Shadow Hearts: Covenant is a console role-playing game developed by Nautilus and published by Midway in 2004.
The game is also known as Shadow Hearts II (シャドウハーツII, Shadō Hātsu Tsū?) This is the name used within the game itself: the name "Shadow Hearts: Covenant" was used only on the American and European packaging and in advertising.
The story follows six months after the events of Shadow Hearts in the midst of World War I. The heroes are drawn into an intriguing plot involving the demons of demonolatry, the chief advisor of the tsar of Russia and a man from main character Yuri's past.
The release of Shadow Hearts: Covenant generated much more fanfare than its predecessor. As such, the series gained a much wider following in the United States.
The Judgment Ring from Shadow Hearts returns with many modifications and improvements. Also, battle has been greatly expanded by different types of attacks as well as combo attacks. An element of physics has been added to battles as well, which links to the types of combo attacks which can be performed.
In Shadow Hearts: Covenant, players are able to customise the Judgment Ring to their own preferences with the introduction of two new Ring items: Hit Area Expand and Strike Expand, making the game easier or more challenging to the player, depending on what they want. Several ring types are also introduced to cater to the different players e.g. Practice Ring for beginners, Normal Ring for amateurs, Technical Ring for veterans and lastly, Auto Ring for gamers who simply are just too lazy to aim at the Judgment Ring.
A worthy mention of the new battle mechanism would be the introduction of the Crest Magic system, where players are able to equip Crests to certain characters that would allow them to cast different types of elemental magic. Along the journey, players are able to collect new crests and use more powerful magic. The crests may also be positioned in a key item known as Solomon's Key. Postioning the crests correctly will unlock new spells for each crest for a certain region. It should be noted that most of the crests' names are derived from the names of various demons in several ancient mythology.
Shadow Hearts: Covenant also includes "Hit Classes" which are incorporated with the physical and magical attacks. These include: Standard, Hard Hit, High Angle and Knock Down. Depending on the "weight" of the opponent monster, you'll be able to do more damage when connecting a combo during battle. Conversely, if an attack with an inappropriate Hit Class is used to continue a combo, the end result is a missed attack, or rather, a Combo Break.
For example, a Standard hit will simply push an enemy behind while attacking. This allows for any other type of Hit Class attack to be connected to do a Combo. A High Angle and Knock Down combo attack is another similar example. However, say if a Knock Down attack is applied to an enemy who has a "Heavy" weight followed by a High Angle hit, it will most probably miss since the enemy is still Knocked Down at that moment when the combo attack is made.
Combo shortcuts are also introduced where players are able to assign physical/magical attacks onto the controller buttons. This reduces the time taken to create a Combo attack as one character can attack immediately after another with a simple press of the button. However, this makes the game more challenging as players have to decide quickly what kind of attack they should follow up next as the combo shortcut menu appears only for a short amount of time i.e. when the precediing character is in the midst of launching his/her attack.
The town of Domremy has stubbornly refused to fall to the German advance at the beginning of World War I thanks to the aid of a "demon" which seems to defend it. Lieutenant Karin Koenig of the German army is sent along with a person who claims to be an Inquistor from the Vatican, Nicolai Conrad, to acquire a means of exorcising this demon. However, the 'Demon of Domremy' is actually the Harmonixer Yuri from the first Shadow Hearts. It is discovered that Nicolai is a member of the group Sapientes Gladio, and he casts the curse of the mistle toe on Yuri, which causes him to lose his fusions and weakens him. Yuri, Karin, and other allies made along the way chase after Nicolai. It is eventually discovered that Nicolai works for Rasputin, who is the leader of the Sapientes Gladio who hopes to assassinate the Czar and become the ruler of Russia. After Yuri attains his fusion powers back, specifically that to fuse into Amon, he kills Rasputin and then goes after Nicolai. As Nicolai opens the gate of Malice, he is confronted by Yuri and his party. Before he is killed, Yuri's former friend Kato comes, who is now a high ranking official of Japan, and takes Nicolai to Japan. Yuri and his party follow Kato, and upon entering Japan they find corruption in the government and hopes to take over Russia. Yuri stops the prime minister from going to war with Russia, and then chases after Nicolai, who has escaped. Kato comes with him. Upon finding Nicolai, Nicolai fuses into Astaroth, but he is defeated by Yuri. As he is dying, Nicolai uses his power to speeden up the curse of the mistle toe, which would have killed Yuri had Kato not interfered and kicked Nicolai. Nicolai then pulls out a dagger is about to stab Kato in the chest, when the clone of Kato's former master gets in the way, and is killed. Kato breaks Nicolai's neck, killing him. Kato decides that the world has become corrupt and seeks to destroy it. Before he has a chance to do so, he is defeated by Yuri and his party.
The game as a whole was revamped from Shadow Hearts, including the graphics, cutscenes, voices, the way the Judgment Ring worked, and the cast of characters. Game critics have also smiled upon Shadow Hearts: Covenant much more than the original, and a general consensus seems to be that the game is an overall improvement on the first.
An interesting bit of trivia, is that, when this game was in its early stages of development, Aruze "leaked" that the story revolved around only Nicolai, Karin and other yet-to-be-named allies. Yuri was unmentioned and Shadow Hearts 2 was believed to be absent and this game a separate story. However, once the game was released, many players and fans were delighted and surprised to see that Yuri had made his return as the main focus of this game.