Shadow Hearts: From The New World Is An Acid Trip

Shadow Hearts: From the New World is probably the most controversial game from the Shadow Hearts series. It’s controversial because it really does everything it can to destroy the series as a whole. After this game came out Nautilus went under, and then Arzue went back to being a pachinko game and changing their name. In an interview a few years back the creator of the Shadow Hearts game said that the original idea of the game was to feature Kurando’s dad and Yuri’s dad in an adventure in Japan or something along those lines. It would have been a better concept. Though in later years he started a kickstarter and was developing the spiritual successor to the game along with the creator of the Wild Arms series.

But at any rate. When I was writing the blog post for the most annoying character, it kind of dawned on me that Shadow Hearts: From the New World was more of an acid trip than anything. That being said for many people the Shadow Hearts series as a whole is something of an acid trip. Starting with Koudelka you happen upon a monastery and fight against demons and what not. The other two games have you fight in 1914 and 1915 Europe, Asia and Japan respectively, fighting demons and god knows what. Finding yourself going against secret socieities and government plots.

The thing that makes Shadow Hearts: From the New World a really bad acid trip was how they took the popularity and success of the second game’s characters and tried to replicate it. We already took a look at just how similiar Frank and Joachim are but let’s dive a bit deeper.

Shania much like Yuri uses fusion to become monsters. Unlike Yuri the souls that she fuses with aren’t demons but are revered spirits that you meet on your journey that were once worshipped by Native American tribes scattered in the US and South America. Unlike Yuri, she gains a tattoo that represents their symbol and in order to fuse, she has to strip. I’m not kidding.

Though when she reverts, she reclaims her clothes. I don’t know how or why it happens. And it’s something that Yuri didn’t do in the second or first games. (Now imagine if he did do that. I mean it was bad enough that we were teased with a picture of him almost shirtless in Shadow Hearts 2. *cough*)

At any rate. They really did try and reuse certain aspects of the second game. As well as similiar designs.

Speaking of expys, Killer and Lady bear a striking resemblence to Yuri and Alice. It was something that did greatly unnerve me along with their names being Killer and Lady. (Though later on it’s revealed that Lady’s name was actually Grace, however after an experiement with reviving the dead with use of the Emigre Manuscript went awry, she forgot her name and became this emanator of malice.) It was like they just took two aspects from Yuri and Alice, as well as their looks and decided to make new characters. Shadow Hearts: From the New World didn’t feel much of a sequel but it’s own standalone game much in the same form as Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm.

It could have be called something else because for the first two games, Shadow Hearts was mainly about Yuri and Alice in some form. Now while the original concept of the game was going to be centered around Kihetai (Kurando’s dad) and Jinpachiro (also known as Ben in the first game for whatever reason.)’s adventures, it was still somehow related to Yuri Hyuga. A prequel game would have been better and felt better than the abomination that we got.

And they did this for several characters like Mao being the expy of Blanca. Blanca was an ordinary wolf who understood human speech, and the only time he “talked” was when he was fighting against his fellow wolves in the Wolf Bouts, and also the time that Yoshiko Kawashima (the second. Not the one from the first game. It’s confusing because Naniwa Kawashima decided to adopt her and named her after his own biological daughter, whom he disowned and she was murdered soon after.) tried to take him home like she was Elmira from Tiny Toon Adventures and tried to name him snowball. (Remember that he is Blanca the Hurricane!) The wolf bouts were memorable with some of the wolves being expys of other characters from different games. Like Kelly being an expy of of Terry Bogard from the SNK games. And who could forget R-3, the wolf that mainly spoke in emoji. Or Necro the zombie wolf. Or Tetsu who later revealed himself to be a kid in a wolf suit. Or Ernest himself as Wolfman.

The problem with Shadow Hearts: From the New World is that they decided to make Mao be more anthropromorphic than Blanca and have her not only talk, but also do Drunken Fist and fight against other anthropromorphic cats that were based off of famous movie actors both of the time and also the future. (Like there’s an actor based off of the Terminator.) Though that could be blamed in story for Yuri’s group in Shadow Hearts: Covenant messing with the space-time continuum by going to Takamagahara which has the ability to send someone to either past or the future either by a few months or several years in Karin’s case. Which largely had an effect as we had bomber jackets as a fashion item, even though that didn’t become the case until the 1980’s, and the use of the cellphone which the first patent and cellphone was created in 1978, with some advancements being in 1990 to about the early to mid 2000’s.

But at the same time, it wasn’t my favorite part about the game and something that I largely forgot or didn’t do. I didn’t care about Mao, much like I didn’t care for Frank. Both of their sidequests I really didn’t want to do and it went left unforgotten. Shadow Hearts: From the New World did add new concepts such as the concept of will and how it countered malice, and having harmonixers of other countries being shown. It also mechanically updated the combat system and had different monsters that came out of some Lovecraftian horror show (and even had the man appear and had him create Trials for you much like Sara did in the second game. )

But that being said, Shadow Hearts: From the New World is an acid trip. A bad acid trip. But despite that, I have hope that when Pennyblood comes out, maybe it will re-invigorate the same love for the series that I had in 2004 when I played Shadow Hearts: Covenant and maybe I can forget Shadow Hearts: From the New World ever happened.