So... Shadow Hearts: Covenant...

A

AniHawk

Member
*sigh*

Not really late to the party. There just isn't any. Not for this game.

What a let down. The battle system is nice for a while, but gets boring as the game progresses. The story isn't really all that well told either, and the voice actors range from below average to above average. Good humor though.

Gonna finish the game, I'm on the second disc and probably have about 5 hours left at the most. I just hope SMT isn't as underwhelming.
 
AniHawk said:
I just hope SMT isn't as underwhelming.
Click to expand...

Me too. I'm 7 or 8 hours in I think (SMT), and it's a very high quality RPG that for once takes some thought to beat, but I don't feel hooked. I was actually thinking of switching to Covenant :P This generation definitely isn't as good as the last for RPGs.
 
Yeah, I was disappinted as well, especially after all the talk here about how much of an improvement it is over SH (which I really enjoyed back in the day).
 
Out of all the RPGs I have played this year this is the only one I still care about/didn't put down after a week. Much more polished than SH1 imo
 
Something I also enjoy about SH:C is that it's set in relatively modern times. I like how it loosely connects with history to explain the happenings in the real world as a result of the actions of characters in the game. That and the humor are about it though.

I'd really like to know what other people saw in this game. Phantom Brave and SH: C have been disappointing PS2 RPGs this year for me (not bad though).
 
SH2 is very polished as far as its environments and gameplay, and the story seems pretty interesting so far (about 7 hours in). I like the historical and literary connections (
A giant cockroach named Gregor! rock!
) a lot. Every hour or so it seems like they've added another fun wrinkle to the gameplay to play with. Unfortunately, the voice acting seems to get worse and worse as the game progresses. Yuri's actor is absolutely horrid - I cringe when I hear him trying to emote/act like a badass/laugh. Karin's actor is fairly average, but her battle lines are bad, bad, bad. I'm not sure who to blame for those: the scriptwriter or the localization. Gepetto seems pretty okay-to-decent, but
Joachim
is so obviously trying to sound like his voice is deeper than it is. Very little of the acting has sounded natural or has been of a level where I can take it at face value - I hear voice acting, not the characters' voices, and it really pulls me out of the game.

I'll keep plugging away, though. The game's a lot of fun, and I have a feeling the story's going to be picking up quite shortly, and maybe the voice acting will improve...I hope?
 
jiji said:
SH2 is very polished as far as its environments and gameplay, and the story seems pretty interesting so far (about 7 hours in). I like the historical and literary connections (
A giant cockroach named Gregor! rock!
) a lot. Every hour or so it seems like they've added another fun wrinkle to the gameplay to play with. Unfortunately, the voice acting seems to get worse and worse as the game progresses. Yuri's actor is absolutely horrid - I cringe when I hear him trying to emote/act like a badass/laugh. Karin's actor is fairly average, but her battle lines are bad, bad, bad. I'm not sure who to blame for those: the scriptwriter or the localization. Gepetto seems pretty okay-to-decent, but
Joachim
is so obviously trying to sound like his voice is deeper than it is. Very little of the acting has sounded natural or has been of a level where I can take it at face value - I hear voice acting, not the characters' voices, and it really pulls me out of the game.

I'll keep plugging away, though. The game's a lot of fun, and I have a feeling the story's going to be picking up quite shortly, and maybe the voice acting will improve...I hope?
Click to expand...

Cockroach named Gregor was awesome.

I'm not too upset about the voice acting on Joachim's part, because I think the character is supposed to be trying too hard to be heroic anyway. 2 other characters,
Lucia and Anastasia,
seem to be parodies of their cliches in video games. Yuri's VA is really bad though. Some of the writing is just downright horrible.

Not for your eyes, jiji:

Jovis: If the mistletoe's curse spreads... you will go permanently insane.

I half expected the rest of the crew to shout, "OH NOES!!" What a weaksauce curse.
 
I was a little disappointed by SH: Covenant too. The game was decently fun, but the game had received positive impressions on the forum from even some of the most jaded posters, so I was expecting something outstanding and not just passable.

To be honest, I'm not all that keen on Shin Megaten III, either. I guess once you go Dragon Quarter, you don't go back.... ;)
 
1. Graphics
- Excellent graphics and animation

2. Characters design
- I like every character in the game and I think the settings are great (except the costume for Karin seems too much of a fan service)

3. Story
- A save the world story with love, while not earth breaking, is interesting

4. Battle system
- Judgement ring, ring customisation and combo system

5. Music
- Excellent OST

6. Humor
- Keeps me laughing, even from some minor actions

7. Uniqueness
- No need to say more

The theme is different from the first, the first one is much darker. And well, voice acting is far better in Japanese version than the English version.
 
Don't forget to do the sidequests at the end, good fun.

Is just a good game.
No big flaws; pacing is uneven a few times, especially in the first hours after the intro sequences, the story takes a nap and sends you in that cliched and irrilevant trek; battle system might have been a lot better with a few tweaks; a cople dungeons have boring puzzles; far too easy, and messed up too much with the story of thr first game, but is still as good or better than the average RPG in all regards.
The characters are the real reason to play thought, imo.
 
I am about 15 hours in and I am enjoying it very much, especially
the scenes with the ring soul are extremly funny :lol
.
 
SH2 is a nice RPG. Great battle system and nice music. But the music for the towns and the cities seem to be the same all the time. It has some nice CG too.

Compared to SMT:N, SH2 is so much easier. I lost counts the number times I got KOed in SMT:N. SMT:N is a very challenging game. If you are not prepared, you can get KOed by a boss in 5 mins. Therefore you need to go and train/fuse the correct monsters with the appropriate skills. However, beating the bosses this way makes it much more satisfying.

Overall, both are definitely top notch RPG.
 
Something else I've noticed:

Karin's hair and the two hanging straps on the back of Yuri's pack sway so fucking much. It's fucking annoying. They take two steps and everything flies everywhere.

Astaroth's voice is easily the best in the game. Sounds real cool.

I like the fact you can get discounts and mark-up on prices for games you buy and sell. More games should have something like that.

Oh yeah. The music is awesome too.
 
Hmm... starting to pick up here in the very late end of the game. About 29 hours in,
Gonna try and revive Alice.

This whole thing of people asking what the person just said in RPGs needs to stop yesterday. It's fucking annoying, and it's done in SH:C about eleventy billion times. And it's done in the most insignificant parts of the game, too.

Yuri: We have to find go to Cannes.
Karin: Go to Cannes?
Yuri: Yes.
 
I'm playing through Shadow Hearts: Covenant myself, a few hours into the second disc. It's a good game, but with some flaws. The story is above average, but it's being haunted by the disappointing voice acting.

There are no voices I find particularly fitting or well-acted. Take the old guy in your team, for example (Gepetto?)...he sounds like someone trying really hard to sound like an old man. And failing miserably.
And the little sounds the characters make during some dialogues. You know, when there's a pause and someone is trying to express something by making this sound...by actually pronouncing "err", "uhrrm" or "m-hmmm". Cringe-worthy. :/ I wonder how much better the Japanese version is (in terms script and voice)...

As for the characters themselves, they are OK. I mean...most characters either haven't revealed much about themselves or don't have much to reveal. And seem to rely on rather shallow gimmicks to make them more distinct as characters.

As for the music: yes, the music is good...but also repeated a lot. The standard town theme must've been used for at least 4-5 different locations? Feels a bit cheap.

But the battle system is cool, with the judgement ring making things more involving (also fun when shopping). And it's nice to have distinct abilites for all your characters, with different ways to achieve these abilites too. Stuff like pulling off combos is fun, but the battles have been way too easy so far. Still, I kind of like that in some ways, it's a nice game to relax with without having to spend time levelling up and so on.

And I do like the funny moments (the ring soul and the part with Blanca on the second disc for example). I wish more "serious" games had a sense of humor like this, it's refreshing with some variety.

All in all, an enjoyable game with the kind of cinematic approach I tend to like.
 
I got ten minutes into game and got bored out of my mind :lol
FMV opening was so atrocious, boring, painful and long like typical average games this gen makes you wonder why they think they have to waste money on something they clearly cant do right. I think good lesson from this gen would be make goal of getting the gamer in control of a character within 5mins of load of game with periodically story breaks if needed to introduce the game. It shame we had all these rpgs threads and how there was too many this year to play them all and most turned out bland so far.
 
The Man Festival > All of you.

Covenant was probably my favorite RPG this year. I seriously didn't find anything in that game to complain about. Heck, I even enjoyed the VA. Yes, even Yuri's. :)
 
I enjoyed the game...

While I found Star Ocean 3 to be more fun (from a gameplay perspective), SH2 has been a great overall package. I enjoyed both MUCH more than Tales of Symphonia...
 
dark10x said:
I enjoyed the game...

While I found Star Ocean 3 to be more fun (from a gameplay perspective), SH2 has been a great overall package. I enjoyed both MUCH more than Tales of Symphonia...
Click to expand...

Interesting. I enjoy ToS a tad more than SH2. I guess ToS went for that whole classic cliche story thing that Skies did (which I enjoyed very much). It also revealed more about the characters than SH2 did. I've only been annoyed by a couple characters in SH2 though (
Anastasia, Kato, and Ouka
), where ToS had one who I was praying would die: Collette. I was glad when she lost her voice. Meant I couldn't listen to her terrible, terrible, terrible voice actor. Cam Clarke was disappointing after hearing him in Metal Gear Solid too.

I'd say overall, this year, the Gamecube and/or Xbox have put out better RPGs than the PS2, though the PS2 has had more more (from what I played- SH2, Phantom Brave, La Pucelle). And I was actually expecting it to be the other way around by a whole damn lot.
 
Hey, I absolutely adore Skies of Arcadia, but Tales just didn't do it for me. It didn't have the feeling of adventure, the memorable characters, the sense of scale, the interesting world, or the great soundtrack that Skies did. The battle system was pretty poor, I suppose, and I would have gladly swapped in that from ToS. Everything else about ToS just didn't really appeal...
 
Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with all these comments of ToS being the RPG GotY or being the best RPG on the system or ever. I don't agree that it's bad, either. It's in the same category as Covenant, just ranked slightly higher due to better characterization and the battle system. I even put La Pucelle in the same area as those two. All three feature varied VA (ranging from bad to decent or good), embarrassing dialogue at parts, fun gameplay for an RPG, but nothing to really make it stand heads and shoulders above the rest.

I think with ToS I expected it to be what I got. I expected Covenant to be a game ranking with Skies instead of ToS... so when it didn't meet my expectations, it became a disappointment in general (hence the first post of the thread).
 
AniHawk said:
where ToS had one who I was praying would die: Collette.
Click to expand...

NOOOO! I loved Collette! Even her voice! Collette was such a sympatic and cute character. She's one of the reasons why TOS is one of my favorietes this year.
 
SHC... I kinda feel like starting it over :)
This time with a walktrought, there are lots of cool scenes that you are likely to miss otherwise.
The lines of Joachim when picking up some new weapons, the tower ring, getting the white underpants.... crazy and funny stuff all along.

The two Shadow Hearts rank among my favorite RPGs ever. Anyone knows how SHC sold in the west? I want more games from that team.
 
IIRC it sold about 20k units in october in the states. There are no european sales numbers as there is not yet a release date for the game over here. I'm so happy I bought a US PS2 last year :)
 
IIRC, it sold 200,000 or so copies in JP. That should be good enough to warrant a sequel.

Although I wonder how they'll continue this game though. Since the end loops back to SH1. Unless they do a prequel and follow the further adventure of Karin and Yuri's dad(ken?).
 
jiggle said:
IIRC, it sold 200,000 or so copies in JP. That should be good enough to warrant a sequel.

Although I wonder how they'll continue this game though. Since the end loops back to SH1. Unless they do a prequel and follow the further adventure of Karin and Yuri's dad(ken?).
Click to expand...

They can simply continue on the other ending and have some new characters.
 
This is probably one of my favorite games to come out this year. Some of the music is awesome, I especially like the second disk's boss music, the subquests are cool (I was LMAO at the Man Festival)... The setting is great, I'd love to see a SH3 take place in WW2. The graphics are a mixed bag - some places look real blurry and grainy, and other places look amazing (The
Doll House
and some of the forests).
Man, I used Seventh Keys with a 4 person combo on the end boss = kill him in one hit...
 
The SH2 love faded rather quickly for me too. About 12 or 15 hours in, IIRC. It is likely a game I will eventually revisit, and probably even finish, when my backlog is not so daunting.
 
Wow, what a challenging final boss. Spikes + Stand = win, though.

Final team was Kurando, Yuri, Joachim (Golden Bat during the final fight), and Karin. Took two tries before I got that strategy down.

Okay, what I liked about the final part of the game:

Kato's motives being actually different than "I WANT POWER HAHAHA" and the fact that he wasn't going to destroy the world for the sake of destroying it.
Final boss fight.
The music (especially during one of the FMV scenes).
The humor (skipping like 60 floors in the Man Festival :lol)

What I didn't like:
Characters never developed any soul.
Voice acting.
Yuri dies. Alice gave her life to save him in the first one, right? Eh..

And WTF, Karin is Yuri's mom? That's twisted. He even saw her "naughty bits." Worse than Leia/Luke right there. Actually, now that I think about it, it reminds me a lot of sexylosers...
 
I thought the events involving Karin at the end was one of the few interesting plot events in an RPG that i didn't see coming a mile away.
 
Newduck said:
I thought the events involving Karin at the end was one of the few interesting plot events in an RPG that i didn't see coming a mile away.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't have either, except I read that spoiler in this thread like a moron.

But I would have liked it if the characters were developed better so I could care about them.
 
I liked SH2 because of the "somewhat" modern settings even though the game was set during WW1. I wish more developers would create rpgs set on earth in our modern time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Very LTTP: Shadow Hearts
16
436
Paltheos replied
COVENANT - Official Galaxies Showcase Trailer
4
414
Gonzito replied
COVENANT - Official Reveal Trailer
Trailer 
9
1K
Digital-Aftertaste replied
Kingdom Hearts IV – new screenshots
2
76
1K
Davevil replied
Sonic x Shadow: Generations - coming to Switch 2
2
328
Mownoc replied
Top Bottom