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final fantasy?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 25
Date: April 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

let me tell you the truth out of all the RPG games out there stay away from this one. Also there is noway in hell this comes close to final fantasy

slow down!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 16
Date: December 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Upon purchasing, Shadow of Hearts I was extremely excited of the prospects of the game. A long time role playing gamer I relished a new opportunity. To my utter dismay I began my lame quest in Shadow of Hearts. Aesthetically well done this game still fell below the standard of eye candy. Pathetically, it still was its best quality. The game seems more like a slow sub-titled movie then anything else. The first half hour (the maximum amount one can tolerate prior to throwing in the litter box) was ladened with horrible dialog provided in written from The actual game play stuck to the theme of being very slow. I would hold off on this one. I will admit that I could not with stand the torture of the first half hour of game play and put the game to rest. Perhaps there is a diamond in this rough with more experimenting. Good Luck!

Worst Game ever

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 23
Date: May 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

If I could give this game 5 negative Stars I would. This game is horrible and if someone actually liked it they need serious mental help. You don't control your character, basically you tell him what to do then sit and watch. The fights are a joke and the story is even worse. Do yourself a favor and keep away from this game unless you want to run it over with your car.

This game is HORRIBLE

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 17
Date: February 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I rented this game, and thank god! It was still the worst 2 bucks i ever spent. From the very beggining the game was terrible. Poor voice acting, cheesy graphics (not even worthy of playstation 1), the battle system tried to be inovative, but turned out cheesy. I give this game a whole lot of 'Don't buy it!'! Rent it if you are that eager to play it.

Boring and Unimaginative

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 17
Date: February 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I must say that I am surprised to see that this game has gotten such complimentary reviews and unfortunately there is no option for zero stars.

To begin with the game begins with a gratuitously violent opening that surprised me. Not that I am squeamish but I am accustomed to the proverbial warnings about graphic violence. In this case there were none that I noticed. Despite the gorey beginning, however, the game lurches to a slow start and it becomes immediately evident that one is about to begin yet another Final Fantasy knock-off.

After about two hours of gameplay, most of which consisted of boring scrolling dialogue, I found myself completely disinterested and ready to put the game up for sale on Ebay. There is entirely too much innane chatter which merely repeats, at great length, the plot which is described in the instruction manual. Consequently I was left feeling utterly no emotion for the characters. The story line is unimaginative at best and suspiciously similar to the Legend of Dragoon for the PS1.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about this game is the ridiculous historical innacuracies. If game designers are going to set a game in a specific time and historical context they should consider that not every player is under the age of 8. Among the more absurd elements of the game are the oddly anglo features of the Japanese officers and the female Colonel in the Japanese Army. If the game was going for political correctness than it should not have been set at the turn of the 19th century.

Technically speaking the game lacks depth. The spells are repetitive and boring and weapons and armor seem to have taken a back seat in order for game designers to develop their skills in useless scripting . If you're simply looking for something to do to kill time, and have no interest immersing yourself in a virtual environment with a good plot, then this is the game for you. This game is yet another unfortunate example of the PS2 not being used to it's full potential.

What in the world!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 27
Date: March 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

What in the world is this? how could anyone say that this game is a rival to final fanatasy X??? and a game like this getting a four-star rating is just beyond me. I don't mean to be judgemental but this game is 100% of non-sensical GARBAGE. allow me to demonstrate:

1. Story: awfully dull and really not interesting what-so-ever in any aspect. It's full of horrible and predictable moments, the twists and turns of the story are soooo very extremly out of place. you'll find your self reading about a gazillion lines of boring conversations and at one point you'll even forget the main story!!! the one nice aspect in the story (which justifies the 1 star) are the multiple side stories which have some creativity in them but are presented in (again) a ver Boring style.

2.Charecters: badly animated, voiceless (for no reason), really clichéd typical RPG: the main charecter is Yuri: foul-mouthed, edgy, and out-going guy who has only one ability fusion(transformation to some repetitve monsters) who has a so-called mysterious past which you have to unravel (again a very boring past, i shiver for the mere thought of that story). Alice: a fragile, kind-hearted, and annoyingly optimistic girl around whom the story evolves.Zhauzen: a wise, again foul-mouthed priest who leads the way at the beginig of the game but turns out useless after the first of the story is over. Margret: a butch female spy who joins the party for no reason!. Keith: a cool vampire (my favorite) who joins the party just because he's bored( i wonder why is that?). halley: an orphan boy, a street rat, who is though because he was raised by the streets. why does yuri decide to help alice? i don't know, what is margrets goal? i also don't know. this game leaves you devistated, like really devistated.

3. Graphics: the graphics are ok i guess, way better than Grandia. the backgrounds are nicely done. Water looks horrific really nothing more than a loop and this case a very bad one. the charecters have no facial expressions and are so different from the drawings. CG or short movies are ok but the charecters look really ugly in them except for Bacon the bad guy.

4. Music: let's just say that it's i-put-the-tv-volume-on mute-and-turn-on-my-stereo kinda music. annoying and so uncreative.

5. Monsters: they have a bit of creativety but the repetition kills it.

6. overall: while playing the game you'd feel like why did i ever spent money on this peice of !!!!

Finally, just a bit of trivia for you, that the heads of Midways
label used to work for SQUARESOFT but were fired so decided to creat there own stinkn' label and the out-come is a really unattractive game with a very over-blown story. Shadow Hearts

Only worth playing for the sequels

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: January 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Don't be deceived by the 4-star rating this game inexplicably has on Amazon. Granted, it's not the worst game ever, but it just doesn't compare favorably to most of the other recent games that I've played for the PS2. Once the spectacular (albeit gory) opening cutscene is done, it's all downhill.

First of all, it's clear that this was intended to be a PS1 title originally, so it's not really fair to compare it to what's currently available for the PS2. Therefore, I have to cut them some slack on the choice to go with painted backdrops instead of a 3D rendered environment. Still, they clearly didn't have the talent to make the environments interesting and/or beautiful. It's not so much that I prefer 3D environments; it's just that if you're going to go with backdrops, please, make them well drawn. Shadow Hearts' backdrops don't even compare favorably to most of Square's RPG games for the PS1, let alone stuff that's available for the PS2.

The dialogue is, more often than not, skin-crawlingly bad. They were apparently trying to be campy and anachronistic; however, they didn't take it far enough to make it seem deliberate. You could write it off as bad translation, but the frequent use of modern American idioms makes me think otherwise. Someone at Sacnoth just had really bad taste with language. The main character Yuri goes from man-child timid to tough-guy bravado far too quickly; it's not clever or funny, it's just inconsistent writing. Alice, the pretty young thing and object of everyone's desire (those programmers really, really need to get out more - I mean, just look at her skirt), is drawn paper-thin in terms of character, and everyone else is just there as props. The writers also seem to take great glee in presenting you with as much blood and gore as possible. I'm not sure what the point is. Is it supposed to make the game more "adult" or edgy? It's just icky. There's one section of the game when you're pretty much just walking around on blood-soaked earth (and probably entrails), and the accompanying sound effects are enough to turn your stomach. Yuck!!

The bad guy's name is Roger Bacon. I'm sorry, that's the most ridiculous name for a villain I've ever heard. Yes, I understand there's a historical reason for this, but come on; you're up against a breakfast side-dish. I mean, how threatening is that. "I went to the store today and I picked up some Roger Bacon."

The sub-plots are mostly lame (you have to go through TRIALS to get to the temple - how original), the cut-scenes are long and boring (ask anyone who has played this game about "Shloop... shloop... splat! Skreeeee!"), and most of your time is spent just hoping you can get to somewhere more interesting than where you are. Occasionally there was a well-thought-out plot point that I enjoyed (particularly the parallels between Yuri and his father), but for the most part it's just one dull environment after another.

The plot itself suffers from serious lack of development. It looks like the programmers and writers simply ran out of time, so they wrapped it up as quickly as possible; in fact, they specifically threw in a not-so-subtle self-conscious joke about the fact that they couldn't finish writing the game in time, so they had to cut stuff. Really sad. The end battle and resulting aftermath is so anti-climactic and boring that I ended up feeling like the whole game was a complete waste of my time. That's 40+ hours of my life that I will never get back.

The music is one of the game's few strong suits, with a pretty good number of catchy tunes. But once again, it's wildly inconsistent. It's 1913 and you've got heavy metal blaring in the opening cutscene. Wha huh? The music tends to be fairly inappropriate for a lot of the game, but at least it's entertaining.

Most games that feature turn-based combat (since Final Fantasy VII at least) tend to involve selecting an action, and then you sit there for a good long time while the animation plays out. Not so with Shadow Hearts; you have to do a little thumb-dancing with the Judgment Ring(tm). Overall, I find this to be a plus because it adds a little risk/reward element. You can elect to just go with the safe route, or you can take a risk and go with a more difficult (and more damaging) option. I like it.

The monster and player animation is adequate. Not great. Every once in a while a character does something clever or amusing and I have to chuckle at the animator's sense of humor, but meh. I've seen better. For some reason, something like 75% of the monsters are essentially humans hanging upside down, or with mis-placed limbs or joints. I'm betting that they found it easier to simply move a few limbs around on a standard humanoid 3d-model to create a new monster instead of coming up with something truly original.

For some reason, inventory items are limited in the number of characters for the name, so you get really stupid and meaningless item names like "V-blade-Blodauth." Wha?

The use of emoticons is reasonably clever, but it seems to me that it was mainly implemented for the purpose of cutting down the number of animations or movements that they needed to code. It doesn't really add much, and sometimes it's a little puzzling; like, just what is that icon that looks like a teardrop?

To sum up, if you do get this game, you'll probably have a good time, but you'll have to laugh at some of the ridiculous cliches and other absurdities. Overall, I give this game 2 stars as it isn't ENTIRELY horrible, but it's just not quite developed enough to be what I would call "average." I would only recommend playing through this game if you intend to also play the sequels, which are markedly better in production quality and more deliberate with their use of camp and anachronism.

Alright, Don't know why it needed a "Mature" rating

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: May 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

An RPG like Final Fantasy (wander, enter battles, manage points & items) except with much lower production values. The storyline and dialogue are uninspired. Also, I was hoping for some adult content b/c of the "Mature" rating but it never crossed, say, the Benny Hill Threshold.

I'VE SEEN BETTER GAMES

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: January 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Well, there are some good effects on the game but you can just count them with your finger because there are not that much. The gameplay is pretty cool but there's no point on a good gameplay if the graphics won't help at all. The game is not difficult and actually is always the same...There are monsters in some village controled by a bigger monster and you've to beat the crap out of the big one in order for the little ones to die. It's always the same, the only thing that changes is the village. And what this thing 'bout upgrading weapons?...What's the point? It's very expensive and is so much better to buy a better one than to upgrade the one you already have. Well you can definetively buy the game and see for yourself but I'd rather spend my money in a good and fancy dinner.

A mixed bag

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 19 / 21
Date: March 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

As the title says, my opinions of this game are a mixed bag. I liked this game, but I wanted to love it. The developers of this game clearly invested a lot of time, energy and emotion into the graphics and the story - but it didn't quite satisfy me. I've been racking my brain to figure out why, and I think I've come up with the answer.

They didn't go far enough. There were many times that the game would show a brilliant shine of intelligence, only to fall back on tried-and-true RPG cliches. I'm not going to talk about the graphics, since its the story and characters that make-or-break a game for me. "Shadow Hearts" succeeded brilliantly in creating both - though they didn't exactly follow through with what they created.

An interesting and fascinating character would be introduced, developed for a while, and then be reverted to just another warm body to use in battle. A prime example is "Keith," an enigmatic vampire living in an abandoned castle. When you first meet him, he is a genuniely interesting character. He has a history, a motive for joining the party, and has some cool things to say. But soon after this "castle" section is over, Keith just kind of tags along, not really doing much or saying anything. The majority of the party characters are introduced this way, and it's saddening to see that none of them are developed very well.

The story starts out brilliantly: battling nations, political intrigue, and an interesting villian all made what promised to be a darn fascinating ride. But this soon degenerated into a save-the-world-from-the-giant-macguffin plot that we've all seen a hundred times before. As the game progresses, important plot points that were brought up earlier are forgotten. For example, during the intro movie, our angsty hero gets his arm sliced off. Nonpulssed, he picks it up and sticks it back into its socket, where it melds together good as new. When I saw this, I was pretty darn impressed and wondered how and why Yuri obtained this ability, but this important detail was never brought up again. Many plot points are forgotten like this, and its a shame.

Another small point is that you are given the option to rename your characters, which is always a nifty feature. However, during cut-scenes the characters are always referred to by the default name, which can get kind of confusing.

In a nutshell, when I bought the game I was expecting an intelligent game with a cool plot and interesting characters. And that's just what I got - for a while, anyway. The game definitely shows promise, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the developers will come up with next.

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