In their rush to make it big first on the new hardware, a lot of the preponderance of early PS2 RPGs received some harsh critical panning. Shadow Hearts was not surprisingly among them–it showed hastily-drawn development lines around its every component, it had weak-to-crippling voice talent, and it barely eked past PS1 levels graphically-speaking. A sequel to Koudelka, a short PS1 RPG that had some reviewer difficulties of its own, Shadow Hearts may have seemed an unlikely candidate for a further sequel… but not to me.

I really enjoyed Shadow Hearts’ thematically-mature story of necromantic, murderous intrigue and dark contracts with destiny, despite all its less desirable qualities. When Aruze realized it had done something good, but just good enough, the idea clicked to work harder on the sequel, and Shadow Hearts: Covenant leaped and bounded past the previous production in all its values. Fully-voiced cutscenes with people who actually tried, seriously upgraded visuals that ditched the single-screen prerendered look for giant Christo-European locales, and an opening movie that kicks the crap out of everything edgey and angsty that Final Fantasy ever tried: this is what makes a Covenant. This is what makes you want to join it.