Having never played the original Shadow Hearts, I was a tad apprehensive about playing the sequel. I had nothing to worry about, though, as this one doesn’t require you to have knowledge of the original tale. The key bits seem to be summed up, and the story here is fairly stand-alone. It’s a good thing, because the original game didn’t make many waves at retail, so most gamers ended up missing out on it. Shadow Hearts: Covenant is a fairly traditional RPG with a unique world and a great battle system; RPG fans should give this one a look.

The game begins with a lengthy, but wonderfully animated, prerendered cutscene. A troop of German soldiers is attempting to gain control of a small town, when they encounter a demon in the church. Needless to say, the demon slaughters most of the troops. Among the few survivors is Karin, one of our main characters. Shortly after she returns to base, the German military orders her to go back to the town with the help of an exorcist and eliminate the demon, and this is where the game begins. After some quick preparation, Karin and the exorcist head back to the church where the story gets turned on its head.

As it turns out, the exorcist is a member of a secret society and has a personal grudge against the demon, who turns out to not be a demon at all. Instead, he’s the protagonist of the original Shadow Hearts, a young man named Yuri who has the ability to turn into monsters. After siding with the “demon”, Karin and Yuri somehow escape from the exorcist and his men, although Yuri is cursed in the process. The curse has weakened him considerably, and he’s suddenly forgotten how to use his monster transformations. The first part of your quest involves curing Yuri, although later the focus of the story shifts dramatically. It’s a great ride, and one of the more interesting RPG stories in the last few years. Some of the characters are truly memorable.

Outside of combat, Shadow Heats: Covenant plays like a typical roleplaying game. You’ll go from towns to dungeons, fighting battles and listening to lots of dialogue. The first few hours are pretty heavy on the storytelling, which is kind of a shame. It’s hard to get into the deep and flexible battle system when you’re constantly interrupted by cinematics. On the plus side, though, with just a few exceptions, the scenes are enjoyable and move the story along nicely. The towns are a tad smaller than I’d like; each one is pretty tiny, and there isn’t a whole lot to do in most of them. There are some secrets scattered about in them, though.

The true highlight here is the battle system. Like the Mario RPGs, Shadow Hearts: Covenant requires a fair amount of twitch skill to excel in combat. For almost every aspect of combat, from normal and special attacks to item usage, you have to spin the judgement ring. A circle appears onscreen, with certain areas “pied” off. A line then begins going around the ring, and it’s your task to hit the button when it’s within each colored area. On a basic attack, for example, there might be three pies. Land a hit in all three and you’ll do three attacks. If you only hit one, you’ll just do one. Some of them even have a special sliver at the end of each pie, which produces extra effects like more damage.

Each action has differently placed pies, and different characters have different arrangements, too. You can customize the ring for each character with the use of special items. Increase the size of the pies, or even the size of the special slivers. You can switch the ring’s mode to, for example, be more powerful but require much more precision. Those that just can’t get the timing down can set it to “auto-ring”, which never misses, but has plenty of limitations. This battle system is a great deal of fun, and adds a great sense of player involvement in a genre where sometimes the player just feels like he’s watching.

If you’re feeling lucky, you can set up combo attacks. These allow your whole team to attack in one string, but if you screw up and miss on the ring, you’ll break the combo. Anyone who was in your combo and hasn’t yet attacked will lose their turn. The potential for damage on moves like that is fantastic, but it’s certainly a risk. Perhaps the best part about the battles is their frequency. There are plenty of battles, but you typically aren’t stopped every 10 seconds with an annoying random battle.

It’s not a visual stunner, but the game looks just fine. The characters are impressively rendered, although many enemies don’t look quite so great. Likewise, a lot of the battle animations just don’t seem as smooth as they should be. This is primarily true for the average grunt enemy, though. Player characters tend to animate quite nicely, and there are some really neat looking special moves, especially towards the end of the game. The battle music is surprisingly tolerable, and even after the hundredth battle, I didn’t mind it. The voice acting, on the other hand, is acceptable at best. Some of the actors do a better job than others, but there are a few real stinkers on the team.



Article By: Joe Mackie