#killjoy-sleuth

“You know time seems to just crawl by when you aren’t with me.”

You chuckled as you saw Naoto, the stupidest grin plastered on your face. It feels like it’s been eons since you’ve seen the other, when in reality... you didn’t even know how long it’s been. In the end, it doesn’t matter to you, what matters now is that she’s back and with you.

“Kid’s are fine, and nothing broke while you were gone.”

There was a crash in the background, and you glanced at the sound of the crash and chuckled.

never played | want to play | terrible | boring | okay | good | great | a favorite | I pray daily for the resurrection of this series

I remember when I saw the first few minutes of Shadow Hearts on a game channel. The memories of seeing this punk-looking dude exploding into a creepy demon form and getting wasted by some top hat-wearing fop casting some shadowy apocalypse from a sephiroth tree-shaped symbol, all while standing atop a running train, remained etched in my mind for a long time. Years later, while on a trip in Germany, I happened to find and pick up Shadow Hearts Covenant, blissfully unaware that this was the sequel to that very game I’d never heard anything about. Needless to say, the series eventually grew to be a solid favorite with a spot right in my heart.

I’ve yet to see another game that could reproduce the atmosphere in Shadow Hearts games. The quirky kind of dark humor, the fact that rather than your typical imagined fantasy world, they take place in a version of our reality where every uncanny myth is true, the Judgement Ring system that often makes you pull your hair out, the characters, dear God the characters...Listen, this is the series that features a vampire wrestler with a masked hero persona whose choice of weapon is literally every big object he can find lying around - a cylindrical mailbox, a folded table, a miniature skyscraper containing the game’s own dev studio - and who was trained by the Great Gama himself.A series where you get to turn into a demon and punch Rasputin in the face. The same Rasputin who, in the same game, casually floats around and bombards Japanese battleships with satanic magic.One of your party members is a young Princess Anastasia who fights with clockwork eggs.The main character in the third game, From The New World, uses a literal vacuum cleaner to suck the special gauge away form the enemies.In the same game, one of the mafia’s best aids is a giant talking cat who also happens to be a Drunken Fist master and an aspiring movie star. Said cat is also a party member.

Shadow Hearts has made me cry with laughter and because in spite of all its quirkiness, the setting is a cruel one - the fact that the first two take place in the span of two World Wars should say something about that. And yet it never truly feels like grimdark for the sake of it, in spite of all the somberness the protagonists have to face, there’s this lingering sense of hope - it’s a beautiful, heart-rending tragedy.

“Let me rephrase that: are you bullying the Yosukes WITHOUT ME again?”

I don’t know which Naoto’s Shadow you’re talking about, all I remember was mine was a psychopath that wants to end the world. >.>