Shadow Hearts (PS2)

Yuuki, your master of disaster here to give you my review of Shadow Hearts: From the New World. I've dabbled in the series a bit but nothing heavy so you could say this is more or less a first for me. So let's go.

Gameplay: Your basic Rpg with your basic controls and such. A feature I found terribly entertaining after awhile, is the judgement rings which you use to basically do everything. The ring simply requires you to hit the button at the right time, this is used for a number of things from attack to haggling at the item shop. Another feature which I personally couldn't decide if it was annoying or cool was the fact that every character had a unique way of gaining new skills and abilities. Some seemed a bit long and annoying others were quite entertaining. 3/5

Story: You'll take the role of Johnny a 16 year-old detective who lost a good chunk of his memory in a fire that killed his mom and sister. You'll soon become involved in hunting and killing these horrible other worldly creatures with your band of freaks and oddities. These range from an Italian ninja who was trained by a giant cat in the amazon, said giant cat, an idian princess who transforms into spirits, and more. All of which can be either really funny or just plain stupid, its up to you. Far as I was concerned the majority of it was running from point A to point B nothing great here. 3/5

Graphics: This game wasn't pushing any envelopes but, it didn't really leave anything to be desired. Cutscenes were really pretty and the in-game stuff was nice. There was a bit of love for the fanboys in the from of naked indian woman cutscenes that occur each time she transforms...or well does anything. Magic is your typical bang and zap stuff no big and special skill aren't really all that cool. 3/5

Sound: Not bad here some of the music is really odd like the rest of the game but managed to become kind of endearing. Cutscenes and important conversations has pretty good voice acting and so do all your battles. After awhile you start to really find the odd music really cute and you start having the desire to kill the ninja guy...he's just annoying. 3/5


Replay: Yeah unless your a really big fan of the series and possibly have a brain tumor I wouldn't invest in playing this game more than maybe twice...and only if you don't unlock everything the first time through. Its really not that bad but it is time consuming since the first third of the game is spammed with explanation screens about characters and skills and all kinds of things. 2/5

Overall: To put it simply your either going to love it, hate, or die from the absolute ridiculousness of it. Yes at times the plot was interesting and at times I wanted to shoot the developers who design these oh so insane random characters, but I did have fun playing if for no other reason except I wanted to see how very insane it was. 3/5