Shadow Hearts: From the New World

The third (and tragically last) Shadow Hearts game changes up the setting to to a new locale - America - and stars an almost entirely new cast in a story only tangentially connected to the originals.  But does it prove to be a worthy sendoff for a short-lived franchise, or should it just have stayed in the old world?

The third game to bear the Shadow Hearts moniker and the fourth in the series counting Koudelka, though technically it's a spinoff; a Shadow Hearts 3 was planned (which would have been a prequel telling the story of Jinpachiro Hyuga, Yuri's father), though it was unfortunately canceled when Nautilus was dissolved in 2007 by its parent company Aruze.  From the New World debuted in the US the same year, making it something of a eulogy for the series, as well another popular JRPG franchise that unfortunately never got an HD entry.

From the New World bears many gameplay similarities to the second game, with a cast of outlandish characters and accompanying side-quests to power up their unique abilities. Characters can also chain attacks together in battle and form Combos, dealing extra damage the more hits they land in an unbroken chain, and most characters can use a pool of common spells via the use of add-ons - Stellar Charts in this game's case.  Thus, while there is a fair bit of character customization, each character also gets their own unique mechanics and abilities to utilize; again, not dissimilar to Final Fantasy VI.  The series trademark Sanity Points return too; should your sanity drop to 0 or less, that character will go berserk and start attacking allies and enemies at random and will miss out on any experience gained from that fight, unless you restore it before the battle ends.  This can be particularly annoying early on, as many of your characters (even your main one) have very low SP at the start of the game, so you have to be sure to make every turn of theirs count.

But while many of these elements are still recognizable from 2, things do change up a fair bit.  A new mechanic called "Stock" is added, with attacks and taking damage gradually filling a character's bar up to a maximum of two levels.  Once you have at least one level, you can choose to spend one to start a combo chain (with everyone else who joins in having to spend one as well), or use a Double action, effectively getting two moves per turn, though you cannot do the same action more than once per turn.  Spending two Stock bars even allows you to combine both a Double and a Combo in the same turn, so you can chain up to eight actions together and rack up heavy damage.  Thankfully a UI improvement is also introduced - attacks now have lit indicators show the range(s) in which they hit (high, low or mid-range), and if an enemy you're targeting with the currently-selected attack is suboptimal or likely to miss entirely, their name will be highlighted in red, so you can back up and pick a better option without wasting MP.

The Crest Magic system from Shadow Hearts Covenant is also discarded in favor of a new one, utilizing Stellar Charts.  Each character can equip only one at a time, and each comes pre-loaded with a set number of slots and spells.  However, by visiting Bugen the Engraver, one can pay money to customize these slots and add new "Stellars" to them, granting access to new and more powerful spells.  Slots come in three basic types for Offensive, Restorative and Support magic, one of the six elements - fire, water, earth, wind, light and darkness - and four levels of power.  One can also change any elemental slot to a generic colorless slot that accepts any element, though this is much a more expensive option.  One can further add an "Effect Up" augmentation to a given slot to get more mileage out of offensive spells, or decrease MP cost of a spells in that slot by up to 50%, both at further cost.

The jokey tone of Covenant is played up even further here, both in its story scenes and in the characters' respective combat mechanics.  One of your first recruits is "Frank", a self-proclaimed ninja with an unidentifiable accent trained in Brazil who wields all manner of bizarre objects as oversized swords; not dissimilar to Joachim from Covenant picking up random objects to use in battle, always accompanied with dramatic speeches.  The requisite Valentine family member is a self-proclaimed superhero, changing form based on how many Calories she consumes; while in Slim form her physical attributes drop while her magic gets stronger, and in "Curvy" form things go the opposite direction.  Shania has a familiar mechanic in her Sanity-consuming monster morphing, though the designs and animations are more over-the-top than ever and extremely fanservicey; more than a little reminiscent of Bayonetta, though this game predates it by several years.  Johnny wields several gadgets in battle and is something of an amalgam of other characters; a cell-phone to summon help, a camera to snap pictures and analyze enemy stats (which then take the form of trading cards as part of a larger sidequest), and eventually gains some monster morphing abilities of his own.  It's all the weirdness and creativity of the series transplanted to a kitschy and exaggerated 1930s America, and it's pretty glorious to behold if you're into that sort of thing.  It is considerably scaled down from the previous game though - understandable since it's technically a spinoff title, but if you're used to the more leisurely pace of Covenant and the original Shadow Hearts it can be a bit jarring.

Shadow Hearts: From the New World definitely feels like a spinoff game - smaller in scale in almost every respect, and as a result it tries to cram more into that smaller space with mixed results.  Combat is slower and tends to drag after a while, particularly late in the game when virtually every enemy inflicts status effects and chains together long, damaging combos if you aren't scrupulously depleting their Stock every time they build it up.  Sidequests feel more than a bit filler-y (particularly Mao's, which requires an awful lot of tedious item farming) and even with all of that, you'll likely have to come through again in New Game Plus to see everything.  The lackluster villains and lack of character development in comparison to previous games feels like a pretty big omission too.  The end result is an enjoyable game that feels like it needed a bit more time to cook - time they unfortunately didn't have as they were closed down not long after its release.  It's a shame the series ends on such a bittersweet note, though, as I think Nautilus had the stuff to become a big name in the RPG field had they had a chance to prove themselves some more.

Developer: Nautilus
Publisher: Aruze, Xseed Games, Ghostlight
Released: 2005, 2007
Platforms: PlayStation 2

Recommended Version: N/A

Shadow Hearts: Covenant

Released three years after its predecessor, Shadow Hearts: Covenant attempts to improve upon its predecessors' example in almost every way.  But does it succeed in joining the ranks of other great RPGs on the Playstation 2, or did its efforts just fall flat?

Shadow Hearts was a modest hit in the Playstation 2's earliest days, so a sequel was inevitable.  But as the visual capabilities of gaming hardware had been drastically upped since the days of the original Playstation, so too did audiences' expectations.  Flat 2D backgrounds with 3D models on top wouldn't cut it anymore, nor would sub-par voiceover or even really standard turn-based RPG gameplay.

As a result of this, Covenant spent three years in development, with its developers at Nautilus (formerly known as Sacnoth) making every effort to push their franchise up to modern standards.  Professional actors (and direction) became a staple of its story scenes, environments and enemies were now rendered in high-quality 3D, and the music was provided by (among others) Yasunori Mitsuda, who was fresh off his successes from Xenogears, Chrono Cross and Xenosaga and had become quite a high-profile composer in the gaming world as a result.

The gameplay saw much refinement as well; while still heavily based around the original's Judgement Ring, numerous new tweaks and elements were added into the mix.  Each of the eight main playable characters now had a very distinct moveset and their own game-spanning sidequest in order to earn new techs and power up.  These range from defeating sub-bosses to taking photos of certain enemies in order to copy their moves to sillier ones like finding "Stud Cards" (trading cards featuring burly men in suggestive attire) and finding aromatherapy oils that grant various benefits in combat when mixed, such as health regeneration or statistic boosts.

Shadow Hearts also features a free-form magic system, somewhat similar in style to Final Fantasy VII's Materia mechanic.  All characters (sans Yuri and Kurando) can now equip Crests, which each have a set list of spells that the character can cast when they are equipped.  Spells are generally much more useful here as well, with a more Final Fantasy-like complement of buffers, debuffs, elemental spells and special abilities.  However, efforts have also been made to balance the crest system to a degree - most of the best abilities on a Crest are not unlocked until they have been used for a time, and each character has a set number of points (determined by their level) they can allocate to equip them, with more powerful crests tending to cost more points.  This generally limits characters to either a wide variety of weaker spells, or a more limited variety of powerful ones, with strategy coming from finding whichever ones will work best for a given boss or dungeon.

The Judgement Ring itself could be even further customized than in the first Shadow Hearts, with options like a Practice Ring (with larger hit zones, but no Strike zones for bonus effect), a Technical Ring (with one miss completely negating that action, but having increased effect when pulled off successfully) and a Gamble Ring (which has only a single small hit area, but successfully hitting it will pull off an entire combo).  Or, for those who find the Judgement Ring mechanic too annoying, there is also an option for automatic control, which will generally give less-than-optimal results but removes much of the timing-based element of the game; it's not what I'd personally recommend, but it is an option for those who simply can't get used to the timing element of the game.

Combat as a whole has seen much improvement as well.  While still turn-based, it has a slightly more dynamic feel owing to some new mechanics, such as characters with higher speed getting more frequent turns and the ability to stun and knock down enemies in order to delay their turns.  One can even create combinations of attacks for extra damage; for example, one character can knock an enemy upward, with a second continuing the attack with a midair combination or even a special move; the more hits chained together in this way, the more bonus damage will be inflicted.  However, some attacks will not chain effectively with others, so experimentation is required to figure out which attack combinations are the most effective.  This is easily the game's funnest element, and it certainly makes me wonder if Game Arts took notice of it while they were designing Grandia III.

Finally, and most significantly, major strides were made in the overall design of the game.  Inactive party members still gain experience points, keeping the party at a relatively even level throughout the adventure. There is also virtually nothing "missable" in the game - with only a few exceptions, one can revisit almost any area at any time, the few that cannot be revisited contain no one-of-a-kind items, and there are no there are no dialog options or scenes that one can pass up and be permanently locked out of.  This alone negates much of the frustration associated with PS1 and SNES-era RPGs, where one innocuous mistake can put a character at a permanent disadvantage, forcing the player to either press on without it, reload to a previous save (not the most viable option with memory cards having limited space and high price tags), or simply restart the game.

With all of these new mechanics and refinements, however, something had to give way; after all, Sacnoth/Nautilus was still a relatively small studio, and an ambitious project like this one had to see significant sales in order for them to stay in business.  In Covenant's case, this comes at the expense of its content.  While Koudelka and the first Shadow Hearts game made their mark as horror RPGs with some grotseque bosses and gory scenes, Covenant reinvents the series as one that is much lighter in tone, though retaining a few of its dark themes, which helped push it down to a Teen rating and the larger exposure that would entail.  While ultimately successful in earning the game more sales and the attention of mainstream gamers (who have come to regard it as one of the better RPGs on the platform), it may prove a disappointment to those who were drawn in by the heavy horror elements of its predecessors.

But whether or not you care for the change of tone that Covenant brought to the franchise, it remains a standout RPG for the Playstation 2 platform.  Its gameplay is well thought-out and engaging, the aesthetics have made significant strides, its pacing has seen great improvement over the original game's (and many slow, animation-heavy RPGs of the era as a whole) and it carries on the series' trademark of bizarre settings, clever dialog and odd yet likable characters.  Those who were let down by Final Fantasy X and are looking for a more traditional take on that franchise's format should give this one a chance.

Developer: Nautilus
Publisher: Aruze, Midway
Platform: Playstation 2
Released: 2004, 2005
Recommended version: N/A