Shadow Hearts: Covenant - possibly the most underrated PS2 game in years

Cafe Society
1

After the crushing disappointment of the Xenosaga series (“Xenogears” remains my favorite RPG of all time) and four years since the last Final Fantasy game, I’ve been hurting for a good Role Playing Game for a while. I’m a busy guy, so I don’t play too many RPG’s, though they’ve always been my favorite genre - I just figure that if I’m going to kill precious time on a game, it has to be worth it.

But hearing that Final Fantasy XII has now been pushed back yet again to “Second Quarter '06” was too much - I needed something to play. So I started digging around and came up with Shadow Hearts: Covenant. I think the premise and style is what attracted me - unlike traditional fantasy RPG’s, it takes place during World War I, though it contains quite a bit of supernatural stuff.

I found a cheap copy online - I paid about $15 for a still-sealed copy - and got in the mail a few days ago.

Wow - it’s just an incredible game, a real must-play for RPG fans. I’d say it’s equally FFX’s equal (depending on how the story plays out, it may be better), and I can see this franchise really ramping up to be as good as the Final Fantasy series.

The game’s setting really gives it a refreshing twist - while it’s still a traditional RPG with random battles, dungeon crawling, items, weapons, leveling up, and so on, the settings - 1915 Montmarte France with its newfangled subway and Moulin Rouge, war-torn villages in germany and poland, an old, haunted prison tower in the Vatican - give the game a wonderfully gothic twist. The characters folow in historical creativity - a rapier-weilding German army commander, a rogue priest, an old puppeteer, and so on.

The battle system is really hot - it’s a traidtional turn-based system, but any action you take involves a “judgement ring” system - basically, it’s like a roulette wheel that you stop using the x button, and the amount of damage or effectiveness of your action is determined by your ability to stop the wheel on certain points. It’s very intuitive, and spices up the traditional battle system with a button-mashing good time. In fact, this ring system turns up in many areas of the game where you might not expect it - invoking it while buying items allows you to try for discounts (or markup when selling), and so on.

There are a bunch of little side-games and optional quests, like getting dresses made that enhance your puppeteer’s doll’s (which he uses to attack) abilities, sending your main character to the “graveyard within his soul” to sacrifice spirit energy to the different demons that he can turn into (it’s actually creepy as hell when you go there and do this), and so on.

So far, I just love the game. The story’s already engrossing and meaningful, the battles are fun and not too frequent, and the style and presentation is top-notch. Because I haven’t heard a single other person mention the game and it seems to have been critically passed-over, I figured I’d give it a bump and ringing endorsement!

2

Yeah, it is a very cool game, with a twisted sense of humor when the situation calls for it. The storyline is at maximum pathos for those who’ve played the first game, but it was still plenty interesting without knowledge of the first’s plotline. Wait 'til the endgame; the story will blow your mind!

3

I don’t know - I’m halfway through it but of the three games in the set I still prefer the first. Koudelka just had a better plot and seemed to be more innovative than Shadow Hearts (admittedly I disliked the judgement ring system which doesn’t help.)

4

I never played Koudelka, and I understand it’s hard to find these days. Shadow Hearts was sort of cool, but I really hated that Judgment Ring system. SH: Covenant improves the system somewhat by giving you some options with the Ring, but it still gets on my nerves. As for the story, so far I’m very unimpressed. And what’s with the German woman suddenly turning into Slutty McSlutbomb when they get to Paris? And the ridiculous “we’re gayer than gay” tailors who want you to collect beefcake trading cards?

5

I have never played the game (I don’t own a PS2; I’ve not even played FFX), but my RPG-playing friends have nothing but good things to say about it. That judgement ring thing sounds annoying, though; is it more or less hassle than the system in Legend of Dragoon, would you say?

6

The judgement ring doesn’t change over time like the additions did, so that it makes it a little easier to get used to.

Personally, I thought SHC was pretty weak compared to the original (and I’ve never played Koudelka, so I can’t comment on that). It was way too long, they changed Yuri from a total badass to a whiny bitch, they lost the dark atmosphere of the first game, and they failed to get a villain anywhere as cool as Roger Bacon.

7

Funny that I just saw this thread. I have been playing FFX for the last month or so (I don’t spend too much time on it) and am going to beat Sin tonight. (This is a foregone conclusion since I beat the monster collection/combat sidequest which means I am far more powerful than I should be at this point). Now that was a damn good RPG. Were the other games in the series anywhere near as good? The only other one I have played was back in the NES days.

8

The Final Fantasy series has a long history of good games, although there’s some definite staleness in the later releases. FFX was a step in the right direction, but I’m waiting to see what they do next before I pass judgement on the future of the series.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of the PS1 games (7-9). IMO, the peak of the series (so far) was 3-6. 1 and 2 originated a lot of what you take for granted in console RPGs these days, but they probably won’t capture your interest to any great degree.

9

Y’know, I tried playing 2, but I just couldn’t get into the ability system. It was just too… something. I’m not sure exactly why I didn’t like it, but I didn’t.

I’m looking forward to Dragon Warrior 7 (tho’ I understand they’re reverting to the Dragon Quest name in America for this one)…

10

The only problem I had with FFX was that I wound up kinda wanting to to do the monster ranching sidequest - but thinking ahead of the many hours it would take and just deciding I didn’t care. Too much work, too little reward.

Also, some of the characters got really annoying to me - Yuna, Tidus, Wkka at point, Kimahri just for being born. I want to date Rikku, and Auron is just ridiculously cool, though.

I love the Suikoden series myself (I think Suiko 2 was one of the very best games of all time), though I was scared off by iffy reviews of the Shadow Hearts series.

11

Didn’t they release that a few years back?

SH1 is available for about $30, and even if you do all the sidequests, it’ll only take about 25-30 hours. It’s definitely worth picking up.

12

Oops. I meant DQ8. Eight!

I’ve made that mistake before, dammit.

13

OK, I finished FFX. THe girlfriend has watched me play it this last month while I have been layed up with a broken foot. She spent the entire last cutscene repeating over and over:

I thought he was going to get to be real!

The definitely hinted that that was going to be the case. Excellent ending. The GF cried a good bit.

14

I don’t have the money to waste, right now, unfortunately. I’m having a hard time finding work, though I expect to have something by the end of the year. One of my first orders f businesses with that new paycheck will be to pick up some golden oldies and a few new friends from the game store, if’n ya know what I mean.

He was real. But like Auron, his body was basically held together only by sheer force of will (or, in this case, the will of the dreamers of Zanarkand). He just wasn’t ever fully alive in the human sense. If it helps, he is simpy dead, not “unexisted.” Japanese mythology doesn’t worry too much about how the hero came about. He just is. Presumably, all the people in Zanarkand, despite basically being undead, are this way.

15

You could get that impression from the ending, but if you go around at the end of the game and re-visit all the old temples, one of the aeons–I thinj it was Shiva–makes some comments that suggest that Tidus is still alive in the same sense that he ever was.

16

I did this. Several of the aeons, as well as some earlier events, hinted that Tidus’s encounter with Sin that pulled him out of the dream (how the hell did that happen anyway, and what originally pulled Jecht out?) altered him and made him able to exist without the fayth dreaming him. Others however seemed to imply that Tidus was doomed to nonexistence.

17

About Tidus…

Dream-Zanarkand should be gone. The Fayth needed to stop dreaming about it. However, Tidus can’t be jut gone - Japanese mythology doesn’t swing that way. What was, is. Tidus just wasn’t human, not exactly. He was and is a spirit of Zanarkand. He may, in fact, be hanging around there. He is still alive - but that’s just it. In the same sense he ever was. He never had a flesh and blood body except through the power of Sin. He was a spirit from the get go.