Tag: Sacnoth

#oneaday Day 797: Enthusing Regarding Shadow Hearts: Covenant

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Haven’t written about what I’ve been playing for a little while, so here’s an update.

I’m currently playing Shadow Hearts: Covenant, aka Shadow Hearts II. If you’ve been reading my previous entries, you’ll know that this is the second entry in a PS2-based RPG series published by Midway (in Europe, anyway) and developed by Nautilus (nee Sacnoth). If you haven’t been reading my previous entries… uhh… Shadow Hearts II is the second entry in a PS2-based RPG series published byMidway (in Europe, anyway) and developed by Nautilus (nee Sacnoth).

Jesting aside, Shadow Hearts II is a significant upgrade over its predecessor. Where the original Shadow Hearts could have easily been a PS1 game, with its prerendered backgrounds, polygonal characters and turn-based combat, Shadow Hearts II is not only a fine example of a PS2 game, but a game which still stands up remarkably well today regardless of platform. Replacing the original game’s prerendered vistas with a 3D world full of dynamic (but still game- rather than player-controlled) camera angles is the most obvious difference, and it’s striking what a change it provides. Shadow Hearts didn’t look bad but it did suffer a little from characters standing around somewhat woodenly when having conversations. Shadow Hearts II, by comparison, takes a much more cinematic approach to its presentation and looks great as a result. It helps that the character models are fantastic and well-animated, too — this really is a great-looking PS2 title.

Going hand-in-hand with the cinematic presentation of the visuals is the move to the game being mostly voiced rather than almost entirely text-based. This has the sad side-effect of meaning it’s no longer possible to rename your characters, but since the original Shadow Hearts featured a voiced ending sequence in which the default names of the characters were used even if you’d played for over 30 hours with a party sporting a completely different nomenclature… well, I can deal with that. The voice acting is mostly decent, but pays absolutely no attention whatsoever to the countries that the cast members are supposed to be from. Leading lady Karin, for example, is supposed to be German, but she sure doesn’t sound it. It doesn’t take long for the suspension of disbelief to kick in, however, as you immerse yourself in Shadow Hearts’ surreal parallel reality in which World War I is happening at the same time as Bad Shit is going down with demons and monsters. Eventually the fact that everyone from a wide range of different nations all sounds American ceases to matter, and the fact it’s set in the real world alongside real-life historical events and figures becomes almost incidental. It just becomes a cool JRPG story in which the place names sound very familiar.

I’m not going to talk too much about plot here as I’ll save that for a post once I’ve finished the game, so instead I’ll now dwell a little on some mechanical highlights from the game — specifically, the combat system.

Shadow Hearts featured a functional, fun combat system that didn’t deviate hugely from the traditional turn-based “heroes line up one side, enemies line up the other, polite violence ensues” system used by many RPGs over the years. The main twist on the formula was the use of the Judgement Ring, which required carefully-timed button presses to ensure the success of actions. More powerful, complex moves required more button presses, while the use of the Ring also allowed the designers free reign to throw in a variety of unconventional status effects besides the usual Poison, Paralyse and the like. Some enemies might make your Ring very small, for example (stop sniggering at the back) while others might make it spin very fast. It was a pleasing extra layer of interactivity atop an otherwise fairly conventional battle system.

Shadow Hearts II keeps the good bits of the original — the Judgement Ring and the need to keep an eye on your party’s emotional as well as physical state during combat — while completely shaking up the core battle mechanics. No longer do both sides stand still waiting to be smacked across the face. Instead, characters move around the battlefield to make use of their abilities, and various different types of attack allow the player a degree of control over the battlefield. If you see a bunch of enemies lining up for a concerted attack, for example, then you can perform some sort of explosive move that scatters them and prevents them from unleashing said attack.

This system is given a whole new layer of depth by the Combo mechanic. Characters (player or enemy) who are standing directly adjacent to one another are eligible to participate in a “Combo” attack. This still takes place in a turn-based manner, but allows characters to take their turns outside of the usual order determined by their agility statistic. Repeatedly wailing on a single enemy with several characters also gradually increases the damage inflicted, with more and more total hits contributing to a bigger and bigger damage bonus, particularly if you combine this with knocking the enemy up against a wall. It’s immensely satisfying to pull off successfully, and adds a much greater degree of strategy to battles. Do you risk characters being knocked out in favour of unleashing a four-man combo? Or do you keep someone held back on healing duty while the others batter the enemies with magic and a giant frozen tuna? Karin’s sanity is a bit low — can you risk her going Berserk after she’s done her job in the combo?

Alongside the excellent combat comes a fine system of character development. Player characters may equip “Crests”, which allow them to cast spells. Almost any character may equip any combination of Crests, so long as their total level doesn’t exceed their “capacity” statistic. This allows you to set up characters as healers, buffers, offensive mages or any mix you please.

This doesn’t make characters interchangeable, however — far from it. Alongside the Crest Magic system is the Personal system, which features a unique mechanic for every character. Karin must collect Wagner scores to inexplicably teach her new swordplay moves. Friendly wolf Blanca (incidentally, one of the most subtly hilarious characters of any game I’ve ever played) powers up his special moves through defeating rival wolves from around the world in one-on-one combat. Vampiric wrestler Joachim learns new moves from his “Teacher”, real-life wrestler The Great Gama. Not only that, though, but he occasionally suffers uncontrollable transformations into a golden bat, an invisible form or a superhero alter-ego according to his biorhythms. Highlight of this “Personal” system, however, though, has to be Gepetto the puppeteer, who fights using his slightly creepy kid-like doll Cornelia, who gets new dresses infused with new magical capabilities by taking cards with naked, muscle-bound male pinups on them to a rather effeminate French tailor who persistently follows the party around from location to location. No, I’m not making any of this up.

Herein lies the genius of Shadow Hearts II. It is filled with inspired lunacy, and every time you think you’ve got the hang of its peculiar mindset, it throws something newly bizarre into the mix. And the best thing about it is that it plays it all so straight, so deadpan. These strange systems are just how things work — no explanation required. In the case of Joachim’s transformations, for example, the game doesn’t even bother to mention that this might happen at some point, or even explain it when it does happen for the first time. Instead you’re left gazing at your battle screen, bewildered as to why a party member has inexplicably turned into a bat without warning. Fortunately, there’s an in-game help facility which does explain these quirky little features, but in a way it’s more fun to discover things for yourself and only resort to the help if you find yourself really confused.

It’s proving to be an utterly brilliant game so far, then. I’ve no idea how far I am off finishing it — I’m about 40 hours in and have been on the second disc of two for a little while, so I’m guessing there’s not that much left — but I’m certainly going to continue to enjoy the ride while I can. And if you get the chance to, you absolutely should play this and its predecessor, too.

#oneaday Day 787: Shadow Hearts: A Scoreless Review

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Shadow Hearts for the PS2 is a game which seems to be almost universally adored by everyone who has played it. It’s certainly a far cry from the reaction its PS1 predecessor Koudelka got, for sure, proving that yes, sometimes developers do learn from their mistakes.

Is it worth playing in 2012, though? That’s one of the questions I set out to answer when I eschewed the latest and greatest in fancy-pants HD gaming and booted up Sacnoth’s classic for the first time. I’d never played it before, so coming to it as a 2012 gamer would be my first experience — hopefully allowing me to determine whether or not it’s still worth your time.

First impressions are striking, and not necessarily in a good way. We’re in full-on old-school JRPG mode here, with polygonal characters wandering around on top of pixelated prerendered backdrops, occasionally stopping to perform a canned animation and generally not looking overly natural in their surroundings. Couple this with that much-maligned mainstay of Japanese roleplaying games, the random battle, and you have an experience which takes a little getting used to if you’re accustomed to the ways in which the genre has grown, changed and adapted over the years.

Once you get your head into the mindset of how things work, though, all that culture shock quickly fades away. The characters may have somewhat wooden animations, but they’re detailed 3D models with plenty of personality, and they provide the party you eventually assemble over the course of the game’s 30 hours or so with a distinctive look. When combined with the good quality localisation job which has been done on the game’s dialogue, the game’s cast comes together as a loveable, memorable crew of misfits that is all the more notable for not relying on traditional JRPG archetypes.

The plot, too, is interesting and unconventional, blending real-world events from the early 20th Century with pure fantasy that occasionally drifts into Lovecraftian “it came from beyond the stars” territory, though with a slightly light-hearted edge on everything. It works well, and all the more so for the fact that it doesn’t feel the need to necessarily spell things out for the player. You can tell that we’re dealing with some sort of twisted alternate history here when we see how comfortable everyone is with the use of magic, for example — there are no exaggerated “Wow, you have amazing special powers!” scenes when new characters join the party, even when protagonist Yuri reveals the ace up his sleeve: his ability to transform into slobbering death monsters.

The characters’ special abilities are what provides depth to the game’s combat system. Characters tend not to be single-minded specialists, but often have a range of skills that unlock over the course of the game which can be applied to a variety of situations. Even leading lady Alice, who is set up pretty early on to be your stock “healer” character, has some entertaining tricks which she can perform — and she’s not the only one with the ability to heal, either. Even some of Yuri’s monster forms have the ability to heal, meaning the player can stick with a party arrangement that works for them — or that is simply made up of characters they find appealing. Given Yuri and Alice’s importance to the overarching plot, however, most players will likely find themselves spending the majority of their time in the game with these two and one of the four other characters in the third slot.

Combat unfolds via a rather sedate turn-based system. There’s no time bars here, just a simple behind-the-scenes initiative calculation determining who gets to go next. There are two twists on the traditional turn-based combat formula, however: sanity, and the Judgement Ring.

Sanity points gradually drain over the course of a fight, reflecting the mental strain battling horrific eldritch monsters has on the human psyche. Running out of sanity points causes the character to go Berserk, attacking enemy and ally indiscriminately accompanied by the word “Violently” curiously emblazoned in the air over their head. In a nice nod to characterisation through statistics, different characters have varying pools of sanity points according to their own mental faculties. Alice, for example, being a bit of a scaredy-cat girly-girl at times, has a very small pool of sanity points, while Yuri, who is wandering around with a variety of monsters living in his psyche, has a very large pool which he expends any time he turns into a monster — presumably a rather traumatic experience.

Meanwhile, the Judgement Ring is the mechanic which drives the whole game. Rather than simply hammering the Attack button to get through fights as quickly as possible, the Judgement Ring is a timing-based system that requires players to accurately tap the X button on their controller in time with a predefined pattern. Said pattern varies according to what the player is trying to do — using an item only requires one tap, for example, while the characters’ later special abilities may require three or four carefully-timed taps in total. It’s a simple means of making combat feel significantly more interactive than turn-based titles otherwise can, and it’s also used outside of combat to resolve situations which would be handled by a dice-based “skill check” in a tabletop RPG — kicking down a door, negotiating for better prices in a shop, perfomring a task which requires endurance.

Whether or not you’ll find Shadow Hearts to be a palatable play experience in 2012 will depend a lot on your patience. While the random encounter rate isn’t overly high, you can expect exploration of the game’s world to be frequently interrupted by battles with enemies — and, as is common for this breed of role-playing game, you’ll see the same enemies and groups of enemies quite a lot over the course of a dungeon. Boss battles, meanwhile, are generally fairly lengthy experiences, partly to put a bit of pressure on the game’s sanity system. Later conflicts can feel like they’re dragging on a bit, particularly once you’ve managed to acquire some equipment for the party which allows them to shrug off things like status effects. The requirement to use the Judgement Ring with each ability use and attack helps keep things moving, but a few of the later bosses just go on a little bit too long to be comfortable or fun. The final boss is particularly prone to this, it has to be said, as it’s something of a damage sponge. In a game where three-figure damage is considered a strong hit, taking down something with over 10,000 hit points is a task you’d better set aside plenty of time for.

Presentation has also moved on significantly since the game’s original release back in 2001. Video sequences feature characters with that obvious sort of “rendered on the cheap” animation, and the voice acting is woefully inconsistent. Some English characters speak with an American accent, and others speak English at times and then yell something in Japanese in the middle of battle. The slightly rough edges do give the game a certain degree of charm, however, and the lengthy sequence where an old lady reads you a ghost story — complete with vocalised sound effects — is extremely memorable.

All in all, though, Shadow Hearts’ charms considerably outweigh its idiosyncracies, and the game remains fun, entertaining and engrossing today. While it’s not the most technically polished, high-budget JRPG — something which was apparent even back on its original release, especially when compared to Final Fantasy X, which came out the same year — it’s certainly one of the most memorable. And, crucially, by clocking in at around 25-30 hours, beating the game is well within the reach of even people who like to go outside sometimes. In these days of everyone seemingly being increasingly busy, the importance of brevity shouldn’t be underestimated.

So should you check it out in 2012 if you’ve never played it? Sure, but do be prepared for that initial culture shock as you adjust to the Way We Did Things over ten years ago. Times have changed, for sure.