THE GOOD:story,dialogues' quality,soundtrack,bosses' difficulty is decent,lots of side quests and hidden locations,great replay value,very interesting and pretty deep characters' personalities
THE BAD:
graphics are literally on Playstation 1 level,very short game length,small world's size
SUMMARY:
well,in short:
STORY great,in general-one of the best of all rpgs from NES through PS2.very original and standing out.
main character's personality development is high,deep and interesting.by the way,very original main character-the "hero",he is absolutely out of any "hero"-types that you can see in most rpgs.very interesting,and out of any type as well,all other characters.
dialogues are outstanding.
very interesting and original time and place of the game's events-the beginning of XX century,Asia and Europe..in general-dark and subtle storyline.
BATTLES & B.SYSTEM pretty decent,some bosses are tough and require good preparation.there are a few secret,hidden bosses,they are indeed hard.
SOUNDTRACK the composer of this game is Y.Mitsuda(Chrono Trigger,Xenogears,Chrono Cross).I won't even say anything detailed here,literally awesome soundtrack..however,a specifious one.
GRAPHICS ..well,here this game suffers greatly,they are on the level of PS1 games,especially battles' graphics.the game is made in PS1 style:2d backrounds and 3d characters in towns,and 3d battles.actually this is because the game was originally planned for PS1.but I suppose,in an rpg graphics mean nothing,when the storyline and gameplay are really great.
as negatives,I would also mention very short game's length(and world map),it can be longer if you will find all secret locations and do all sidequests,but in general-a short rpg,but on the other hand-with indeed an impressive and exciting story,and captivating gameplay..maybe it is even better.
speaking of hidden things,I would also mention that the second ending of Shadow Hearts is pretty hard to achieve,so no doubt you will wish to replay this game at least once.
I would recommend this game to any rpg fan,especially to die-hard gamers.if you haven't played it-you missed a lot.
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