I recommend Shadow Hearts 1 if you still can find it. It's probably a rare game by now. Then get Shadow Hearts 2.

heh would you play a RPG if the main character was a fat aunt? :P

Most of the tracks are excellent. My favorite ones are those playing in battles. I like the music playing in the university and in the dungeon too.

I noticed that the few tracks I didn’t like was composed by Tomoko Imoto;

129 Pirates of the Caribbean
128 Sneaking Heart
130 By A Mustache Hair.mp3

Those tracks aren’t exactly bad, but out of context in SH. I would have probably liked them if they were in a game produced by Rare Ware.

I never tried the Persona series, did I miss something valuable?

Heh some people should simply stop playing RPGs – or games ;)

Even though a lot of games use brainless clichés, developers can’t keep away from all of them.

Heh that's not impossible :P If I'm not completely wrong, Capcom developed Zelda: The Minish Cap and Oracle of Seasons  for Nintendo. So everything is probable.

Playing around with historical characters was really the best aspect of the series. I liked Rasputin very much in SH:Covenant.

But



is really too much for me.

Humor had a dark touch in SH1. Humor was respectable and credible in SH:Covenant.  But in FtNW humor is simply childish. The girly pirate with the cartoonish manners, the snoozing pirate in the barrel, the cartoonish noises in some FMVs, and cats producing a movie in Hollywood are good examples of what I’m saying.

I'm not saying the game is total bullshit... I still enjoy many aspects of it. I love the Inca environment, it’s similar to Western Lords (a game we're developing).

I just hope in the next episode they will be more careful.

Possible spoiler:

I'm 20hrs in the game. The atmosphere is getting more serious now. Nevertheless the story isn’t very absorbing and the characters are lifeless so far.

Yeah the graphics are insane, and the battle system is my favorite one.

In my opinion Shadow Heart 1 and Shadow Hearts: Covenant was 100 times better. It’s regrettable because the developers had all the elements to make this game a masterpiece. I wonder if it’s the same team from the previous installment working on FtNW(director, writer, etc)... probably not.

The first 4 hours of Shadow Heart: FtNW was simply extraordinary, flawless.

But then, it started to become a succession of cheezy humor as soon as Ol-Frank, Mao and Hilda joined the party... And unfortunatelly their presence is strong...

I'm just 7 hours deep in the game and I'm hoping against hope it will come back to a solemn mood and stay to it...

I would like to see more interaction from Johnny, Shania, Natan and Ricardo, and I would like Ol-Frank, Master Mao and Hilda to stop interacting in the storyline in an exagerated way... because they can't add anything serious in the storyline.

Here’s my early comment as a fan-boy.

Now that I'm pretty advanced in the game, I must admit that the new cast is awfully poor. I’m very deceived with this aspect.

Half of the characters are cheesy and non-sense, and sadly sometime the game focus more on them than the serious characters. Shadow Hearts is becoming a comical genre rather than a solemn game (which was the strong point of the series, and it’s being slowly destroyed).

I hate the talking cat - Master Mao. The same for Ol-Frank. He’s always there to make stupid jokes when the events are supposed to be somber. It’s ruining everything. It’s okay to have funny characters, but only when they’re not over-abused in the script.

The soundtrack isn’t getting better in the series too. Sometime I almost have the impression I’m playing with Banjo Kazooie… for god's sake, it's SHADOW HEARTS.

Except these details the game is great though. But yeah it merit no more than 8/10, and even as a fan-boy I can admit that.

During the next few days we'll be a lot of people sharing the same passion ;)

I get rid of all my other games and I switched for Shadow Heart: From the New World :D

I'm in the Grand Canyon. It's not that far in the game yet.

What a pain, I have a huge commission to finish during the week, and I'm really gripped by the game! It will be hard to balance my time :P

yahoo! I picked the game up! :D

The intro is insanely amazing. I really love the main character so far.

But only 1 DVD instead of 2?

For some reasons I’m not eager to play FFXII yet. I can’t explain why but there’s something missing that doesn’t catch my attention like the previous installments.