Shadow Hearts: From the New World
Shadow Hearts: From The New World is the 3rd and latest installment of the critically acclaimed role-playing game series. Johnny Garland lost his father, sister and his memory in an accident. The criminal responsible for this has escaped custody, and young Johnny goes after him. Just when Johnny catches up to him, a strange monster come from a green light & swallows him. When he meets a young Native American bounty hunter named Shania, he learns these "windows" have been opening in every major city. Together, they'll learn the secret behind this supernatural mystery.
Shadow Hearts: From the New World Accessories
 Shadow Hearts: Covenant
Radiata Stories
Shadow Hearts
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
Rogue Galaxy
Odin Sphere
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
Star Ocean Till the End of Time
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria
Final Fantasy XII
Shadow Hearts: From the New World Reviews
First of all Johnny is not a harmonixer. However those of us that loved the tragic yet bitter sweet relationship between Yuri and Alice Elliot do feel a bit sad to see them go. The ring of fate added an exciting twist to the usual turn based formula and you did have to pay attention a lot more instead of just punching in a command. However that is not to say the ps-2 is useless or obsolete especially when it comes to worthwhile RPGS. How does it stack up.
Apparently Johnny has lost many of his memories and he surmises being a super sleuth will dig something up. One of the best and most sadly under appreciated rpg franchise is Shadow-Hearts. The judgement ring was also used for bartering with merchants for discounts and starting with SH Covenant you could string combos together between characters. + Interacting with historic icons such as Al Capone and Elliot Ness. Say what you will but for us guys that is a great incentive. + Shania is drop dead sexy. Johnny on the other hand is only 16 (hard to believe a 16 year old would be a detective) and he was definitely tailored for younger players.
Why. The play mechanics add charging stocks but other-wise the judgement ring system is near identical. I'd say its' definitely worth having and a charming odd gem just like its' predecessors. Al Capone's younger sister Edna is soft spoken, kind hearted, and sexy as hell in her tight red dress yet though she could have been a great healer akin to Alice she is reduced to nothing more than a plot piece. With adult themes, an alternate history set in our world, slap stick humor, weird allies, and references that the characters actually think about "sex" it was sort of the "anti-final fantasy". Lady likewise looks exactly like Alice Elliot yet she is opposed to you during every step of your journey and likewise is not tied to the other games save for very obscure references. Though he could have lived off his father's inheritance he chose to be a detective instead. While Ricardo the guitar-gun toting musician, Natan, and Shania all are pretty serious and have decent motivations to stay with you the other half of the team is comic relief.
Cons. Shania and Natan save Johnny and things grow from there. He was a nice guy sure, but he was a realistic nice guy. That honor belongs to Shania and I kept debating if in fact she was the lead. He'd swear, he'd drink, and before he was even in love with Alice he wanted to get in her pants. As before ftnw is a fan of weaving an alternate history and this time the time line is set during the great depression.
I'm not saying that the characters you do get are crap, but the most interesting and well thought out ones pitch for the other team. - Towns are as small and cramped as ever. From the New-World is the newest in the series. While I do think Nautilis/X-seed were a bit over excessive with the cheesy humor that alone does not warrant calling ftnw a bad game. Its' just people that were fans of the other two slightly more serious and mature games might be put off at first.
- Johnny while lovable in his own right has a very difficult time filling Yuri's shoes. While I can say it does get better it is definitely more "cliche" though not on an entirely negative note. Yuri was a man. If anything ftnw gives you a few unexpected surprises. + The out-door level designs are beautiful. It also introduced the judgement ring system, an exciting slice of probability that made you time each button press on the wheel of fortune carefully.
If you thought the previous cast was "odd" suffice it to say you have not seen nothing yet. Is this story as strong as Covenant's. Johnny was in a tragic accident and lost his father and twin sister in a nasty blaze. Pros. To me, stringing combos together was much easier this time and I enjoyed how you had to think about what types of attacks would temporarily knock down and disable enemies. + Ring system keeps the game play as fun and addictive as ever.
Unless you are a jaded elitist that expects every incarnation of the series to be like the first two games you should enjoy this one immensely. Luckily they can all be upgraded through totem fetishes. In the mean-time Shania and her stoic gun toting warrior companion Natan spend time as bounty hunters hunting malice creatures. Luckily even the silly characters have beneficial abilities in battle and everyone has their own side missions to power up their abilities.
As expected Johnny's first case to find someone that evaded paying his bail turns into a terrifying encounter with the denizens of the abyss. As you see there are subtle nods to the first two games. So, with the X-box 360 becoming affordable even proud retro geezers like me will move on soon. So what is all this about. This doesn't make sense in places such as Chicago and New York that should be sprawling metropolises.
+ An interesting new alternate history set during the great depression. . Basically you will feel like you are the "under dog coach" left with the people no one else wanted and you are expected to make them into a formidable fighting force. Killer is a red haired Yuri look-alike but disappointingly he is not tied to Yuri in any way. A hero deserves to "retire" after two lengthy quests of fighting his own inner demons and the forces of malice around him. She is also a better fighter so Johnny seems weaker by comparison. - Some of the characters could have been "subtly humorous" instead of "outright ridiculous".
There is Old Frank the vigilante American ninja, Mao a drunken master giant cat, and Joachim's cute yet unruly little vampire sister Hilda that unlocks different abilities by using "calories" to become "thin" or "fat". It had to happen, Yuri cannot fight evil forever and the good ending from covenant suggested he found a way to change fate and be with Alice at long last. - Story line may seem a bit weaker to serious fans.
- Not as many fusion forms. This is not "bad" entirely. Perhaps the thing that upset me the most is the most enigmatic alluring characters are the bad guys or npcs.
The immediate problem I had with ftnw was I couldn't relate to the young spirited detective Johnny Garland as much as I could to Yuri. In the end ftnw is still fun to play and keeps you curious about what is around the next bin.
You will help Al Capone escape from prison, interact with Elliot Ness the detective, trek through the Grand Canyon to help Shania get another fusion form and to help Natan capture big foot, save everyone's favorite little eccentric wizard Roger Bacon from Area 51, and confront mad college professors that create "monsters" in their spare time just for kicks. +Mostly great voice acting and music throughout.
It's a fun game overall, and has an engaging story and cast of characters. There is a lot of micromanagement which can be tedious at times, but it doesn't detract from the game. They say that 3rd times a charm, and this third installment to the series is no exception. It's definitely worth the price of admission.
I've been a huge fan of the Shadow Hearts series, but "From the New World" is the weakest so far. The story this time is a brand new one. There is scarcely any plot to speak of as it is, the whole game is just a chase from start to finish, following the villains all around the world. You can do each dungeon level and boss in a single sitting and it sometimes seems like the game is whizzing by.
There's scarcely a serious moment in here, or anything approaching the depth or the adult orientated themes that the series did so well in the past. The stellar chart magic system is terribly clumsy and you have to navigate endless permutations of screens and options to set each character up with decent spells. The game still plays with "alternative" versions of real places, but it doesn't impress much this time around, with Alcatraz prison and the Roswell UFO site being very lack-lustre. Along the way he gathers a team of new friends and so the stage is set for a typical RPG. Managing Stock is crucial to a good battle, and I enjoyed it. Boss battles can be long, but at the same time, the game never gets particularly difficult, and levelling up sems to happen very rapidly so you can easily make a powerhouse team to face almost anything. The fun in the game lies with the battles and becoming an expert using the Judgement Ring.
I might be a little biased as I played it immediately after finishing Final Fantasy 12 and it just can't compare to that, but even so I remember having a far better time playing the first game and the sequel, "Covenant". The best thing about the series, though, is still it's trademark Judgement Ring system, and if you enjoyed the first two games for this reason you will be well served here. New York is represented by four "boroughs", most with just one street and no visitable buildings. I also enjoyed the Combo mechanism, with great results for those who have good reflexes (missing the correct symbol button and breaking a good combo is frustrating but fair, because if you want that 4 chain Combo magic you have to work for it). This time, however, I am not warming to any of them.
Frank the Ninja is a direct copy of Joacim, with his weapon upgrades from found objects, and Hilda the childish and annoying vampire changes form between being fat, skinny or a bat in the same way that Keith and Joacim did. Plus the stellar charts themselves have to be modified at shops to hold the better magic spells, which makes it even more of a bother. Shania the indian squaw can shape-shift into elemental fusion monsters like Yuri did, and characters learn new moves and spells by finding documents or manuscripts like Karin did. This can then be used to unleash devastating linked attacks once filled. Battles are complex and even random encounters need some forethought, especially as there are bonuses available for very good performances (perfect ring turns, enemies killed without having a single turn, etc), so there is a lot to enjoy.
It's nowhere near as impressive as "Covenant", and all it's ideas are second hand. Go the wrong way or step off the kerb and you drift back to the world map, showing you how tiny each location is. The trouble is that I'm having a harder time becoming attached to them in this game because they just don't seem to be original creations. I thought having the puppet master Gepetto and Princess Anastasia as part of your team in Covenant was whacky enough, but this time around you'll be joined by a giant drunken Kung-Fu cat, a kittenish female Vampire and a comedy Ninja. As this is supposed to be a completely new game, I found this amount of repetition in the characters to be very disappointing. It's a shame that these good aspects are not complementing a more impressive basic game, because as it stands, the Judgemant Ring and the good "extras" are the only thing lifting a very short and mediocre RPG plot and characters into being a passable game. It's all now just a giant cartoon, and while Kung-Fu cats and fat vampires are funny for a while, they don't draw you into the story at all.
Another thing is that in this day and age, there is no excuse for the playable environments to be so small. The story of Yuri and Alice really made the first game memorable, and the second was almost as good, with Karin making a very sympathetic female lead. One good thing is that each character has unique abilities, which means that they are not endlessly interchangeable like in some RPGs (even in Final Fantasy 12 you could have built up all the characters in exactly the same way), and this gives some variety. There's no moveable camera and the scantest populations of NPCs to talk to in each place. A 16 year old called Johnny Garland has his own detective agency in New York (like all 16 year olds do), and one day a chance visit from a stranger begins a missing person hunt that leads to uncovering an evil force that threatens to wipe out the entire world. My overall impression is that "From The New World" has been created to ride on the glory of the games before it by simply copying them. There are some new ideas, but they are not all good. It's also trying too hard to be funny.
The battles have even become more complicated with the introduction of the "Stock" guage, which acts like a meter that fills up when you give or receive damage. Sidequests are good - there are seperate side stories for each character which is a nice aspect, and something of a tradition now in the series. The dungeons are little better, relegated to just a few rooms or stages, with no more than about three varieties of enemy in each. Now, Shadow Hearts is famous for having off the wall characters and this time is no exception.
There are also ways to slow the rings and create more opportunities to attack. It draws you slowly into the new Battle System so that it is not hard to get used to. The interactive battle system, using rings that spin around and around, is a fun addition to this RPG. Enjoyable game with beautiful graphics (mostly the movie modes but still good during gameplay) and even better music with a blend of a Native American style and old western with a modern rock influence. This game, though it starts a little slow, gets better and better by the minute. All in all, a great installment of the Shadow Hearts series and a great addition to any RPG collection.
An awesome RPG adventure with an unforgettable story with amazing game play the best in the series by far a must for RPG fans.
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