location and moment almost perfect. My favorites in particular being The Fate Cluster Amaryllis and Evil Gate Opener. It just strikes on so many wonderful levels though I do think that the game's implementation of these themes is a little messy. The dungeon music is fairly uniform in a way that's a little boring after the 5th time you've heard it and the town themes, while VERY good, suffer from unfortunately the same problem. Still amazing but just wish they used a lot of the tracks in much better ways like the first time around.
The combat, oh dear sweet jesus, the combat is so fucking good. They took the rough but fun systems of the original and put them completely within your hands. Every aspect of it is customizable and tweakable to make the game as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Like I hear FTNW only improves on it and I seriously cannot even imagine how yet and that only gets me more stoked because for me it's so fucking excellent!
The dungeon design would be fine if it weren't for how horrible the map system is honestly. There are some standouts like Mirror Castle but this game would seriously benefit from having a real map and it boggles my mind that it just only has a minimap for navigating around. It's so bizarre especially since the dungeons can loop you around and shit. It's faiiiirly annoying but I can deal with it!
Something about this whole experience hit me in a way that I don't think I'll ever be forgetting anytime soon. Everything about it vibed with me in such a specific way that the first game just didn't at all. This is absolutely one of the best sequels ever made that I've experienced so far at least and I'm so hopeful for Penny Blood if this is the framework they follow (though hopefully with far better queer rep/something more along the lines of Joachim or something.) It's messy, it ain't perfect, but fuck it I love this game a ton. Captured everything I wanted the first game to be and more while also getting me to care far more about aspects of the first that I didn't fully before. Absolute banger.
Karin deserved so much better though like holy shit why did they do THAT.
My full analysis on it is now up if ya wanna check it out!
A story of people doing their best to make it and find their own happiness in a cold world that just keeps throwing ordeal after ordeal at them. In a world that does nothing but take how do you continue on giving yourself to others? Ya just do. Everything about Yuri's story hits for me in just such a special and specific way. Grief is rough and its easy to get lost in. Support systems are important and can help you from ending up completely losing yourself within it.
I love that it even touches more upon the bad people justifying horrible shit to themselves deal that Koudelka strives at and Shadow Hearts stumbled with and nails it pretty hard here (Koudelka still the GOAT at it tho).
I love everything about this games Trigun ass vibes, the warm summertime glow of some of the locations, how beautiful the world is represented. How endearing mostly the entire cast is. Joachim especially is a fucking standout character. Like this game is absolutely not great with queer rep (the man festival is pretty fucking yikes dawg) but Joachim is like a shining beacon of hope within the messiness of it all. He's such a loveable gay himbo and I absolutely want to protect him at all costs, he gets so many fun bits and jokes, so many wonderful character moments. It's definitely a step forward from the first game even with, again, how bad the man festival specifically is (though it's at least thankfully optional).
The music yet again slaps hard as fuck. Complimenting every location and moment almost perfect. My favorites in particular being The Fate Cluster Amaryllis and Evil Gate Opener. It just strikes on so many wonderful levels though I do think that the game's implementation of these themes is a little messy. The dungeon music is fairly uniform in a way that's a little boring after the 5th time you've heard it and the town themes, while VERY good, suffer from unfortunately the same problem. Still amazing but just wish they used a lot of the tracks in much better ways like the first time around.
The combat, oh dear sweet jesus, the combat is so fucking good. They took the rough but fun systems of the original and put them completely within your hands. Every aspect of it is customizable and tweakable to make the game as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Like I hear FTNW only improves on it and I seriously cannot even imagine how yet and that only gets me more stoked because for me it's so fucking excellent!
The dungeon design would be fine if it weren't for how horrible the map system is honestly. There are some standouts like Mirror Castle but this game would seriously benefit from having a real map and it boggles my mind that it just only has a minimap for navigating around. It's so bizarre especially since the dungeons can loop you around and shit. It's faiiiirly annoying but I can deal with it!
Something about this whole experience hit me in a way that I don't think I'll ever be forgetting anytime soon. Everything about it vibed with me in such a specific way that the first game just didn't at all. This is absolutely one of the best sequels ever made that I've experienced so far at least and I'm so hopeful for Penny Blood if this is the framework they follow (though hopefully with far better queer rep/something more along the lines of Joachim or something.) It's messy, it ain't perfect, but fuck it I love this game a ton. Captured everything I wanted the first game to be and more while also getting me to care far more about aspects of the first that I didn't fully before. Absolute banger.
Karin deserved so much better though like holy shit why did they do THAT.
My full analysis on it is now up if ya wanna check it out!