Shadow Hearts – Review

OK. Lets get it over and done with, shall we? This game bears more than a little resemblance to another great series of RPGs for the Playstation by the name of Final Fantasy. Does Shadow Hearts measure up to the behemoth that is FF?

The story appears reasonably simple, the intro sequence setting up the usual “good versus evil” plot line, the male hero (Yuri) has the ability to meld with powerful monsters/demons and thus use their strengths in battle. This game cannot really be reviewed without making numerous references to the Final Fantasy series; the commonalities are far too many to be ignored. The battle sequences appear in similar fashion to those in FF, a stand off graphically, with characters attacking in turn based fashion. Your characters have the usual choices such as Attack, Defend, Special and Item.

The main difference here is the addition of the ‘Judgment Ring’…sounds impressive? Well that really depends on your taste, to me the addition of the ‘Judgment Ring’ appeared to be some lame attempt at originality. In essence, as you choose your action, the ring appears on screen (by ‘ring’ I mean a flat ornate circle), with certain areas of the ring being colored green and red (like a pie chart). So what is the idea behind this? Press the button when the spinning pointer enters one of the green areas to perform an attack, or time it right and get it in a red area for a stronger attack. Whilst it is different, I didn’t feel it truly added to the game in any great way, other than being a fairly original approach. Another addition is that of Sanity Points. Characters need to ensure that these stay above zero lest they go insane and the men in white coats come to take you away. Overall, the storyline is fairly linear and there are obvious paths to follow throughout to get you moving on in the game.

Graphically speaking I had to keep reminding myself that this was a PS2 title and not a PS1 title. Though the intro sequence was nice and there were some other nice FMV throughout, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this could have been so much more. A lot of the graphics seemed to give the impression of low resolution and the backgrounds are fairly static. There just wasn’t enough there to dazzle and impress me and I didn’t feel that the full capability of the PS2 was being harnessed. You could describe the graphics as ‘nice’ but this is possibly as far as you could go, as they simply do not match up to other RPGs on the PS2, specifically FFX.

The soundtrack was slightly less disappointing with some nice composition, some of which seemed reminiscent of a Dario Argento movie soundtrack mixed with oriental melody. My main cringe factor has to be the addition of the “Sea Mother’s” story part way through, which I started to think was accidentally included after being ported from a childs read-along book gone Cthulhuian with her cries of “schloop” and “Skree Skree” coming across as really annoying and laughable. In fact, to take it a step further, it may well be said that the dialogue overall is average at best.

With a reasonably poor backlog of RPG’s to choose from on the PS2, you might be tempted by Shadow Hearts. My advice is that if you’ve already got FFX, this is going to disappoint, but on the upside it is going to be familiar gaming territory for you, just less sharp and intriguing. If this is your first outing on PS2 with regards to RPGs, you might actually enjoy it and you’ll then have the joys of FFX to look forward to once you’ve finished with Shadow Hearts.

It’s not all that bad however, and I feel I should try and find something a little more positive to say about the game. The story can lead you to want to continue playing in spite of yourself, as was shown when I decided to let another family member play the game. I was concerned that perhaps I was missing something and therefore wondered, in my attempt to bring you all a conclusive review, whether other people might see something more in the game than I have. The individual in question has played this game to death, never moving from the sofa the entire day and then opting to take the PS2 into her bedroom at night simply so she could carry on playing. This alone suggests that there is something to this game, but it’s certainly not going to be for everyone.

Review by Angela

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