Two RPG series I'm curious about....

[LINK398]

The only major RPG series that I don't have any games for that I can think of is probably Xenosaga. I really have no desire to play those games. I was looking up some information about the Persona games and the Shadow Hearts games and was wondering how are those games? Are they currently hard to find? I'll throw in Eternal Sonata as another game I'm curious about.

[Yoda]

Persona is relatively cheap depending on your budget.

I bought P3 and P4 for cheap and will probably never play them.

Just to have them, mocking everything RPGfan stands for

[Eusis]

Persona games shouldn't be too hard to find. P3 Fes, P3P, and P4 are fairly abundant last I checked, P2: Innocent Sin just came out, and P1 PSP is a few years old but is on PSN if worse comes to worse. The only problematic ones are P1 PS1 and P2: Eternal Punishment, and most people prefer P3/P4 (and those are easier to get into anyway). Even if you DID want those, better to just play the PSP games, P1 on PSP is uncut and P2:IS came out before EP anyway.

As for Eternal Sonata... uhh, gameplay may be fun enough, but there's better options. And Shadow Hearts a fairly good series overall, but each game may be fairly pricey now.

[Darklight]

Give Eternal Sonata a chance, It has a certain Charm about it that makes it enjoyable imho. Good to play after something a bit more extreme like Nocturne, it's a simple game to play but I was really sucked into the Sonata universe. I'd read reviews on Shadow Hearts, Game is easy to find though you need to be able to cope with Disney

[Sapphire_Fate]

The only major RPG series that I don't have any games for that I can think of is probably Xenosaga. I really have no desire to play those games. I was looking up some information about the Persona games and the Shadow Hearts games and was wondering how are those games? Are they currently hard to find? I'll throw in Eternal Sonata as another game I'm curious about.

You can find all three Shadow Hearts games on Amazon for about 25-40 bucks each. The series is a masterpiece of quality games.

[RPGMetalFan]

I'd read reviews on Shadow Hearts, Game is easy to find though you need to be able to cope with Disney

That's Kingdom Hearts, dude. :P

I don't have much to say about Persona, never played any of them, but I do know that they're pretty easy to find. I did thoroughly enjoy the Shadow Hearts games, and I'd highly recommend them. As the poster above me said, they're easy enough to find on Amazon.

[Gen Eric Gui]

All the SMT games are great, not just Persona.  Buy them if you can.

Shadow Hearts is a hinky series.  I personally didn't like the first game, but I've met people who extoll it as the best in the series.  The second game is fantastic, and I can't suggest it enough.  The third game is kinda terrible, but that's mostly because they went full-on goofy mode instead of staying quasi-serious like the previous games; the game itself was still totally solid.

[Zendervai]

Yeah, the first Shadow Hearts is really dark and serious with only a couple examples of wonky humor, but the second one, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, while relatively serious starts to go in the humorous direction, and Shadow Hearts: From the New World went full on humorous.

[Bytor]

...and full on down hill, the series simply got worse an worse as it "progressed"

[Prime Mover]

Shadow Hearts, Game is easy to find though you need to be able to cope with Disney

Well, to be fair, Covenant has Gepetto.

I've only played Covenant, and I was not impressed. For a game that seemed to really want to take itself seriously, I thought the characters, other than the leads, were cheap architypes and silly cameos. The battle system was alright, but the dungeons were horrifically linear and confining. For a game that was supposed to be a broad sweeping epic, it really suffered from tunnel vision. Not a terrible game, but not one I ever really think about.

[Tomara]

All the SMT games are great, not just Persona.  Buy them if you can.

Shadow Hearts is a hinky series.  I personally didn't like the first game, but I've met people who extoll it as the best in the series.  The second game is fantastic, and I can't suggest it enough.  The third game is kinda terrible, but that's mostly because they went full-on goofy mode instead of staying quasi-serious like the previous games; the game itself was still totally solid.

I'm one of those people who liked the first one the most. I have a soft spot for horror stories and a horror RPG was like a dream come true. But horror is not for everyone, I guess. Still, I think you can get most out of the second game by playing the first one too. It's fairly short by RPG standards anyway.

Edit: or read/watch a Let's Play, that'll work too.

[Sapphire_Fate]

Yeah, the first Shadow Hearts is really dark and serious with only a couple examples of wonky humor, but the second one, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, while relatively serious starts to go in the humorous direction, and Shadow Hearts: From the New World went full on humorous.

Shadow Hearts was the only one that had a fantastic, horrifying atmosphere, however. It's still pretty hilarious when it wants to be, too, and it's a lot smarter with its humor than its sequels.

It's worth playing all three for the amazing battle system, which is perfected in the third game. Still haven't come across an RPG with as good of gameplay as FTNW.

[Adapheon]

Yeah, the first Shadow Hearts is really dark and serious with only a couple examples of wonky humor, but the second one, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, while relatively serious starts to go in the humorous direction, and Shadow Hearts: From the New World went full on humorous.

So Shadow Hearts is the video game equivalent of the Evil Dead series then it seems.

[Uru]

The first two shadow hearts are related with the third being the spinoff. The character progression through the first two games is top notch with all the battle mechanics being perfected in the third. The third is also way harder and more unforgiving than the first two.

[Eusis]

The New World is probably the most disliked entry overall (that, or the first, but I really liked that one), but this isn't some dramatic drop off in quality or anything from what I played. If you really loved the prior two games it's still worth playing through the third I imagine, I mostly haven't done it because there's other stuff I wanted to play more (and Covenant kind of bored me once the "this is better than Baten Kaitos!" sheen wore off).