Shadow hearts 2 is one the best JRPG's I've ever played (but I like SH1's story and tone more)
EDIT: Adding a TL;DR as per suggestion
Basically Shadow Hearts 2 is phenomenal JRPG, great pacing, great presentation, gameplay systems are incredibly fun. It's a really well made video game, however, I really dislike the story and switch to a more comical tone. SH1 is better in this regard.
Ho boy, this post might get me some heat, but I'll do my best to explain my perspective and hopefully get some understanding. I loved Shadow Hearts 1, its mix of horror, historical, occult packed with its own unique charm. It wasn't an entirely humorless game. It was rather vibrant and distinctly human, there was a sense of hope and beauty that prevailed over the darkness, but the balance it maintained was the key to what made it work for me.
Also I played this game in Japanese just like the first game, so I may refer to some names possibly a bit differently and may have missed some plot details, I am a Japanese learner still. So this isn't exactly a review, I just wanna talk about the game. With that, let's get underway.
Shadow Hearts 2 picks up some time after the first game. It is established that the bad ending (Alice dying) is the canonical ending, which I earnestly admire to be honest. World War 1 has been underway for a bit, since it is the year 1915. It is incredibly rare to have any game set during this period, in any genre really, but JRPGs? The best bet you'd get is a paradox game or a shooter like Battlefield 1, but even then, the setting isn't nearly as pervasive as its infamous irl sequel. And it is understandable why. This is one of the darkest, most violent and unrelentingly depressing times in human history. It wouldn't be wrong to say that the entirety of the world changed after this war, it is the catalyst for so much that comes after it. The same can be said of WW2, but that is a war that has a much more clearly defined villain, making it more transferrable to the world of video games.
Given this, I was rather excited for this game. I didn't expect it to be completely depressing of course, but coming from the first game I knew this game could pay respects to the time period and subject matter, as I felt the way it handled Shanghai and Japanese occupation was respectful enough. The world was full of horrors, supernatural and otherwise, but people found the best way to cope with it and still enjoy their lives.
The opening of this game inspired a lot of confidence. The graphical improvement here is immediate. The cinematography, CGI animation, music, it all felt expertly crafted and looked good, comparing to the somewhat stilted CGI of the predecessor. We immediately see Karin, who has Alice sized shoes to fill this time around, but through the window bursts Amon, who at this time I wasn't sure if it was Yuri or not, but yes, it is Yuri. Immediately, this has a lot of edge to it. Namely, Yuri has absolutely no issues dispatching an entire battalion of soldiers in a situation that we thankfully learn is basically in self defense (well, and others, but I digress). Still, he does find it in his heart to defend Karen. For what reason I still honestly don't understand even after beating the game to be honest, she was in line with the soldiers invading the church. I likely missed something though.
We then take control of Karin (who is called Karen in Japanese, funnily enough), who is teamed up with Nikola (called Nikoru in Japanese but Nikolu sounds a bit weird), the least suspicious vatican priest. I was immediately in love with Karin. She was a part of the military, and had the stern attitude to back it up, with a hint of naivety. It makes sense, given the setting, and I loved her uniform and serious portrait. Fencing trained as well? A woman after my own heart! Granted, I am a longsword fencer mainly. I do plan to train saber and rapier at some point tho!
She gave me major Re-l vibes from Ergo Proxy, and I love me some Re-l. Very professional, serious and mature, yet not bereft of humanity.
It was at this point that this games immense improvements over its predecessor were glaringly apparent. We finally have fully 3D rendered backgrounds and despite that, the team still opted for fixed camera angles, a dying art at the time.
This heavily enhances each location you visit, and you can tell a lot of care and attention went to each camera angle in pretty much the entirety of the game. It is immediately felt here in the tower. Most of the angles here are top-down, and are quite zoomed out. Getting close to the angel statues in the entrance has the camera focus heavily on them, looking down on you. I don't know how many of you have been to monasteries, but here in my home country of Serbia, there are a quite a few. And being inside the bigger ones just carries with them such a sense of gravitas, like you are within the presence of something far greater than yourself. These structures don't feel man-made in that sense, even if you know they are, and I am saying this as a non-religious person.
The angles help the tower really capture that feeling in a way that I don't know a fully freeform camera could. This gave me heavy confidence for the rest of the game. And then...Lenny appeared...with the Foot clan from TMNT...I guess it's time to discuss the biggest elephant in the room. I do this partially cause I just want to get the negatives out of the way, and it feels appropriate to place the rant here.
Before I get misunderstood, I want it to be on record that I don't mind silliness, comic relief or just goofy moments. The darkest pieces of media still opt to have some levity to them. Koudelka, the most serious out of this series (if you consider Koudelka a direct part of it), still had Roger Bacon and plenty of quips and jokes exchanged between its characters. Humor is only natural and human. Shadow Hearts also had tons of personality and quirkiness to it.
But what neither game did up until this point was make light of its antagonists, and even worse, have the main heroes be the one doing so. Say what you will about the quality of the first game's antagonists, they never fucked around, not for a single bit. Remember that Tokukai (dehuai in english?) was willing to show up and transform Li Li, who to be fair was already a ghost, into a malformed abomination. He killed people around us, he was an active force that eventually lead to the deaths of countless people when Shanghai got leveled. Albert was a menace as well, he constantly stalked us and even if Yuri did throw quips towards him and other antagonists, that is just Yuris attitude towards...well anything really. Dude's seen some shit, and done some shit. Our first introduction to Olga in Prague is her completely point blank murking a dude no hesitations, something she continues to do for the remainder of the game.
The designs were also appropriately grounded for their regular forms, while morphing into edgy grotesqueries during their battles. It was also important to emphasize they were humans who were corrupted at some point, their evil felt all too real. I am not gonna sit here and pretend that SH1 doesn't have its absurdities in its main story as well. Alice beating up armed Japanese soldiers with a bible and not getting turned into swiss cheese is patently ludicrous, the gang should have been dead 50 times over any time the Japanese soldiers were encounterable enemies. But, I was willing to let that go because of the infrequency of such events and the plausible deniability of it all. Maybe Yuri just morphed into Charon and smoked their asses, we see in this game that does make him basically bulletproof...although that was with Amon to be fair.
The important part was that the threats our team faced were real, and they were taken seriously. Yuri is boastful and quips a lot, yes, but even he gets vibe checked not too infrequently. We also spend a lot more time going into rural areas or spooky castles, mansions and asylums dealing with localized occultist loons and fighting primarily twisted fleshy apparitions. While the story does go big, arguably jumping the shark in its finale, up until then we mostly get a compilation of horror short stories going from place to place.
This made moments of levity, quirkiness and the humor feel like a necessary reprieve to balance the pathos, not to mention a lot of it feels earnestly human and reminds you that there is still good in the world. Shadow Hearts 2, on the other hand, spends the majority of its first half, and honestly well into its 2nd half, just refusing to take itself seriously. Mind you, I am not saying it never does, it had moments here and there that kept my flame of hope lit, but the lack of consistency was immensely offputting. The antagonists at the start this time are Serpentes Gladio, a super secret super evil occult society who want to do eeeeeeeeevilllll...I mean sure, why not. It can work.
But, the representatives of it are Lenny, a large, bald, himbo saturday morning cartoon villain with his foot clan goons who is so unserious and unreal that no one, including our protagonists actually takes seriously, constantly making jokes at his expense when he is on screen, having him go "why ii oughtaaa" and sum such. I am sorry but when your heroes reactions to your antagonists actions is the equivalent of "oh no! Anyways" for a lot of the game, your antagonists aren't compelling. Which is fine, they don't have to be, this can just be a fun romp where you just travel around Europe and beat up some silly baddies and save the day. That works for games like Skies of Arcadia or Dragon Quest XI.
I have 2 fundamental issues with this:
- It is not the time nor setting for this kind of nonsense. This is WW1, to paraphrase Indy Nidel from the phenomenal YT channel "The Great War" that chronicled WW1 week by week "This week was a quiet one on the front, which for WW1 means that only thousands were dying by the day, rather than hundreds of thousands" (not exact quote, but you get what I mean).
That should give you some scope on how unbelievably grim this war was, and it is incredibly difficult for me to believe our little circus troupe(I'll get to that eventually) is freely willy traveling this desolate continent fighting some Dead or Alive rejects, not once confronting the realities of the time period. Yes, this is an alt timeline, but the war is very much acknowledged, I'm not sure how much that pulls weight here.
2, You can't have your cake and it eat it too. Some of you may be screaming at me that the game does pick up in the 2nd half, and yes, I enjoyed the 2nd half much more, queen's garden to the end was the best part of either game. But that doesn't just eliminate the fact that over half the game is spent in a complete lolygag lalaland version of our reality that is so unbelievably juvenile and hard to take seriously. This isn't just a serious story with some humor, this is a nearly parodical interpretation of history, while occasionally tapping back into this series' horror roots and sometimes a few darker moments.
I just find it really hard to articulate just how much this tonal departure and what we were doing in the story upset me. There just was almost never a time where the game just said "ok, playtime's over, shit's real now". We rescue the fucking Tsar of Russia from Rasputin and then almost assasinate a high ranking politician in Japan (killing his dragon ball reject assistant previous to this) and never get noticed in the world seemingly. We can just travel freely!
Literally all it would take to fix a fair few of my issues would be to set the game in 1920s, well after the war. Yes, the Petrograd segment would need to be heavily reworked, maybe Japan too, but idk. I think the idea of meeting a complicated character like Lenin and having a much more interesting story in that city is better than Rasputin is el bad guy and we kill la bad guys :).
Actually, no, we don't. We are tragically incapable of killing these incredibly evil people. Karen should have taken her sword and slashed Veronica's throat in our first meeting with her. Same with Lenny! How it stands, the game does not give us a good excuse as to why we just non-chalontly let these people go and even joke about it, if we want to get info out of them, capture them and beat the sh*t out of them until they sing like a canary. Seem too brutal? Well, this is the organization that begins the game by KILLING A SMALL CHILD! Fu*k em!
I understand a lot of this may seem incredibly semantic, and that I must hate this game or smth. In reality, no, I love this game. But I DO hate the way it treats the world, story and its characters, especially compared to the standard set by its predecessor. Of course the 1st game ended with a world ending threat and this game is set during a global war, so, it isn't wrong to go bigger. But ironically, the stakes are far lower than the 1st game because the game never tries to establish them. Our party members this time around are a wolf, an old man with a little girl puppet, a military woman, a fortune telling dancer, a pro wrestling vampire, a 14 year old girl and a young samurai. Do I have an issue with this lineup on its face? No. Do I have an issue when you want me to take it seriously in context of the story? Absolutely!
The way shit happens in the game, it makes it seem like our group could turn up to actual WW1 battles and win them handily because guns might as well all be squirters in their presence. Chemical warfare? Eh, just chuck a few of those status clearing ailments or have Lucia shower you with mystery oil. We just rarely if ever actually get vibe checked and face a threat we can't overcome with a few combo attacks and a few medicines. It is genuinely far too happy go lucky.
I do think it bears repeating that I am not opposed to just a silly romp. I didn't play Skies of Arcadia expecting it to have the tone of Jin Roh the wolf brigade, I am fine with a game where you just travel across the world, beat up some bad guys, have some fun, explore some dungeons, etc. As I promise I will get into, I don't hate this game, it's incredibly fun. But even when the story turns towards what I loved from the first game in its very last few sections (and a fair few of its side content and even some main dungeons), it's a little too late. By that time I've had to sit through Anastasia...existing (and physically abusing Joachim for no fucking reason which I hated) in every cutscene, Lucia being present while we nearly assassinate a high ranking Japanese politician after we just storm his FAIRLY WELL GUARDED building outright, as apparently her oil cologne makes all of the soldiers miss their shots on her.
I mentioned her briefly but I truly have to go on a tiny sub-rant about Anastasia, because I truly did not like her inclusion in this game. She is a historical figure, one who in our world has met a tragic end and whose family, especially her father, was not one to portray as positively as he kind of is here. Not to say Nicholas II was Ivan The Terrible levels of bad, but at the same time he is a complicated political figure and person whose legacy is quite murky. If you aren't willing to tackle all of that baggage in a serious manner, his inclusion seems a tad tone deaf.
Apart from this, she is also an undeniably goofy character. In a different game, and especially setting, I would be fine with such a character. Here? It's really hard to take anything seriously when you have people verbally and physically berated by a 14 y/o. Whole entire professional trained armies are getting humbled by a sassy princess with a camera. Even when the game tries to be a bit more serious, she just deflates the entire atmosphere just by existing, let alone speaking.
And hell, I would have been almost fine with all of that if ever there was a moment where she is brought down to earth in realization that she is way in over her head, and we see her struggle to meet the cruelty of the world, because she is just a fuc*ing child. A child of royalty too, one that doesn't exactly get to see how shitty life can be for those less fortunate. We truly could have had opportunities to have her jolly nature and disposition challenged in a meaningful way, even leading to conversations with at least a few of the adults that makes her grow and see the world with a broader perspective, wishing to take this attitude back to her country to make a change. The Russian chapter could have greatly benefited from having to run into workers and soldiers who were VERY unhappy with ol Nick the 2nd. Because boy howdy was that the case during his rule. She could have even had an attempt on her life not by Rasputin but by actual driven haters of the regime. And if you believe this isn't the game for that...are we forgetting that Shadow Hearts 1 straddled this line with the Japanese ocupators in Shanghai? This series is the perfect one to explore darker themes, it's inherently a mature series.
I know I've ragged about this for a while, it may seem weird that this one character left me with a profound negative impression, but she truly did. Even with Hailey, the minor character of the previous game, there was rationale to his inclusion. He was orphaned pretty young and that environment toughened him, he needed to be strong for his siblings. He has psychic powers that we can see immobilizes even our own party members when he gets angry and he does get cut down to size by Albert. He is handled with a degree of maturity and does not impact the tone of the story with swooning gags and slapstick shlock. Not to mention through him a pretty poignant issue of London's wealth disparity is brought up and discussed and handled rather tastefully. No matter which way I look at it, I vehemently oppose Anastasia's inclusion in this game as a major party member.
I understand that dedicating 2 paragraphs to one character may seem a bit much, but I hope you can understand where I am coming from and that I've explained my perspective well enough.
Overall, I just didn't enjoy this games main plot, I think it's too much of a departure from the first game with the wrong setting and tone to go for a silly globe trotting goober venture like this while thousands of soldiers are dying not even from the battle but to trench foot (seriously do NOT google it). Like I said, if this was set in the 1920s well after the war, I still wouldn't have liked it, but it would seem less tone deaf and outright disrespectful imo.
I also feel that the party members in this game do not get as much love and agency as those from the first game. Yes, there was a bit of "this character will go actually fight god with you because they're a party member in a JRPG and that is what they do", but I think there was a lot more effort expounded to give each character their own reason and motive for sticking with Yuri. Of course ZuZheng wants to fight with you when his goal is to take down dehuai, and later he sticks with Alice because he wants to help rescue Yuri, after which he is too deep in the whole thing to stop. Alice is chased by the antagonists, and Albert killed her dad, she has every reason to seek revenge. Margarita leaves a couple of times in the start and only tags along due to circumstances, but grows fonder of Alice and Yuri and actively puts in effort to help them. Keiths is the one that most feels like "he tags along because why tf not", but that is fine, better than being cooped up in his castle for eternity. Hailey's mom was captured by Albert, absolutely Hailey will stick around and fight him.
I am not gonna say the party members don't have their own reasons for sticking with you, a baseline of they're good people and want to stop evil is good enough. I just don't feel that we get enough segments where the issue we are dealing with feels personal to the characters involved with it outside of the characters introduction in the main plot. Yes, Anastasia wants to take down Rasputin and protect her country, and that is a pretty lengthy segment. After that, she is just there with us. Half the time whenever cutscenes appear with all party members, it feels like they're just there. When decisions are made on where to go, what to do, it doesn't feel like all of the members are involved, members don't take their own initiative and action and there are rarely if any quarrels or battles of opinions, as far as I saw at least.
Take that in comparison to SH1, where many story section had a select few party members you had to take with you because they had personal investment in the issue. Like in London how Margarita gets robbed by Joshua and then gets entangled in the orphanage plot. Meanwhile ZuZheng and Keiths literally just chill out at the hotel leaving you, Hailey, Marguerite and Alice to deal with it, because these are the characters that have a much more personal attachment to this particular part of the story. That is to be fair Hailey's introductory segment, but the fact that ZuZheng and Keiths aren't available for it speaks more to my point.
Arguably, that may seem like a negative, because if those are the 2 characters you were playing as, it may seem like the game is just taking them away for no reason. But, I am a fan of it, because it reinforces that they are actual characters with agency and will.
Mind you, yes, each character does get their own little personal side-quest and progression system, which is absolutely great, I love that part of the game (I swear I really like this game). I just prefer that the story itself is tailored to give the characters a chance to shine, and most importantly feel like independent human beings here of their own volition, with investment in the matter, rather than this being a part of side content that, unless you're committed to getting everyone's stuff, you might not even see. You could make a few arguments, like how Lucia and Veronica have history together or how we have Joachim want to stop the gang in Le Havre, but these truly do end up feeling like small footnotes overall. Perhaps that is nit picky but I hope you get what I mean. Don't worry I don't want to undermine the absolutely splendid endgame, it's my favorite part of the game.
I also wanna throw this in here because I'm almost done with this part of the review but I have nowhere else to put it: I kinda feel apathetic towards Karin. I don't dislike her, but I also found that she really felt like a tacked on love interest. The moment she joins up with Yuri, she starts to feel like a tertiary C list character. I thought I'd feel that way about Alice but, no, Alice is just as much a main character in SH1 as Yuri is. Remember she is the one that leads the travels to Bistritza and helps rescue Yuri, she goes to Rouen to discover Albert Simon's true name. Karin on the flipside is just kinda...there I guess? I don't hate her or anything, I was just kinda disappointed with her story just eventually being that she is in love with Yuri. With how she was introduced as a serious military woman, I thought she would be a lot more stern, more serious. Subjective, yes, but I really wanted her to feel more cold and hardened, given that she opens the game seeing her entire batallion killed in front of her eyes and is now basically on the run from a cult while teaming up with the killer of said batallion. But within an hour she dons a new set of clothes and is being subject to crass perverted gags while having a permanent smile on her portrait (which I am not against but I wish it was earned after a long time in the game).
Since this is a JRPG sub, I basically thought I would get a similar character to Elly from Xenogears (although I haven't played Xenogears in neigh on 17 years...I should really replay it).
It is very likely I just missed things due to me playing Japanese, and I intend to replay the game when I am better in the language, but this is my opinion as it stands.
Also the ending...man...why did they need to do the whole time travel thing? I really don't like that Karin ended up being his mom. Meaning that she was crushing on her son the entire time... Just....huh? It's just a bit too much to be honest, there was very little reason to go in that direction. I am generally not a fan of paradoxical time travel stuff. Especially not when you put it at the very end like this and I am fairly sure there won't be a follow-up to it, unless you count what little we see of Ann in Shadow Hearts 1 as a sort of weirdo follow-up to it. I don't know, do people generally like this ending? I was kinda left facepalming. And the more I think about it the less I like it.
The good ending doesn't get off Scott free either (I got the bad ending, btw.). Apart from the time travel paradox stuff, this ending has the issue of just kinda being wishful thinking. Again, pet peeve, but I don't like the whole oh he went back in time and reversed Alice's death, happily ever after. I get it, that death was really unfair, and tragic. But I like stories that depict grief and coming to terms with tragedies. I know this game is heavily supernatural, at this point to a somewhat ludicrous degree, but death is final. Any attempts to circumvent it end up in warped perversions, any time this has been attempted, even in SH2, it just ends up leading to a mess. All of us will experience loss, and it is painful, it is awful. But we have to move on, and live for those that no longer do. I felt this ending almost felt fanfic-y in that sense. The bad ending is kind of comically bleak, but, I prefer it as it at least respects the events of SH2 and the accomplishments of our party within it.
Also also also what in the hell is with Anastasia and Kurandou??? I mean she's 14 he's 17 so they are both technically minors but I couldn't help but feel just kinda uncomfortable with that whole thing. I thought it was just a funny gag at first but then they just commit to it near the end and I'm like ??????? WHY!?!?
As a final, thankfully slightly more positive note on the story, this game has really fantastic cutscene direction, animation and voice acting (Japanese at least, I haven't heard the English dub). I also rather enjoyed the game's final stretch, from Queen's garden onward. It felt far more in line with its predecessor, as the story centered around going to a spooky location, retrieving occult items, fighting creepy monsters and performing a ritual that leads to some pretty powerful moments of grief from Yuri with Alice, paraleled with Kattou's own grief with Yoshiko, a parallel that I felt really worked and made sense. This stretch of the game almost feels like this is the idea they had first when starting to write the story and sort of populated the game with everything else in between.
It's such a shame that the rest of the game's story just feels so...immature to me. Even past the slapstick moments, the villains are just complete chumps. I couldn't take any of them seriously except Kattou, who made sense. Lenny and Veronica are honestly downright shameful, these are 3DS era Fire Emblem characters, not 2 people that were alive during frickin world war 1! And gosh that torture sequence...whoever thought that would be so hilarious should have had their wrist slapped, I haven't felt that weirdly uncomfortable in a game in a long while. Sequences like that should be treated as monstrous and horrific, not played for laughs and given a kinky spin.
So, with the way I've been talking about this game, you'd think I think this game is the spawn of satan. If I didn't enjoy the main plot for the majority of it, what in the hell did I actually like about the game?
Well....literally everything else. Let's start from the combat.
This game has one of the most fun combat systems I've ever experienced. It retains the dopamine dispensing judgement ring, now in a much legible format (although I do wish a wider variety of colors was used or a modifier allowed you to select colors, seeing perfects was still very difficult as a colorblind person), but with the new linking system that allows you to combo actions between characters, it's just endlessly satisfying to try and mix and match skills and spells to get the most damage out of each combo chain. There is a reasonable risk/reward to it all, enemies, bosses especially, usually put up enough resistance to make decision making meaningful. This is enabled by combo breaks, which occur when a character misses their spell, fails the judgement ring or uses a support action, that last one being key. If you link up all 4 characters, and use a support action as the first person in the chain, you combo break and lose the other 3 turns. So, you have to pick and chose who is gonna do damage.
I love that counterplay of having to decide on whether to heal with the character or add them to the link to increase the damage just that bit more. In addition, AOE has been changed, now, instead of 2 fixed lines for where the enemies/player characters are, there is a lot of dynamic positioning on the battle and some enemies may naturally be more grouped up. As your AOE now has a specific hit radius, whether it be a circle or line, it is up to you to recognize the opportunities afforded to you by the enemies positioning, and to take advantage of it by using your AOE skills. This does make random encounters take longer, which in some cases felt a bit tiresome with trying to get through dungeons, but dungeon puzzles were never too complicated nor was the encounter rate too high to make it too much of a slog. It retains its rock solid balancing, tuning and pacing from the previous game.
You are never in one place for too long, the dungeons offer a bunch of variety and tons of effort put into them (even the side ones, hell, especially the side ones in some instances). This game just is fun from start to finish, with no BS. While I personally like some games that "take time to get good", this game doesn't take time, it just IS good and only gets better.
The progression systems are also very satisfying. Each character has their own thing that helps them grow more powerful, and you are heavily rewarded for being thorough in each location, but not punished for missing one or 2 things (which is extremely easy to do). There was constantly something new and something to get excited about in this game, whether it is a new location to explore, spells to obtain, NPCs to meet, somehow throughout my entire 100h period within this game I didn't find a single thing, gameplay wise, boring or frustrating.
Each area had clear love put into it, even discolored craggy rocks of Mt. Fuji and shabby old tunnels of Rhonda Mine feel like distinct areas that have unique mechanics and loot to find that don't feel like they just put something together in an afternoon or copy pasted any other part of the game to make.
It truly is a game of constant novelty and that never relents in throwing new curveballs at you. It is rare to find a game that maintains such a steady, exciting pace for its entire duration. Even the genres classics have their down periods, parts of the game you may not always look forward to replaying. But I can't say there was any part of this game I would look at a replay and say "oh god no, not this!". I dare say it's bloody well close to perfect. I never needed to grind to overcome any obstacle, yet I also never found the game being a breeze either, and I absolutely wasn't being optimal about it, when I was doing endgame clean up I saw I missed SO much from earlier on.
Oh, yeah, that's another thing. There is legitimately nothing in this game that is missable. All of the side content is there for you whenever you unlock the full map, unlike SH1 where you can't come back to China after you reach Europe. It's such a nice change!
Overall the gameplay side is one of the best experiences I've had with any JRPG, fine tuned to pretty much perfection. Not too easy, not mind numbingly hard, endlessly fun and engaging, progression is satisfying and rewarding, tuning has the precision of a Swiss clock. But all of that is just a piece of the puzzle that makes up the utter brilliance of this game. What truly helps this game stand out is the utterly impeccable art direction and visuals.
I struggle to find words to describe it without devolving into primal noises. The sheer neuron activation I got stepping into every new area and seeing these gorgeous places all over the world being represented in such a grounded and respectful very picturesque style, with framing I am sure was inspired by actual period photos and footage that survived. Just seeing the Eiffel Tower looming in the distance from Gepetto's apartment, the cathedral of Notre Dam's imposing figure with a backdrop of the sunset, Yokohoma's busy streets, Le Havre's cozy port town vibes and small businesses and pubs adorning the streets of Cannes. As a European, seeing all of the European locations represented here damn near brought tears to my eyes, I was just speechless at it all.
All of that also accompanied by a masterpiece of a soundtrack from Hirota, who is a bass player, and by god, the bass in these tracks does something to me I swear. Shadow Hearts just has a distinct identity and its presentation oozes that vibe and atmosphere. From the moment you step into its world, it has a way of holding you there, treating you like an esteemed guest of honor. This team really created something special, there is very little like it. Just anywhere. Rarely did I look forward to booting up a game and looking forward to what comes next every single day for the past month and a half, but Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 hit that point.
There is more I could gush about and I get that this review does have the negatives outweigh the positives but that is my fault as a writer, as I find it easier to rant about stuff than praise what I like. But, let that not cloud my overall judgement of the game. This is one of the finest JRPGs if not games I've ever played. Were it not for my issues with the plot, I would genuinely make an argument that this is an almost nearly perfect game. I don't know what I would change within it - maybe add a button to turn off random encounters to help in some dungeons but I never felt it got that bad at all.
Even if the 3rd game is much goofier as I've heard, I still really look forward to playing it because this series is really that special.