Fun battles, beautiful graphics with outlandish plot premises, but the voice acting was a little annoying.
First off, the learning curve was quite steep for me without a manual (borrowed the game from a friend). It took forever to figure out what all those numbers and abbreviations for everything from battle stats to combo mechanics meant, and learn by trial and error what moves would break a combo. But once you get that stuff down the game is pretty easy with your powerhouse characters, at least if you're using a walkthrough like I did (seriously pathetic sense of direction).
Battles are pretty fun because of the judgement ring system, although by the end of the game I was beginning to tire of it. But the graphics, though not at the forefront of technology even for a 2004 game, were pleasing to my eye, and the magic and fusions have the right amount of rainbow-infused pyrotechnics and sparkles to keep me happily glued to the screen for the whole ride.
The cutscenes are pretty well done and mostly funny. The significant ones, though few and far between, are quite memorable and bittersweet. There will be a couple of scenes that you will go back to watch again, and that's Shadow Hearts: Covenant at its best. The thing I really hated Yuri's voice acting; too old and gruff. The characters are all quite interesting, though I wish there had been more dialogue and interaction between them. I wasn't as drawn into the whole thing as I expected to be, but I suppose I can't expect it to have a storyline as deep as an anime. The plot tends to the bizarre side and it seems anything can happen, so sometimes I really feel like I'm dungeon-crawling for the sake of doing so, not to further this particular goal because the next plot twist will pretty much void anything I just did.
Overall it was a fun ride in the summer break, but holds no replay value for me.