Shadow Hearts Review
Round and round we go
The 2001 Holiday season was a rough time for a lot of publishers. Metal Gear Solid 2 and Grand Theft Auto 3 were absolutely tearing up sales charts, and Final Fantasy X was just around the corner too. Big fall hits like Devil May Cry and Silent Hill 2 were garnering lots of interest as well. And it was into this climate that Midway released Shadow Hearts, the semi-sequel to a strange, little-known PSone game called Koudelka – Needless to say, very few gamers cared. But even if it had been released in calmer waters, I still don’t think many more people would have found it. Developed by team Sacnoth (a group of former Squaresoft programmers), Shadow Hearts is distinctive due to it’s setting, but is somewhat loathsome otherwise.
Story
The setting is SH’s greatest strength. Shadow Hearts is set in real world 1913, a year before World War 1. A young exorcist named Father Elliot and his daughter Alice are traveling through Rouen on a secret mission from the Vatican. While waiting for a contact, a man in a top hat and suit politely introduces himself to the two as a one Mr. Roger Bacon, and then promptly rips Father Elliot to shreds. Alice is able to escape, but is quickly captured by the Japanese government, and brought into custody. While on board a train bound for Shanghai, Bacon tracks her down, and as he is about to capture her, another gifted youth on the train intervenes. That’s right! The archetypical troubled, rude hero! This year’s model, Russian born Yuri von something or another, watched his parents die, and is of course gifted with “strange powers.” He saves Alice, rips out Bacon’s eye (in a particularly random and satisfying scene) and hops off the train. And this is where the game begins; Yuri and Alice, getting to know each other, and finding out Bacon’s plan, and what Father Elliot was doing.
It’s not that the tale is particularly well told, and it’s not one of the most engaging narratives I’ve ever seen either. But it’s just so unique, that it ends up being enjoyable. The main problem with the story was that characters have that strange Final Fantasy syndrome, where they are introduced, given very unique personalities, and then forgotten about. They cease being people, and simply turn into more party members. More combatants to mess around with. But the setting is still really neat. Shadow Hearts, certainly isn’t the first RPG set in the real world, but unlike similar titles (Earthbound), it doesn’t take a goofy, or inverted look at it. Oh there’s lot’s of magic and sorcery, but there is also a lot of actual conflict. You’ll eventually tangle with both the Japanese and Chinese armies, and the conflicts between the two at the time are pretty well outlined. A character late in the game also wants to destroy the world because he senses a great catastrophe (WW1) approaching that will eventually divide the world with an iron screen (the iron curtain). Neat stuff. It would have been nice to see some of the history play a more active role in the story, but I’m satisfied with it simply serving as a great backdrop.
Gameplay
Nothing too special here. It’s all standard RPG stuff. Battles are turn based, and you can attack, cast spells, defend, and use items. The hero is a Harmonioxer, which is really a fancy word for summoner. He can transform into a variety of beasts and perform special moves. As you defeat monsters, you will accrue something called Malice from the defeated foes. If enough of it builds up, the dead souls will grow strong enough to send death himself after you, and he will randomly appear in battle to challenge you. Yuri has to periodically make trips to the graveyard area via save points to clear it out, which gets to be quite troublesome after a few hours. You can run from death every time he appears, and the graveyard itself is just plain boring. There’s nothing there. You just have to run off there every 15 battles or so and fight some weak spirit. How was this supposed to enhance or enrich the Gameplay in anyway?
Progression is pretty normal too. Move from town to town, gain levels, buy new equipment, recruit new party members, etc. One thing I didn’t like though was the fact that you can’t go back to any of the areas from the first part of the game. The first part of the game all takes place in China, and the second half all takes place in Europe. An important event happens about halfway through the game and BAM! No more Asia. While it’s true that a large section of the continent does get blown to bits, there is no reason why the characters shouldn’t be allowed back in. Logically, the back and forth trips would have taken huge amounts of time in 1913, but there is nothing in video game logic that would prevent them from going back. It’s a bit of a pain since there are quite a few things in the game that you can obliviously skip over. For example if you don’t pick up an erotic book on a coffee table in a tower that you visit once near the end of Asia, you can never get the most powerful fusion monster in the game. There is no indication that the item is used for anything, and I don’t even think that there is any sign that it’s on the table either.
Pretty standard right? Nothing we haven’t seen before. But Shadow Hearts does feature one little element that separates it from most RPGs: The Judgment Ring. Every single action in Shadow hearts revolves around the judgment Ring – attacking, using items, and even buying things. The Judgment Ring is a small radar line that swings around a circle. You have to stop it in anywhere from 3 to five points. That’s it. That’s the big innovation. And boy does it get old quick. Whew. Different actions have different spots, and there are various ailments too (speed up, area decrease, etc.), but it’s still an annoying and stupid invention. I’m sure it was meant to spice up an otherwise plain system, but it actually serves to further the opposite purpose. It has a tendency to make things more tedious. You want to open a locked door? Spin the ring! Use a potion? Take a spin! Play the goddamn digging mini game!? Spin that god forsaken ring you cur! This is what the winners of Wheel of Fortune have to do all day in hell.
Graphics
Graphically, Shadow Hearts is a landmark game. Hands down, the worst looking PS2 game I’ve ever played. Nothing good can be said about the graphics. The character models are blocky and plain. The texturing is about as rudimentary as it gets. Any less effort and you really wouldn’t be able to tell the characters apart. Special effects are almost non-existent. The animation is awe-inspiring. The main character’s run looks exactly like he’s trying to do “the windmill.” Arms flailing, legs pumping, he looks like he’s constantly about to fall. It was so amazing that I had to show a buddy of mine the game, just so he could witness this run. Fan-fricking-tastic. It’s the same deal as when people show off their scars. “Where’d you get that?” “Fell off a tractor into a spike pit that was also filled with snakes and porcupines.” “oh.” I don’t think that I’ve ever actually laughed at the absolute horror of a game, but I did here. The game is set against pre-rendered backgrounds (ala Resident Evil) to terrible effect. The backgrounds are pixilated and grainy, and lack any detail. The color pallet is a monstrosity as well. Neon blue benches! Bright green fluorescent lamps! Truly, the backgrounds in Resident Evil 2 (1998) looked better. Not that I think that pre-rendered backgrounds can’t look good – Onimusha and Final Fantasy used them to great effect, and I firmly believe that the Resident Evil Gamecube remakes are the best looking games on the planet – It’s just that Shadow Hearts butchers the effect. The characters literally look pasted on. It’s almost as if the backgrounds were all made at a lower resolution than the screen, and were stretched to fit it.
Now I could understand, nay, even accept Shadow Hearts if it was, say, a launch game or something. But the PS2 was already a year old when it came out. This was released a mere month before Final Fantasy X! Comparing the two games is like looking at games from two different systems. And that friends, is exactly what I think happened. Smart money says that Shadow Hearts was an almost finished PSone game that was hastily tailored (or butchered I should say) for the burgeoning PS2 market. Really, the only good thing about the graphics are the CG movies, of which there are about three. Very nice, very professional. About the caliber of what Square was capable of circa Final Fantasy 9. Not mind-boggling, but certainly pretty.
Sound
The music was actually very good. I can’t really pin it down under a specific theme or style, but it’s all very solidly composed, and very atmospheric. Since Shadow Hearts is something of a period piece, the music reflects that, and there are very few modern sounding ballads. Lots of strings, lots of lute – the kind of things they made songs on back in the old days. Of particular note are the battle themes, which are my favorite tracks in the game. Usually a song that you hear hundreds of times tends to get old, but I dug these from start to finish.
The voice acting was so-so. Unlike Koudelka, which was almost entirely voiced and featured great acting, there is very little spoken dialogue in Shadow Hearts, and what is there doesn’t sound great. I questioned some of vocal director’s choices too. For example, Keith the vampire is given a goofy Dracula/Transylvanian accent (“I vant to suck your bloooooood!!”), which doesn’t fit his suave in game persona at all. The dubbing is only half done too. Certain battle cries are in Japanese and certain ones are in English. It’s a bit stupid to hear a character start a special move in English and finish the second half in Japanese. Pure laziness on Midway’s part.
Replay Value
Not too much. The main game only takes about 20 hours to beat, which isn’t awful by RPG standards, but it isn’t great either. There are a few side quests to partake in here and there, but as I mentioned, a lot of these become closed off if you do or don’t do certain arbitrary things early in the game. I did like what was there though. Early in the game you can join a secret lottery group, and as you progress, random townsfolk will turn out to be members and you can play for prizes (on the damnable judgment ring of course). There are a few optional areas you can explore late in the game, and several secret summon forms to sniff out as well. There are two endings (good and bad), but the method for getting them is…..a little odd. Eventually the Malice meter death attacks are replaced by four emotion masks (don’t ask). If you beat all of them, and then go to the graveyard and read one of the tombstones, an event late in the game will play out differently, and a certain character will not die. None of this is ever explained, or even hinted at of course, but the endings are there for those who want to see them. There is also a bizarre new game plus mode, but the only things that carry over are Yuri’s monster summon forms. Again, most people won’t care, but it is there.
In Closing
While Shadow Hearts certainly isn’t broken in the same way Koudelka was, Sacnoth still has a ways to go. The setting is very unique, and the music is very good, but the Gameplay is a bit stale, and it’s an absolute joke graphically. Since I’ve become so very fond and so very dependent on using crappy little analogies in these closing paragraphs, here’s another one for you; It’s like a portrait, with a beautifully embroidered gold frame, and no picture in it. The artistic aspects are all great, but Sacnoth needs to include solid Gameplay as well.
