Customer Reviews

Shadow Hearts: From the New World

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First off: this is a new game in the series. New locations and characters. You can jump right on in without playing any previous titles (although, Shadow Hearts is a fabulous series, I highly recommend all of them).

For veteran players, the game feels so much like Covenant that there is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to the new battle mechanics. All the old features are there: combos, collecting magical items (to cast battle spells), the judgement ring, SP, MP, and HP. However, you now need to collect "stock" by either giving or taking damage. You must have stock in order to do combos, or the new feature of "doubles." With a double, you can do any two actions in one turn - just as long as they are not the same.

The story line revolves around malice and some evil/shady characters trying to release it into the world. Your job is to stop them. Along the way, you'll visit North and South America, and learn revelations about your playable characters. The characters in this title are a trip. A boy detective, Native American Princess, Native American Warrior (using two pistols and "GUN-FU," A perky little drama club vampire, Brazilian trained ninja with collects odd weapons, a mariachi, and last, but not least, a giant drunken cat.

If you're in the mood for a quirky, highly imaginitive, and fun turn-based RPG, look no further (but notice the other titles in the series) than this one.

Normally, I would consider any year that promised a squel to Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy a banner year. But for some reason, 2006 has seen enough new fantasy games that I'm actually behind on playing them, something that hasn't happened since I first acquired my PS2. This may be the year of the new high-powered game consoles, but Sony developers certainly haven't forgotten their old reliable platform, this new Shadow Hearts sequel is exceptional, and it looks like there's more to come.

Xseed games has decided to start a new story on the Shadow Hearts model, set a few years after the great release of malice in Shadow Hearts 2. The main character is Johnny Garland an orphaned 16-year-old who has set up a detective agency in New York City. His big cases are still finding lost cats, but weird Professor Gilbert from Arkham University asks Johnny to help find a missing criminal and, in short order, Johnny finds himself plunged into a fight with evil monsters. The beautiful shapeshifter Shania comes to his rescue and soon he has assembled a team of unusual characters, including a martial arts cat and a musician with a loaded guitar.

As in earlier games, character relationships are an important part of the quality of the game. Johnny's attraction to Shania is kept low key, and is balanced against that of the mysterious Lady and the psychotic Killer. In Shadow Hearts, heroes don't beat their chests. Instead they struggle with internal conflicts every bit as important as their battles in the game world.

Play is still turn based using the Judgment Ring and various player strike combinations. I have mixed feeling about this scheme. It works well, but it's complexities introduce a level of thumb dancing that is sometimes a bit beyond my limited reflexes. You have the opportunity to mix magic, medicine and muscle in complex and devastating attacks. My real criticism is that there aren't enough monster (or human) types, so the longer missions can get on your nerves. Dungeons characteristically only have three to four different monsters plus the boss. A dozen more varieties would have made the end game a bit more interesting.

From the New World has more sidequests than most games have game. Everything from quizzes to the attack of the sushi warriors. There are lots of ways to get neat accessories and level up. To the point that you can over level up and sail through the ending a little two quickly for my tastes. In fact, the endings (there are two) are the weakest part of the story. Suddenly things are over and it's time to save a cleared game and start all over again. But you've had 80 hours of fun on the way, and that's nothing to complain about.

Covenant set a breakthrough for the Shadow Hearts series with solid gameplay, interesting characters, improved battle system and interesting sidequests with an extended and interesting story from the first game. In Shadow Hearts 3, none of these were back and it just turned the series into a blend and sometimes annoying game.

The main characters are not likable right from the beginning. Johnny, a sixteen year old private detective who happens to be for God's sake amnesia. The character design is exacltly the same as the character in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy XII. Shania just lack the death of Kirin in Covenant and not to mention all the other characters who joined the team randomly. The story is scattered all over the place to fit into the world of randomness of the characters. Seriously the most interesting characters in the game are Lady and Killer. The giant cat Mao is annoying, the Ninja is easily the most hateable character competing with Hilda the vampire. The seriously lack of depth for the characters already killed half of the game, not to mention the lack of substance in the story. In Covenant, the side quests naturally blends into the story as they were mentioned here and there even before they were opened up for you to tackle them. In 3, they were just there for the sake of being there. Nothing interesting and nothing exciting, and Johnny's sidequest is just damn annoying, comparable to Kurando's sidequest in Covenant.

The battle system is greatly improved in a way that you need to be more strategic than just go all out and whack. But when your enemies also took advantage of the system, it could leave you breaking the controller into two with tears, and prepare for that in Johnny's sidequest. The battle system is very interesting and strategic with customisable rings, double-attack, combos etc. There are more gauges and stats you need to pay attention to during the battle. It could definitely satisfy players who want to have more interactive and intuitively strategic battle system. However, Shania has less fusion forms compared to Yuri and her fusion for most of the time look like porns - from tatoos on various parts of her body, including all the private parts. These tatoos light up and there will be a close up on them. It is very disappointing that From the New World needs to use that kind of tactic to attract players. For all other characters, most of their moves are mediocre though Hilda the vampire's certain moves could be lifesaving in important and difficult battles.

In all Shadow Hearts 3 is a game that you can play if you are free and once finished, there is nothing interesting to revisit it in the future. Unlike Covenant, it is not a game that you can get yourself addicted to and replay it again and again.

I've been a huge fan of the Shadow Hearts series, but "From the New World" is the weakest so far. I might be a little biased as I played it immediately after finishing Final Fantasy 12 and it just can't compare to that, but even so I remember having a far better time playing the first game and the sequel, "Covenant". The story of Yuri and Alice really made the first game memorable, and the second was almost as good, with Karin making a very sympathetic female lead. This time, however, I am not warming to any of them.

The story this time is a brand new one. A 16 year old called Johnny Garland has his own detective agency in New York (like all 16 year olds do), and one day a chance visit from a stranger begins a missing person hunt that leads to uncovering an evil force that threatens to wipe out the entire world. Along the way he gathers a team of new friends and so the stage is set for a typical RPG. Now, Shadow Hearts is famous for having off the wall characters and this time is no exception. I thought having the puppet master Gepetto and Princess Anastasia as part of your team in Covenant was whacky enough, but this time around you'll be joined by a giant drunken Kung-Fu cat, a kittenish female Vampire and a comedy Ninja. The trouble is that I'm having a harder time becoming attached to them in this game because they just don't seem to be original creations. Frank the Ninja is a direct copy of Joacim, with his weapon upgrades from found objects, and Hilda the childish and annoying vampire changes form between being fat, skinny or a bat in the same way that Keith and Joacim did. Shania the indian squaw can shape-shift into elemental fusion monsters like Yuri did, and characters learn new moves and spells by finding documents or manuscripts like Karin did. As this is supposed to be a completely new game, I found this amount of repetition in the characters to be very disappointing.

Another thing is that in this day and age, there is no excuse for the playable environments to be so small. New York is represented by four "boroughs", most with just one street and no visitable buildings. Go the wrong way or step off the kerb and you drift back to the world map, showing you how tiny each location is. There's no moveable camera and the scantest populations of NPCs to talk to in each place. The dungeons are little better, relegated to just a few rooms or stages, with no more than about three varieties of enemy in each. You can do each dungeon level and boss in a single sitting and it sometimes seems like the game is whizzing by. The game still plays with "alternative" versions of real places, but it doesn't impress much this time around, with Alcatraz prison and the Roswell UFO site being very lack-lustre.

There are some new ideas, but they are not all good. The stellar chart magic system is terribly clumsy and you have to navigate endless permutations of screens and options to set each character up with decent spells. Plus the stellar charts themselves have to be modified at shops to hold the better magic spells, which makes it even more of a bother. One good thing is that each character has unique abilities, which means that they are not endlessly interchangeable like in some RPGs (even in Final Fantasy 12 you could have built up all the characters in exactly the same way), and this gives some variety.

The best thing about the series, though, is still it's trademark Judgement Ring system, and if you enjoyed the first two games for this reason you will be well served here. The battles have even become more complicated with the introduction of the "Stock" guage, which acts like a meter that fills up when you give or receive damage. This can then be used to unleash devastating linked attacks once filled. Managing Stock is crucial to a good battle, and I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the Combo mechanism, with great results for those who have good reflexes (missing the correct symbol button and breaking a good combo is frustrating but fair, because if you want that 4 chain Combo magic you have to work for it!).

My overall impression is that "From The New World" has been created to ride on the glory of the games before it by simply copying them. It's nowhere near as impressive as "Covenant", and all it's ideas are second hand. It's also trying too hard to be funny. There's scarcely a serious moment in here, or anything approaching the depth or the adult orientated themes that the series did so well in the past. It's all now just a giant cartoon, and while Kung-Fu cats and fat vampires are funny for a while, they don't draw you into the story at all. There is scarcely any plot to speak of as it is, the whole game is just a chase from start to finish, following the villains all around the world. The fun in the game lies with the battles and becoming an expert using the Judgement Ring. Battles are complex and even random encounters need some forethought, especially as there are bonuses available for very good performances (perfect ring turns, enemies killed without having a single turn, etc), so there is a lot to enjoy. Boss battles can be long, but at the same time, the game never gets particularly difficult, and levelling up sems to happen very rapidly so you can easily make a powerhouse team to face almost anything. Sidequests are good - there are seperate side stories for each character which is a nice aspect, and something of a tradition now in the series. It's a shame that these good aspects are not complementing a more impressive basic game, because as it stands, the Judgemant Ring and the good "extras" are the only thing lifting a very short and mediocre RPG plot and characters into being a passable game.

Shadow Hearts: From the New World continues a rather interesting series. While not quite living up to expectations formed by the previous installation in the series, Covenant, which I thoroughly enjoyed, FtNW was an entertaining romp. Gameplay mechanics were fine, and I found the judgment ring mechanics to be acceptable, even though I don't in general enjoy games which require an inordinate amount of twitching.

The Good: As usual, fascinating environments, side quests which flesh out the characters, quirky humor (canon does not include too many, or any, obese vampires). Although the main story is not directly continuous with SH 1 & 2, many trademarks of the series persist such as the shopkeepers, Roger Bacon and the Valentine family lending a pleasurable sense of familiarity.

The Not So Good: For some reason, I didn't seem to care as much for Johnny and his clique as I did for Yuri. The lead characters' personalities were relatively flat compared to their predecessors'. This installation also lacks the depth which the other two had primarily because it didn't appear to track momentous historical events the same way. In some way, it didn't feel as if it was as firmly embedded in its reality. Finally, the additional characters lacked, well, character. Frank and Mao were comic relief and Ricardo's personality seemed pretty cliched. This was somewhat true of the previous games, for example Lucia from Shadow Hearts Covenant seemed to be little more than a pretty picture stretched over a skeleton of a plot device.

Conclusion: All in all, an enjoyable romp. It lacks, however, the draw which made Covenant, in my view, a hit.

Everyone seems to have problems with this game, comparing to the other sequal and all. Well first it's not really a continuetion of the story, it's a like a whole new one so of course it's not going to be as dark as the other one was. I thought this game was an excellent roleplaying game and I loved it because it had everything a video game needed. Yeah, some of it was a little dragged out but hey, what video game doesn't drag their plot out? This game follows a whole new character very different from Yuri, though to make up for that they put a hot female into the mix who is barely dressed and who is able to transform into spirits. And yes a couple of old characters make their apperance, like Roger Bacon the deformed creature thingie and the very gay motorcycle dudes. And I personally love the talking cat because Meo is very sassy. The basic storyline is follow is that your this 15 year old kid name johnny garlic, who is also a detective. Then suddenly everything changes when you meet up with Shania, a beautiful girl who is able to transform much like Yuri did. They team up and try to stop Killer and Lady from releasing on malice, which is evil spirits. And along the way Johnny's power grows stronger and there is something very mysterious about this boy that everyone sees. The game made me wanting to never shut off my ps2. And yes, at first I was disappointed to find it out it didn't have all the same characters in it but all you got to do is enjoy this game for what it is, accept it flaws and don't compare it with it's other sequals. If you enjoy a roleplaying game that takes you on a great adventure, at least rent this one. People give it bad reviews but really, I love it for it's wackyness. And buy the gaming guide! Or it will take you forever to figure out the puzzles.

Right from the beginning this game is filled with wacky, crazy, just complete out of this world humor. As for that are like omg the gay biker merchant just hit on my 16 your old (who isn't really 16 btw.. but you'll find that out later if you actually play it long enough :P ) isn't funny then maybe you need to lighten up and go out and get a sense of humor. This game has everything from crazy super hero ninjas, talking drunken master cats, sushi gone wild, transforming vampire that has to watch her diet, native American gunslinger and spirit summoner (basically) team that fights off evil demons. Who all get throw together to fight a evil being and her serial killer boyfriend followed by a evil scientist to stop them from destroy the world. Sure some of the stuff is retarded, but hey how often do you get to play a RPG full of wacky humor? The story is actually really good and at the end I was really happy I played this game. I would say it's one of the best RPGs lately to come out for the PS2. The combat system is pretty cool Judgment ring that you can use to link combos and special attacks through. Example is I really like to do Double combos and it's where I'll build so much (TP basically) that I'll link every character together with double attacks. It's really in-depth how you have to use the attacks to watch where they land (ground, middle, or in the air) to match the next attack. I really liked this battle system and the fusion abilities to change into powerful beings were really amazing too. Best combo to date was a 132 hit combo for 5000 ish damage. Did that on a special boss fight ;) not saying any names. It has tons of side quests in this game not as many as say FFX, but a lot. In all beating this game and collecting everything it's about 50 hours of play. A lot of RPGs in the past I've been disappointed with one way or another, but truly this was a wonderful game and only reason I'm even giving it 4 stars is just because this is the 3rd part of a series and part was actually the best one. Though I think this one comes in second.

Key points
1) Very nice battle system
2) Really really funny storyline that has a seriousness to it when it needs to be
3) Nice slightly better then average graphics
4) Has a wonderful soundtrack and voice acting was really good
5) Lots of side quests
6) Game play never seemed to get boring actually played this pretty much none stop since the first day and very few RPGs keep me that in grossed.

Check it out a RPG that won't disappoint.

Shadow Hearts 3 from the new world is a good game. The battle system is unique, it you have played the other 2 shadow hearts games then you would know of the judgment ring system, if you don't then you will just have to take my word that it adds a fresh spin on turn based battle systems and keeps you on your toes. The music is beautiful and addictive; the graphics are so so for a game coming out this late in the evolution of the PS2. Maybe 1-3 hours of learning curve to get the play down. Characters are original and very unique and entertaining. Not as good as final fantasy of course but a good solid RPG I think anyone would enjoy so long as you are open to the battle system.

Actually a more accurate score would be three and a half stars. While not by any means a bad game, I can't help but mourn over the potential that was wasted in Shadow Hearts: From the New World. Set in 1929 on the cusp of the great depression and in the midst of mafia turf wars, From the New World showed glimpses of what it wanted to be but sadly never quite made it. The game play is excellent with a revamped and customizable judgment ring and the ability to once again perform combos with your teammates. The scenery and locations are beautiful and well done and the character models are impressive. But beneath all of the glossy pictures is a story that while not mediocre somehow doesn't make it to great.

Approaching it from a stand alone point of view I was interested to see more of the Shadow Hearts world and its various inhabitants and what better way to do that than with an eclectic party with members ranging form a Brazilian ninja to a teenage vampire? Unfortunately between poor pacing and even poorer characterization I never got too attached to any of my party members. I really wanted to like them, I especially wanted to like Johnny, but none of them exhibited a strong enough personality to allow me to care for them.

The story with the recurrent Shadow Heart themes of malice and human ambition had the potential to be phenomenal, instead it lags at some parts and feels rushed at others. Characters randomly meet and join up for no good reason and interesting plot points are brought up and then never mentioned again. I can't help but to think of how much better the story would have been if just a little more time was taken to fill in some of the holes. Don't get me wrong. In spite of my complaints I still feel that it's a very solid game, however it had the potential to be something great and instead settled for something less.

Shadow Hearts 3 is another game that suffers from being in the shadow of greatness. The first two entries in the series were not only direct sequels to each other, but where amazing games, far outpacing anything else on the PS2 at the time.

While little in actual game mechanics has changed from 2 to 3, the setting and tone has.

For those not familiar with Shadow Hearts and Shadow Hearts Covenant, they are turn based JRPGs, very similar in style to classic Final Fantasy. Each character has strengths, weakness, and some unique skills. One of your characters is a Harmonixer, a human who has the ability to take demon souls into their body and assume their form and properties. In SH1 and 2, this was the protagonist, Yuri, and it was a major plot point in both games. In this game it is the pretty, scantily clad, native American girl who joins you early on. It is a plot point to a degree as you are on a quest for her to visit various earth spirits and gain their elemental forms, but it is more ancillary. You travel rather large segments of the world, meeting people, fighting evil, and preparing for the ultimate confrontation. There's plenty of treasure and side quests and such to be found. It sticks to the major tropes and does them very, very well.


Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 were located in Europe and Asia immediately before and during the events of WWI respectively. This game is set in post-WWI America, starting you in New York. They do well to make this setting feel authentic, as authentic as they can when there's demons and crap running around New York theaers, but maybe its just because I am an American, I really wasn't interested. The European and Asian settings of the first two were just more interesting to me. Eventually you move to South America but that seems to fit the series even worse.

The over all tonal shift is a detriment to. SH1 and 2 were very dark and serious with a few minor exceptions. It set them apart from stuff like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy which are so over the top and/or melodramatic. SH3 is just.. strange. Your characters are all eccentric weirdos with the exception of the two Native Americans and the main protagonist is clearly a 12yr old version of Tidus if he was cross bread with Bart Simpson.

Another problem is your antagonist doesn't feel threatening at all. She is basically just a mindless force of destruction that wanders the world. Her minion, Killer, is just an over the top psycho but not that good kind of over the top psycho like Kefka. I realize the cackling villian is over done, but these villains don't feel menacing. Tie that in with all the silly weirdos you have following you around.. like the giant talking cat who is a drunken kung-fu master... or the "American Ninja" who's ultimate weapon is a giant shish kabob, it just comes off as too quirky to bare the Shadow Hearts name.

It's not bad, mind you, in fact It is bordering on greatness. If I didn't love SH1 and 2 for the reasons I love them, this would be another superior game, but it just doesn't feel right by comparison. Despite that, I strongly suggest finding all the games in the Shadow Hearts series, including this one, if you're a fan of classic JRPGs. You wont be disappointed.