Also unique to the series is it's lore, the games are based in an alternate reality during the 1900's where supernatural happenings are commonplace and general knowledge. The stories are dark in nature and explore occult activities that often put the entire world in danger.
I've been a fan of the second and third games and have only recently tried my hand at the first and whilst I did my best to view it unbiased in reference to it's successors I can affirmatively say that Shadow Hearts has aged quite badly. Is it worth your time playing? Read on and find out if this is one trip down retro way you want to take:
PREMISE
A young man named Yuri, guided by a mysterious voice in his head boards an Imperial Japanese train to save a young priestess called Alice. However, the girl is pursued also by a warlock known as Roger Bacon who requires Alice for some cataclysmic rite that will summon a deity and alter the world forever.
Yuri and the allies he meets on his travels through Asia and Europe embark on a monumental quest to protect Alice and save the world from potential destruction!
PLOT AND NARRATIVE
Shadow Hearts is an interesting slow burn story that is supported by smaller interconnected character driven arcs. Ultimately, it is about one man and his desire to destroy or rather rewrite the face of the planet but the method and the lore accompanied keeps you invested.
Characters unfortunately, get little development aside from Yuri and Alice and are often just plot devices that keep things moving, even the rest of your playable characters. Only one of them maintains a place in the story, it's very odd.
Dialogue is passable at best, fan fiction inspired at worst. This may just be due to whoever localised the game but everything the characters say is written in a amateurish fashion that is at times cringy, especially with Yuri who is supposed to come across as a sarcastic, hot head cool guy.
The plot has enough presence throughout the narrative that you're always chasing it's arc, even the small sub-plots that accompany each new place you explore are intricately connected to the main arc and that's a big thumbs up from me. Just following that single plot thread can be monotonous experience and there are plenty of games to prove that, this style of story telling is engaging and well paced and Shadow Hearts deserves commendation for this.
GAMEPLAY
Three pillars, story, combat and exploration and they're all well balanced which is palatable to most audiences. A dungeon crawler this is not.
The story we've covered so I'll start with exploration; pre-rendered backgrounds make for interesting and attractive locales and that's true here. Because of their limitations they rarely make for dungeon crawlers either but there are occasions where Shadow Hearts repeats areas over and over to extend the length of an area or have you travelling two and from several times to achieve the same goal.
The maps don't lack interactivity, there are plenty of hidden items to find nestled in the corners or behind objects and this makes the game more engaging.
Maps are split between dungeons and towns, the latter naturally occupied with shops and NPCs to interact with. It's pretty standard and acceptable interaction that helps pace the game.
Onto combat and it's sadly the games weakest point, the judgment ring in itself is the only positive aspect adding the only layer of complexity into an otherwise dull experience.
The combat is turn based and unlike later entries there is no combo system to speak of. You can simply attack, use spells and items, defend, change formation and for Yuri he can transform into different forms that afford him new spells.
When you perform any action you must successfully strike the highlighted portions of the judgement ring. Failure to do so will cause an attack to deal less damage or an action to fail completely, but there are also smaller highlighted areas on the judgement ring that when struck further increase damage. This mechanic allows the player to choose on the fly when to risk failure for extra damage or play safe for moderate, it's a great idea and implemented well.
Getting to the bad points now, there are status ailments and elemental affinities, the latter are pointless as even striking an enemy with a weakness deals marginally improved damage. There are also spells that change the element of physical attacks but again do marginally improved damage. In fact, far more potent that standard attacks are the spells themselves that deal massive damage. Purchasing MP restoring items is affordable and so you never have a reason to be out of MP so there's no need to play conservatively. About halfway through the game you can destroy everything with some overpowered all hitting spells which leads me to my next criticism, no balance. This game encourages crutch tactics, the routes to dealing high damage are so narrow there is no need for experimentation. Further compounding this issue is how Shadow Hearts approaches difficulty; awfully.
Bosses are a fine example of forced difficulty, bloated HP pools, super high damaging attacks that result in endurance fights and the only way to actually win is to grind a few levels out so that you can better tank the damage.
In boss fights this is especially frustrating when it comes to the arbitrary sanity points (SP) each character has. Some have a few, others have over 40. Regardless, when they run out that character goes "berserk" which is effectively 'confusion' from Final Fantasy.
There is also a range of status ailments that the game ends up relying on to further increase the difficulty but this is completely eradicated by the plethora of affordable protective equipment.
DESIGN AND PRESENTATION
Visually, the pre-rendered backgrounds are nice but considering this is a Playstation 2 game, it looks like a Playstation 1 game with slightly sharper graphics and some low end anti-aliasing. Character designs are varied for the most part but lack actual character, unaided by stiff animations and expressionless faces. There is always dissonance between player and character when all you have to attach to are small hand drawn portraits.
The variety of the environments is a big bonus though and means visually there is little stagnation.
Audibly Shadow Hearts is negligible, I cannot fondly recall any piece of the soundtrack and the sound effects are crass and basic, like stock from an old sound effects collection.
The full motion computer generated videos do actually look good, even if the character models look freakishly doll like, there's some good effects on show.
The menu is subtly detailed and I like that, there's quite a few options in it but otherwise it's clearly laid out and simple to use, the same can be said for the HUD in battle. It's simplistic and functional and warrants no criticism.
OVERALL
Shadow Hearts has spawned two great sequels, so surely this did something right on release. Sadly, look back on it in the year 2018 shows an old game with dated design and mechanics and offers nothing to learn from.
You could play Shadow Hearts Covenant and have no issues as to what is going on because, although directly connected the events are so enormously different you don't need the history lesson and the characters are so much more refined that the backstory contained within for Yuri say, isn't worth the lengthy unrewarding singleplayer.
Sorry Shadow Hearts, but I don't believe you're worth the time to play.
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