PSST! Nightblade! You might wanna use Spoilers. I would be pissed if I knew about Al Capone being in the game before I’d already played it.
I finished it over the break…here’s pretty much how I feel about the game:
Graphics and Music: Let’s be concise…The music is still good. The graphics are the same as SH2, practically. The scenery is a lot lighter, but it’s practically a new game, years later, and a new country. I’m not surprised or dissapointed, honestly.
Gameplay: Much akin to Grandia 3’s battle system changes, SH3’s changes give you more incentive to do take advantage of all the facets of the combat system (stock, doubles, combos, and d-combos). This minor thing tips the balance severely in one way or the other. In SH2, you didn’t need to do combos to finish the game, and they were kind of a pain to do anyways. In SH3, if you don’t do it, you’ll find the battles are unnecesarily hard; however, if you use combos, you’ll find that random battles are stupidly easy. In any case, they’re ALWAYS kind of long, cos it seems like no one’s ever strong enough to One-Hit-KO an enemy without magic, abilities, or combos. Maybe that was just me. In any case, I think game developers in general need to learn how to innovate without losing gameplay balance.
Story: My feelings are very mixed on this…On one hand, it’s a new game… a new place…new main characters, and all that. On the other hand, they use so many similar gags, ideas, characters, and all that…that it’s really strange. Having a SH game without Yuri feels almost like a Wayne’s World 3 without Wayne and Garth, but using all the same jokes. It didn’t bother me for that long, but if you can’t get past it, that’ll prove to be a big obstacle in your enjoyment of the game.
The basic plot is pretty decent, and the plot twists are cool. I really liked these, and I wish they had put more emphasis on these; Johnny’s mystery really kept me intrigued through the whole thing. But, I have a lot of gripes overall:
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Villain motives very hard to discern - They’re mentioned in the game, but they’re mentioned so vaguely, so discreetly, that it’s really hard to pinpoint exactly what they’re trying to do. For example, can you tell me exactly why Gilbert knew what would happen when Johnny met that murderer? Or how about what he wanted the gate to be open for anyways? What did he NEED to contact Johnny for? Who the FUCK was Killer? I guess that’s not necesarily pertinent, but he has no backstory at all…And Lady, did she just wanna go back into the gate? Or did she wanna destroy the world? What was the deal? It’s much too hard to discern. I sure as hell can’t remember.
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Too many ‘joke’ characters - SH2 had Joachim and Lucia…these people were VERY funny, no doubt. But in SH3, three of your seven characters are joke characters. That’s a lot…
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Kind of boring ‘serious’ characters - All the main characters besides Johnny are REALLY boring. I don’t even know what to say about this. They’re all static and revenge-driven. It’s boring.
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Story pacing issues - AUGH! I just PLAYED a game with bad story pacing BEFORE SH3! Shadow Hearts is supposed to be a game I can count on to be good with this sort of stuff…Generally, pretty interesting up until the second half, when you’re just exploring caves for 8-10 hours. It’s not quite as bad as SH2’s “why does the second half of this game even exist” problem, but it’s still obnoxious.
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Too sidequest-oriented - You get to the end in about 20 hours…and about 10 levels behind the level you actually need to be at to complete the game. You could technically finish it at this time, if you use the right characters and abilities, but be prepared for a drag of a fight; the last boss is STUPID hard to fight if you’re underleveled. So, be prepared to go do sidequests and level grind for at least another 5 hours…maybe another 10 hours if you want the good ending, ugh.
Another personal gripe I have is this…To me, the main character of Shadow Hearts is Roger Bacon. I really think his involvement in the third story was much too minor, especially having introduced him before even the second half of the game! To me, Roger is a really big part of Shadow Hearts for me, and so it’s really strange and even bewildering to see him play such a minor role.
Overall…it’s better than SH2 in my opinion, which was just a series of completely nonsense events with funny and clever dialogue- a brittle straw house that fell apart right at the end, but was never too sturdy to begin with. But, it’s not even close to the original Shadow Hearts, which was one of the most impressive RPGs I’ve seen in recent years. I personally hope they don’t make another game. This one had a lot of story issues (which is funny, because story is a lot more of the focus in this game than any other aspect), and I think the series loses its touch when it doesn’t focus on the main characters of the first games (especially when it can’t make up it’s mind about whether or not it wants to separate itself from the previous games or make itself familiar with them). I’m not dissatisfied with my purchase overall, but it’s time to make a new game, Nautilus. It’s a good time in my opinion to call Shadow Hearts done.
They can’t really do much more with him anyway. His story was ended in Covenant, and I think the Covenant’s ending made it very clear.
). The other ones are mediocre…the series can be analogized to an independant film that gets a bunch of recognition, and someone picks it up, and starts making sequels with the star treatment, and they lose something in the process.