Okay, true confession time. I love a good role-playing game(RPG). I get enormous satisfaction spending several hours levelingup characters, finding the best weapons, learning the hardestspells, then proceeding to beat the daylights out of someunsuspecting random monster. That being said, story is importanttoo.
The Story Begins
Shadow Hearts: Covenant for the PS2 is the sequel to2001’s Shadow Hearts. The story picks up a few monthsafter the conclusion of the first game, surprisingly, one of themost innovative aspects of the story is its setting.
Whereas most RPGs are set in some far-off land wrought with mythand magic, or some far-off time where even goldfish have laserbeams attached to their heads, the world of Shadow Hearts:Covenant is 1915 Europe, during World War I.
The Imperial German army has taken most of northern France,except for the small village of Domremy, the birthplace of Joan ofArc. Lt. Karin Koenig is dispatched to take the village.
As she is exploring the small chapel in the village, most of herunit is wiped out by a demon. The demon fights his way into thechapel and the remaining soldiers attempt to kill him.
In the battle a soldier lets loose a grenade which falls infront of Karin. The blast is intense, damaging much, but when thesmoke clears the demon is crouched over Karin, protecting her fromany damage.
She wakes up a few days later, and the German General station inLuxembourg sends her back to Domremy with an attaché fromthe Vatican to destroy the demon.
Soon after returning to Domremy, the demon attacks, and theattaché reveals he is part of a secret sect bent on takingthe demon’s power and dominating the world. Why do theyalways make Catholics the bad guys? The attaché confrontsthe demon, who turns into Yuri, the hero from the first ShadowHearts. One minor scuffle and a curse later, Yuri isunconscious, powerless and ready to start the game. Thus far youhave invested 45 minutes and your reward is awkward gameplay. Readon.
Awkward Gameplay
Shadow Hearts: Covenant follows the model of mostturn-based RPGs. Your job as player is to wander around variousmaps, search for items and get into random encounters. The gamelacks any sort of free camera control, so the view you have is theview you get, and the menu system feels clunky. Once a randomencounter is triggered, the screen “shatters,” and youare dropped into battle mode. In battle mode, characters have aturn priority meter displayed across the top of the screen whichindicates the order of actions in a battle.
One major twist in Shadow Hearts: Covenant is theJudgment Ring. All actions in battle are dictated by the ring.
For example, if you want to attack, use an item or cast a spell,a large floating ring appears before the character attempting totake action with different zones highlighted in differentcolors.
A bar begins to race around the ring, and you press the buttonwhilst the bar is in a colored zone. If you are successful, youcharacter performs the action, if not, you fail.
You can customize the ring with items that you find on yourquest. With the ring, the overall feeling of the game suddenlybecomes less RPG and more like trying getting the right powercharge for your golf swing in Golden Tee. Timing iscritical, and the game becomes a lot more stressful and a lot lessfun. Frankly, this system made control of battles extremely awkwardand frustration levels rose rapidly.
As far as graphics go, the game is par for the course for PS2games. Nothing spectacular, nothing truly horrendous either. Afterall, PS2 is getting long in the tooth and there are a lot prettiergames out on other consoles and PCs.
What you do get is interesting character design and fairly goodcharacter animation. In some places the levels felt quite barebones, it would have been nice to the more detail in environmentsacross the board. Spells are well animated, but again, nothingspectacular.
Overall Impressions
Shadow Hearts: Covenant has many interesting elements.The setting, WWI, is unique for an RPG. Unfortunately, the gamefalls back on tired humor and cliché. One thing thatbothered me immensely was the pacing. I expected there to be alarge opening CGI sequence to set the mood of the game, and I wasnot disappointed. However, I did not expect to take three steps andhave another CGI sequence, play for a second, then another andanother, etc.
Overall, hardcore RPG players will probably get a kick out ofthe game, but to someone new to the genre, the overall dark toneand truly kooky humor might be off-putting. If you are killing timeuntil the November season premiere of “The O.C.” anddesperately want some new entertainment then check out ShadowHearts: Covenant, otherwise. You might be better off watching”Futurama” reruns on Cartoon Network.
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