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 Shadow Hearts? The hell kind of hipster game are you talking about? Shadow Hearts was a series of four JRPGs, primarily on the PS2, that started with the PS1 game, Koudelka, in 1999. The series deviates from the usual JRPG norms in many ways, giving them a unique style and charm. First of all the series doesn't take place in Tolkien fantasy land or a fantasy land with sci-fi thrown in like most JRPGS, but instead its set in our world around the dawn of the 20th century with Lovecraftian horrors threatening the world. It also plays fast and loose with history and actual historical figures like Rasputin, Mata Hari, and Al Capone make appearances in interesting ways. The cast is also very unique when it comes to JRPGs. Two out of the three protagonists of the series, Koudelka Iasant and Yuri Hyuga, are far from your JRPG standard of plucky teenagers or brooding young adults, both are very sarcastic, flippant, and not at all impressed with the cosmic horrors and demons they run across. The rest of the cast are even far more colorful with the likes of Anastasia Romanov, a gun toting mariachi straight out of a Robert Rodriguez movie, and a very quirky family of vampires. The casts travel the world to places like Mt. Fuji, Chichen Itza, Shanghai, and St. Petersburg in their quests to save the world. Areas vary from decaying mansions and castles, speakeasies, Vatican towers, Chinese villages, secret government labs, and living temples from other dimensions. The series start off as horror games but eventually it gains a very tongue and cheek and aware sense of humor. Overall Shadow Hearts is my favorite JRPG series and I think its still woefully unappreciated, though they have become cult games and still have their fans which is half the reason I decided to start the thread in the first place. They also tend to have great soundtracks. Now for a kind of quick summary of the series for those who aren't in the know. Koudelka (1999)  Koudelka was headed by Hiroki Kikuta, the composer for the Mana games, who broke away from Square and created Sacnoth, a dev team comprised of fellow former Square developers, seeking to create a unique JRPG that didn't fall into the anime clichés that the rest of the genre was quickly slipping into. What we got is Koudelka, a dark and atmospheric RPG rooted in the aesthetics of Gothic horror. It’s the darkest game in the series and one of the very few horror RPGs. The year is 1898 and a young Roma woman and powerful psychic, Koudelka Iasant, is drawn to a secluded monastery in the hills of Wales. There she discovers a whole host of monsters and vengeful spirits have taken over the monastery due to a dark ritual. She allies with an adventure-seeking English aristocrat, Edward Plunkett, and a stern and cultured Irish When it came to gameplay Kikuta wanted a fusion of JRPG and survival horror, like Parasite Eve. His crew on the other hand wanted a more traditional JRPG. Because of this divide Koudelka is a total mess gameplay-wise which brings the game down. Its has random battles and has a glacially paced grid based combat system with breakable weapons. Fun it isn't. Regardless Koudelka still stands as a genuinely mature and unique game in a genre that's still pretty juvenile in theme and tone. It also laid the groundwork for the rest of the series. Shadow Hearts (2001)  Koudelka was a total bomb and Kikuta left Sacnoth soon after. Out of the ashes of Sacnoth grew the new team of Nautilus and two years later they released Shadow Hearts in 2001. Shadow Hearts began the process of lightening up the series tone-wise as the series went on. Shadow Hearts is still a horror RPG, filled with horrific enemies and unsettling locales, but it’s not as oppressive as Koudelka was and has more lighthearted humor compared to Koudelka’s dark and sardonic style. Shadow Hearts take place in 1913 and focuses on Yuri Hyuga, a scrappy loner that is a Harmonixer, a person with the ability to transform into monsters. He is urged by a mysterious voice to travel to China where he saves a young exorcist, Alice Elliot, from a strange and dapper man that claims he’s the medieval alchemist, Roger Bacon. The duo travel together in their quest to stop Bacon and his followers like the Taoist monk Dehuai in their bid of destroying the world by using powers from beyond. Yuri and Alice befriend some other allies along the way and their journey takes them from Japanese-occupied China all the way to London. Shadow Hearts acts a sequel to Koudelka and the characters, events, and places eventually become important to the plot. Shadow Hearts really fixes up the combat system, using a more traditional JRPG set-up but with a twist. All actions are decided by the Judgment Ring, which kind of makes it sort of like a rhythm game. You have to hit X at the right time when the cursor goes over an orange area of the ring in order to attack or use items, hitting smaller red areas give you bonus damage/benefits. While it may seem strange at first you really get used to it and makes battles far more fast paced than Koudelka's ever was. Unfortunately Shadow Hearts didn’t do all that hot, especially in America where it was released the same week Final Fantasy X was. (Fun fact, Midway published this and Covenant in the States.) But ultimately it proved successful enough for a sequel, which leads us to the best game in the series, Covenant. Shadows Hearts: Covenant (2004)  A direct sequel to the original, Covenant continues the adventures of Yuri during the height of WWI in Europe in 1915. He and his newfound friends like German officer Karin Koenig, have to contend with a secret society, Sapienties Gladio, who have an interest in Yuri and his powers. The group also confronts a former ally from Yuri's past. Overall Covenant is a fantastic game that really improves on a lot of what the original set-up. Covenant is much sillier than its predecessors but it manages to strike a good balance between tongue and cheek absurdity and serious moments. Covenant also does not shy away from the grotesque locales and enemies that the previous games had. It’s also quite lengthy with an rear end-ton of side-quests to complete. I think Covenant is one of the best JRPGs ever made and is a must play for any JPRG fan. Shadow Hearts: From the New World (2005)  The final game in the series, FTNW takes places in the Americas during 1929. FTNW is the ultimate culmination for the series’ penchant for absurdity and in the process kind of leaves a good amount of its horror roots behind. FTNW is also the most stock JRPG in the series, what with things like it losing much of its darker tone and having your usual spunky teenage protagonist with bad hair in Johnny Garland, but it still retains the series’ charm. The writing and pacing is weaker than the other games, but FTNW refines the gameplay, adding even more stuff to bring some more variety and challenge to combat. The main plot focuses on Johnny Garland, a teenager from Brooklyn trying to hit it big as a detective. He soon finds himself embroiled the schemes of Danny DeVito as The Penguin look-alike Professor Gilbert and along the way Johnny teams up with a Native American woman named Shania in her mission to stop Gilbert and to find the mysterious woman who wiped out her tribe. Despite its flaws FTNW is still well worth checking out. Sadly this would prove to be the last game in the series as Aruze, the series’ publisher, disbanded Nautilus a few years later and the team has been scattered across the Japanese side of the industry ever since. The last appearance of the series in a video game was in the infamously horribly dubbed crossover RPG, Chaos Wars. Aruze also made a slot machine, which is the last Shadow Hearts related release. Aruze is mainly a pachinko company so they’ve just been sitting on the rights ever since, with a fourth game looking extremely unlikely. Okay, I am interested. Where can I pick these up? As stated before Aruze is totally content with doing nothing with the series so none of the games are up for digital download on PSN and may never be. The only way you’re getting them is getting hard copies or emulation. Koudelka is rather rare and expensive. The Shadow Hearts games not so much, but they still will run you around 100 bucks combined give or take. Amazon is your best bet now, Game Stop used to carry them but seeing is how they phased out their PS2 collections it might be harder than it was a few years ago. The main Shadow Hearts games are definitely worth tracking down though, especially Covenant. Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 08:10 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 05:12
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 11:15 |
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I want to express much love for the Shadow Hearts series. Although Koudelka didn't really do well and is probably a pretty annoying game for most people to play, sometimes I go back and watch the cutscenes and just  at how godly the voice-acting interacting with the CG movies is. Jesus, especially since it was a Japanese team, outside of their own language, directing a group of English speaking actors who (if my memory recalls correctly) were brought together in the same room to act. Just so much love and effort put into the game.Also, can I ask if about spoilerish plot discussion here? I want to know if there was a change in the sacnoth team in between Shadow Hearts and Shadow Hearts: Covenant, because I felt like some of the commentary on Japan was 180'd in between the two. In the first game, it was pretty surprising to see a critical view to Japan's imperialist measures and politics, as well as Ben Hyuuga marrying to a Russian woman, showing to a large degree a lack of demonization towards war enemies in favor of just living a good life. Meanwhile, in Covenant, I think the game makers went 'oh poo poo, we need to make Japan sympathetic again.' I think the only bad Japanese dude was the dude on the pillow. Also, forget the symbolic act of Ben marrying Anne, turns out she's German, and in the way that Russia was a war enemy, Germany was a war ally. Pardon my  plot analysis, I just always wondered if Shadow Hearts: Covenant was written by the same people as the first Shadow Hearts.
EagerSleeper fucked around with this message at 07:04 on May 24, 2014 |
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May 24, 2014 07:01
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Everyone should play Shadow Hearts 3. You get a party member whom is a Mariachi Man that fires rockets from his guitar. 
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May 24, 2014 07:26
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EagerSleeper posted:Also, can I ask if about spoilerish plot discussion here? I want to know if there was a change in the sacnoth team in between Shadow Hearts and Shadow Hearts: Covenant, because I felt like some of the commentary on Japan was 180'd in between the two. In the first game, it was pretty surprising to see a critical view to Japan's imperialist measures and politics, as well as Ben Hyuuga marrying to a Russian woman, showing to a large degree a lack of demonization towards war enemies in favor of just living a good life. Meanwhile, in Covenant, I think the game makers went 'oh poo poo, we need to make Japan sympathetic again.' I think the only bad Japanese dude was the dude on the pillow. Also, forget the symbolic act of Ben marrying Anne, turns out she's German, and in the way that Russia was a war enemy, Germany was a war ally. Did you forget how the second half of the game had a ruthless Japanese general as an arc villain and the final boss was literally a Japanese dude who went crazy after the clone of his dead girlfriend got stabbed and tried to destroy the world in response? I never played the first game, but it's not exactly a rosy treatment.
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May 24, 2014 07:28
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Mr. Sunabouzu posted:Everyone should play Shadow Hearts 3. You get a party member whom is a Mariachi Man that fires rockets from his guitar. Also an American who learned the secret ninja arts from Brazil. Wields random things with hilts glued to them. There is not a single "normal" party member in Shadow Hearts 3. Nor were there any in 2, really, though some of them were definitely weirder than others.
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May 24, 2014 07:49
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Yeah both games were heavily critical of Imperial Japan. Heck in Covenant its revealed that Yuri's parents are dead because Japan's war with China drove Dehuai to murder Yuri's parents in retaliation. That's why Yuri goes absolutely batshit at the Imperial Minister and kicks the crap out of him.
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May 24, 2014 07:54
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Infinity Gaia posted:Also an American who learned the secret ninja arts from Brazil. Wields random things with hilts glued to them. Also a gangster cat and a calorie-sucking vampire that is convinced she's the heroine of a Sailor Moon-esque adventure. I'd love to see what kind of bizarre, drug-inspired crap could come in during a hypothetical fourth game. I've never played any of this series (by the time I heard about it, it'd become ridiculously rare), but everything I've heard and seen looks great.
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May 24, 2014 23:34
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Is Koudelka actually rare in the US? You can find PAL copies for £5-£10, though maybe that's expensive for a PS1 game. 
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May 25, 2014 00:57
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3 was the Suikoden:Tierkreis of Shadow Hearts. It just didn't seem to have the same heart, was more formulaic. The real Shadow Hearts 3 is playing the first one again and beating Atman this time.
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May 25, 2014 01:26
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Sakurazuka posted:Is Koudelka actually rare in the US? You can find PAL copies for £5-£10, though maybe that's expensive for a PS1 game. It floats between $40 and $80 depending on where you look. A lot of the PSOne JRPGs are very rare now, especially if it's A) good and B) not by Square.
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May 25, 2014 01:28
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FtNW was fine because Johnny had a cool jacket and also it never ruined my combos for no reason.
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May 25, 2014 01:30
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This thread got my hopes up for a fourth game for a second. It'd probably be sometime during the 50s-60s if it followed the same linear path through their bizzaro timeline, but its just pie in the sky now that Nautilus is sucked up somewhere in the Frankenstein's monster of MarvelousAQL. 
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May 25, 2014 01:37
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Crabtree posted:This thread got my hopes up for a fourth game for a second. It'd probably be sometime during the 50s-60s if it followed the same linear path through their bizzaro timeline, but its just pie in the sky now that Nautilus is sucked up somewhere in the Frankenstein's monster of MarvelousAQL. The majority of the Shadow Hearts team went to Mistwalker after Nautilus went under. They had connections with Sakaguchi from when they worked for Squaresoft.
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Jun 1, 2014 03:58
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Lost Odyssey uses a few Shadow Hearts-esque mechanic, but it swaps the cool semi-modern setting for generic fantasy. The 1000 years of dreams stuff was cool but I didn't really care about the plot beyond that.
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Jun 1, 2014 04:47
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