Post by E-109 Omega on Apr 24, 2007 18:48:21 GMT -5
So, has anyone heard of/played this excellent RPG? Honestly, it's probably one of my favorite games hands down (Final Fantasy VII just wins out), though I gotta admit, it started off pretty "eh".
I'm guessing y'all want a story. Shadow Hearts takes place in 1913 in an alternate Earth, it's as if it was designed by H.P. Lovecraft, there's vampires, demons, and other weird-ass stuff I don't even know how to describe running about. Anyway, the story opens on a train bound for Shanghai, where a man named Roger Bacon basically kills almost everyone on the train (With magic, of course) to get to this one woman, Alice Elliot. Right before he kidnaps her, the main character, Yuri Hyuga, walks in, a few events occur (The coolest moment in this cinema is that Yuri's thrown back a few cars by one of Roger's spells, and reattaches his right arm that happened to be blown off like nothing happened). Yuri then walks back to the car, and onto the roof, saves Alice from Bacon (Or, rather, the other way around), and jumps off of the train with her. He says he did all this because some weird voice in his head told him to. He can't really refuse the voice, since then it would just get more annoying, and painful (When he hears it, it causes him some painful headaches)
The game is the story of Yuri and Alice as they try to figure out why Bacon, who has been called the greatest warlock in the world, wants Alice so much, and how Yuri fits into the entire scheme.
What I love is how the story takes real people (Try looking up Roger Bacon or Margarete Gertrude Zelle (One of the party members) in Wikipedia and see what you get) and turns it around into something bizarre. It's done in the best possible way, though. Every main character is there for a reason, and they're all believable, especially for Yuri and Alice. Yuri is a pretty rude, brash guy, who always speaks his mind no matter who he's talking to, and Alice is a "prim and proper" English girl, so they're pretty much opposites. The story is one of the best I've seen in any RPG I've played (Even though I have a hard time figuring out what's going on sometimes, especially in Asia), and it's really just a joy to play. The music is one of the best parts, it was co-composed by Yasunori Mitsuda! While I can't say that every piece is top-notch (I don't really like most of the music in Asia, the normal battle music in that part of the game is particularly annoying, in my opinion), but the music for Europe and some parts of Asia (Shanghai, for one) is beautiful.
There were two sequels made, Shadow Hearts: Covenant and Shadow Hearts: From the New World. Covenant continues the story from SH1, and from what I've read, is actually better than the original. FtNW takes place in America, and thus shares little with the previous games, but from what I've heard, it's okay in its own right. If it's not completely obvious, I haven't played these games, or the "original" game, Koudelka.
So, yeah, one of the best games I've ever played. I wouldn't be surprised if a few people didn't hear about it, it was pretty obscure, I only heard about it from one of those random GameFAQs Top 10 lists.
I'm guessing y'all want a story. Shadow Hearts takes place in 1913 in an alternate Earth, it's as if it was designed by H.P. Lovecraft, there's vampires, demons, and other weird-ass stuff I don't even know how to describe running about. Anyway, the story opens on a train bound for Shanghai, where a man named Roger Bacon basically kills almost everyone on the train (With magic, of course) to get to this one woman, Alice Elliot. Right before he kidnaps her, the main character, Yuri Hyuga, walks in, a few events occur (The coolest moment in this cinema is that Yuri's thrown back a few cars by one of Roger's spells, and reattaches his right arm that happened to be blown off like nothing happened). Yuri then walks back to the car, and onto the roof, saves Alice from Bacon (Or, rather, the other way around), and jumps off of the train with her. He says he did all this because some weird voice in his head told him to. He can't really refuse the voice, since then it would just get more annoying, and painful (When he hears it, it causes him some painful headaches)
The game is the story of Yuri and Alice as they try to figure out why Bacon, who has been called the greatest warlock in the world, wants Alice so much, and how Yuri fits into the entire scheme.
What I love is how the story takes real people (Try looking up Roger Bacon or Margarete Gertrude Zelle (One of the party members) in Wikipedia and see what you get) and turns it around into something bizarre. It's done in the best possible way, though. Every main character is there for a reason, and they're all believable, especially for Yuri and Alice. Yuri is a pretty rude, brash guy, who always speaks his mind no matter who he's talking to, and Alice is a "prim and proper" English girl, so they're pretty much opposites. The story is one of the best I've seen in any RPG I've played (Even though I have a hard time figuring out what's going on sometimes, especially in Asia), and it's really just a joy to play. The music is one of the best parts, it was co-composed by Yasunori Mitsuda! While I can't say that every piece is top-notch (I don't really like most of the music in Asia, the normal battle music in that part of the game is particularly annoying, in my opinion), but the music for Europe and some parts of Asia (Shanghai, for one) is beautiful.
There were two sequels made, Shadow Hearts: Covenant and Shadow Hearts: From the New World. Covenant continues the story from SH1, and from what I've read, is actually better than the original. FtNW takes place in America, and thus shares little with the previous games, but from what I've heard, it's okay in its own right. If it's not completely obvious, I haven't played these games, or the "original" game, Koudelka.
So, yeah, one of the best games I've ever played. I wouldn't be surprised if a few people didn't hear about it, it was pretty obscure, I only heard about it from one of those random GameFAQs Top 10 lists.