While frequently a game that borders on the bizarre, Shadow Hearts: Covenant is a game that blends wonderfully classic, yet dark, atmospheres and a souped up traditional turn-based combat system into a truly first-rate RPG title. Shadow Hearts: Covenant has a visual style that is unique to RPGs, except for maybe its precursor, Shadow Hearts. Set in Europe during World War I, every area of the game is filled with the depressing undertone of a continent ravaged by war. The war itself is only in the background however, darker things stand in the path the player must walk. Most of the time, when I was walking around a town, I felt like I was in, of all places, a Resident Evil game. A dark and foreboding undertone permeates through every environment of the game. While never scary or frightening, it is decidedly unsettling. Style aside, the graphics are also technically excellent, with characters and environments that stand up to just about anything else out there.

With an atmosphere as dreary as Shadow Hearts: Covenant’s, it should come as no surprise that the soundtrack is equally sad and melancholy. While appropriate for this game, it also causes the soundtrack to seem more subdued than many contemporary RPGs. You won’t find yourself humming many of these tunes while you walk down the street, but all in all it’s a solid B soundtrack. Sound effects are primarily found in battles and consist of your typical crashes, booms, tones, cries, and so forth. The game also has voice acting, and is decently, if not wonderfully, done.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant maintains a balancing act of being decidedly traditional and untraditional at the same time. Leveling, magic usage, and battles are all rooted in typical conventions at their core. Leveling is just a matter of gaining experience, magic uses up secondary “pools” of points, and battles are turn-based. However, the acquisition of magic, special abilities and the execution of commands in battle are all extremely unique. Let me give you a few examples. The character Karin acquires new sword skills by finding pieces of an opera. There is even a character who, sit down for this, collects “stud cards” which is given to a “foppish” store clerk in exchange for new dresses for the character’s doll which he uses in battle. Now, the character in question is named Gepetto and is a puppeteer, so it’s not quite a bad as it first may appear. Still, you see what I’m getting at; this game truly straddles the bizarre at times.

As odd as the game may be at times, it’s consistently the most entertaining RPG I’ve played in a long time. The battle system is complex enough to be engaging, but not so cumbersome that I have to think so much that I feel like I’m in school. While the turn-based system is pretty traditional, the manner in which you execute commands is not. Shadow Hearts: Covenant uses a “Judgment Ring” system. When a character performs any action, attack, spell, special move, even using an item, a ring appears with a clock hand that moves clockwise at varying speeds depending on circumstances. As the hand moves around the ring, it will pass over colored areas at which time you must press the X button. There are several different kinds of areas, and when you have 6 tiny little slivers to nail on the ring for more potent maneuvers, things can get pretty hair-raising. Even normal attacks have a few interesting twists. You can perform them in four ways such as standard, hard hit, high angle, and knock down. Add to that the fact that you can combo character’s regular attacks together and you can come up with tons of different ways to go about a battle.

The storyline of Shadow Hearts: Covenant picks up where the original Shadow Hearts left off. It takes place in 1916, a year after the start of World War I. The main character from the original, Yuri, has secluded himself in a church in the French town of Domremy. The German officer Karin leads a failed assault, later returns with a Vatican cardinal named Nicolai, and then the story begins in earnest. Most of the game is spent traipsing around Europe as you try to uncover a hidden threat that exists beneath the ongoing war.

Since most of Shadow Hearts: Covenant is pretty standard RPG fare, the real trick to winning the tougher battles is generally performing well on the judgment ring. Set up all of your characters to perform a four man combo and then screw up on the first person’s turn and you’ll have wasted your entire party's turn. That generally doesn’t go over real well. Thankfully, the game actually gives you a few options with the judgment ring. You can make the ring easier or harder to perform on with the consequences of actions being less and more effective respectively. For the truly lazy types, there’s even a way to have the computer automatically do the rings for you. Of course, if you choose this option you will never get the maximum effectiveness out of any moves, and since a large part of the entertainment in battles is derived from the judgment ring, this would also make the game quite dull.

As I mentioned above, one of the more unique aspects of Shadow Hearts: Covenant are the ways you gain new special attacks and spells. Gepetto collects new dresses, the wolf Blanca challenges other wolves to duels and gains a new skill when he wins. Yuri acquires soul points to spend on new fusion forms and level up ones he already has. This is only about half your characters. Magic also works in an interesting way. You find and equip magic crests to characters, which gives them access to new spells. There is an interesting little diversion for upgrading crests wherein you must place them in their correct positions on a map. When you complete a region of the map, all the crests in that regions will gain new spells.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by how good Shadow Hearts: Covenant turned out to be. While I knew fans of the original were eagerly awaiting this sequel, I had no idea I myself would it enjoy it so much. If you like console RPGs, chances are you’re going to like Shadow Hearts: Covenant. Console RPGs seem to be going through a little bit of a revolution at the moment, with established series’ like Breath of Fire and Final Fantasy going in vastly different directions. Shadow Hearts: Covenant succeeds in keeping a traditional flavor while remaining fresh and fun at every minute.