A fantastic sequel to a great game, with superb characters following a good storyline and a great unique combat system.
One day a female captain invades your village with a squad of men. You transform and quickly dispatch them all and save the captain from a stray grenade then let her escape with her life. Then she returns with a man from the Vatican that has a holy artifact called the "Holy Mistletoe". When they arrive the man turns on her and says he will kill them both. Yuri in fighting gets stabbed with the Holy Mistletoe and after an incantation he screams and passed out. Saved by his friends and the girl Yuri must find out what curse this Holy Mistletoe has put on him and how he can stop it.
The storyline of Shadow Hearts: Covenant is a direct sequel to the first Shadow Hearts. With the same main character Yuri and a new and unique cast of cool characters the storyline is very entertaining. It is a nice length RPG with great character development and an amazing plot with many unforeseen twists and turns to surprise you. As a sequel to one of my favorite games I had high expectations but it surpassed them all.
The gameplay is quite unique from your average everyday RPG, the Shadow Hearts series uses a combat system based around the Judgment Ring. The Judgment Ring is a ring that appears on your screen whenever you select an action such as attacking, items, magic, combo attacks, or anything else when this happens you must hit "X" at the right time for your action to be successful. This system makes battles a lot more entertaining and much more unique than the over-used menu surfing. Pretty much everything in the game is based around the judgment ring they do a good job of keeping all the characters timings different so you have to get used to them until the point where you can challenge yourself further. There are also special effects you can get on your ring that make it go twice as fast, invisible, makes the targets smaller, and many others making the judgment ring more difficult.
One thing Shadow Hearts: Covenant does very well also is the amount of things to accomplish in the game and possible after the game. Even after you get to the end of the game there are tons of things that you can do. There are not only many side quests that delve you further into the characters storylines and collects special skills for them but also collecting ultimate weapons and armor, collecting all the magic crests and arranging them on Solomon's Key, finding all of the lottery members, and my favorite collecting all the different demon fusions for Yuri among other things. Through all of the game it will keep you fully entertained and interested much longer than most RPGs can do with such a large array of things to do.
The cutscenes were amazing to say the least, not only were they frequent but the quality was great and they were very entertaining. The rest of the game looks great as well with very smooth animations and cool looking environments for you to explore. The music of Shadow Hearts would probably be the weakest point in my opinion but even so that isn't an insult. There are a good variety of music you will hear as you travel the world as Yuri but it doesn't seem to quite keep up with the great quality of the rest of the game.
Possible one of my favorite games of all time Shadow Hearts: Covenant does not disappoint. It provides a great storyline with fantastic characters, an awesome battle system based around the judgment ring, and great cutscenes and graphics. Due to all of these great features that it has I would rate Shadow Hearts: Covenant a 9.7 out of 10. Anyone who plays RPGs would love this series it is a great change of pace from conventional RPGs, with its good sense of humor and fun gameplay you will enjoy it. If you have yet to try a Shadow Hearts game I would suggest you do so and start with the first one if you want the full quality of the storyline and characters.