[Multiplatform] How good are: Shadow Hearts, Valk Profile, Dark Cloud, & Arc the Lad Series

Quoting myself on another forum.

Shadow Hearts is the sequel to Koudelka. Koudelka wasn't a good game, but they redeemed themselves by bringing out pure greatness with Shadow Hearts. Also note you don't need to play Koudelka to understand Shadow Hearts, but maybe you should read up about the character Koudelka since she makes appearences in the series later on.

Shadow Hearts came out around the same time as Final Fantasy X so it was overlooked by pretty much everyone. This is just a huge marketing mistake, I think it could have gone over so much better if they advertised it more.

This series has a unique battle system. You have to time button presses as a line goes around what the game calls a "Judgement Ring", hitting the little spots that it shows.



As you can see, there are orange and yellow fractions. If you hit the small red fractions, you get a critical hit. If you normally hit the orange ones, you get a normal hit. But if you miss, your attack ends. So basically if you hit the first one and miss the 2nd one, you only do one hit instead of four in this case.

The game also throws in unique status effects and such. Like an enemy gives you "blind ring" status and you can't see where the fractions are, you just have to wing it. Or "speed ring" where the line goes faster than usual. Stuff like this just proves how unique this game really is compared to normal RPGs.

The story is probably one of the bigger parts of the series, all Shadow Hearts games are based on alternate reality. In the real world, at certain times in history. I believe they've covered the late 1800s and early 1900s so far. Of course they add fantasy to the game, so like I said "alternate reality" it's still pretty much based off of real world history.

Another thing worth mentioning is the music of the series. The first two were a collaborative effort with Yoshitaka Hirota and Yasunori Mitsuda. Mitsuda didn't really do too many tracks, but he influenced Hirota on the first game, and it shows. In my opinion the best soundtrack in the series is the first one, it also had the most quality sound sample-wise.

In the end, Shadow Hearts is an amazing series, and I reccomend everyone try it out. The first game first, please. Unless you're a graphics whore.

Dark Cloud 2

This is one of my top favorite games of all time. Everything about it is perfect, of course not everyone likes the randomized dungeons, but they didn't really bother me one bit.

The graphics still hold up pretty well to today's standards, the cel-shading is done very well. It's up there with Dragon Quest VIII, definitely. Though obviously it's not AS GOOD as DQ8, it's a bit older afterall.

The gameplay is the most important part of this game. The main character, Max has a melee weapon (wrench!) and a long-range type weapon (gun). The female character has a Sword and Magic. You can upgrade each weapon and long range item by finding items in dungeons and breaking them down and putting them on your weapon.

Your weapon has a set of requirements and different paths it can take in the upgrading line. For instance "Lightning 15" and "Power 25" means you have to find items that can increase lightning and power on your weapon, you break them down and put them in your weapon, then you upgrade it. The direction you go changes your weapon, you can find FAQs that give all that info.

Early in the game you get another "character" named Steve, he's basically a mech-type character that Max gets inside and uses to fight. Steve can also be upgraded, imagine having a mech that can fly and dual wields katanas or something. Great stuff.

The "big" system in this game is being able to build towns. If you listen to people and build it their way you get items that increase your stats as a reward. Also you can go into the future and see how your town turned out as well using an important item to the story.

This game is full of fun minigames. Namely "Spheda" which is a golf game, you can play it in every single level in the game. There's also fishing too, though I never really got into that myself.

Dark Cloud 2 is a game with a lot of fun to be had. It feels like it's worth way more than I paid for. It's just one of those games that you can be very impressed with all of the detail put into it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Main problem I have with VP1 and 2 is that they seem pretty unbalanced to me and there's a lot of micromanagement which made it a bit hard for me to enjoy.

I also wouldn't consider SH3 a bad game. It's lower quality than Covenant, yes... but it's still a good, fun game.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Talaysen, you should give Dark Cloud 2 a chance.

How ya doing, buddy?