Shadow Hearts/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Abandon Shipping: Happens to every single Yuri/Karin shipper after they complete Covenant (long story short, thanks to time travel, she's his mother). Well, "every single" may be giving shippers too much credit.
  • Angel/Devil Shipping: This is played up a lot for Alice/Yuri shipping, both in canon and fanon.
  • Badass Decay: Happens to Albert Simon in Covenant.
  • Crazy Awesome: Joachim. Vampire? Check! Superhero? Check! Professional Wrestler? And check!
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Soundtracks by Yoshitaka Hirota, with Yasunori Mitsuda guest-composing a few tracks on the first two games for extra added flavor. Since Hirota is almost unquestionably a disciple of Akira Yamaoka and Mitsuda needs no introduction, Shadow Hearts' soundtrack manages to be both epic and skin-crawlingly creepy at the same time.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • Killer in From the New World is often treated as being more sympathetic than he actually is, despite being a psychotic, remorseless serial killer.
    • Nicolai also gets some of this, particularly in relation to his feelings for Karin.
  • Ending Fatigue: Doing the end-of-game sidequests can sap your enthusiasm if you spend too long on it.
  • Fetish Fuel: In Covenant, Cordelia's first six outfits range from cute to spicy. The next two are leather bondage and a revealing raccoon suit. The last one is an Alice costume, complete with Panty Shot while casting Advent.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: Margarete. This is Mata Hari we're talking about. Covenant is set in 1915. Anyone else remember what happened to the real one near the end of WWI? For those who don't know, the French executed her for spying.
  • Game Breaker:
    • If used properly, Lucia's Aromatherapy ability can make the game *much* easier with the only drawback being it will effect everybody but her. her successor, Ricardo, is also pretty good, too.
    • Combos can become this way. They're optional but still powerful if utilized properly in Covenant, but in From the New World? You can see several videos of people literally racking up the bonus damage from using the huge-flashy-and-practical-abilities-that-inflict-lots-of-hits and taking out a sizable chunk of the boss's HP.
    • In Covenant, Fides (Fire transformation) with Energy Charge and any other thing will destroy even some bosses with ridiculous ease.
  • Growing the Beard: The first Shadow Hearts game is widely considered a solid horror-tinted RPG, with an interesting combat system in the Judgement Ring and a refreshing protagonist in Yuri. The second game, though cutting back (a little) in the horror department, is considered by many fans to be the apex of the series and one of the best RPGs in history, improving upon almost every facet of what was already praised as good.
  • Hell Is That Noise: Quite a few, both in exploration and combat. In the first game, you walk on blood and corpses quite often, producing a disgusting wet noise with every step. And the music for some areas would include screams, hysterical laughter and strange pants. Then the monsters come along and assault your ears with their weird moaning, nauseating squishy noises or gut-wrenching screams.
    • Furthermore, if through whatever means your characters happen to go insane by having their Sanity Points depleted, the music changes to the 'Berserk Track'. There is a unique Berserk Track for each battle theme in the game, and is usually... Well, different. Compare standard with berserk.
  • Ho Yay: Joachim with pretty much any other male character.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Albert Simon. Everything from the start of Koudellka up to the final dungeon of Shadow Hearts is basically all part of Albert's plans. The shear level of his manipulative adaptation and back-up plans is nothing short of impressive. Even Yuri considers Albert the crème de la crème of villains.
  • Memetic Badass: Yuri. A lot of Shadow Hearts fans hold him up as one of the toughest protagonists in the RPG genre.
  • Needs More Love: The first game was a quiet gem with the misfortune of being released 3 weeks before Final Fantasy X in Japan and just 1 week before in the US, getting crushed by its massive publicity.
    • Arguably averted for Europe who had to wait over half a year for Final Fantasy X to be released, Shadow Hearts was a welcome distraction for many while they waited.
  • Poke the Poodle: This troper has a closet full of role-playing games wherein the Big Bad tries to conquer or destroy the world, so he has always found Masaji Kato's plan to turn back time a mere 100 years very reasonable by comparison.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Johnny from From the New World. As far as some fans are concerned, he's not Yuri.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • In the first Shadow Hearts game, to do anything, you need to press the action button at the right time at least three times. Anything. This includes attacking, spell casting, using an item, searching a place for an item that's right in sight. And would you believe this very same mechanic somehow wasn't horrible in the sequels?
    • Hildegarde's Calorie Meter in From the New World is an utter bitch to work without expending rare, irreplaceable items.
  • Shipping: In the story for Covenant, Yuri was clearly making a comeback, with a new love interest, Karin. Backlash from fans demanded he get back together with Alice. Fans got their wish, but not in the way they expected.
  • Squick:
    • Kato creating Ouka as a Replacement Goldfish for his dead love interest. It gets even more disturbing when Raiden and Hien discuss, in a cutscene, about Kato and Ouka wanting to have a baby together.
    • How about Karin's creepy infatuation with the inhuman Amon?
      • Or, more obviously, with her son!
      • Her attraction to him isn't especially squicky until it's revealed that she is stalking him through time itself to be with him as a child. Assuming she retains her memories after the time travel (debatable), that's one messed-up family.
  • Tastes Like Diabetes/Historical Hero Upgrade: Anastasia in Covenant, and well aware of it.
  • That One Boss: Shadow Hearts 1, Fox Face. Or any of the four killer bosses that pop up after you beat him.
  • Tier-Induced Scrappy:
    • Gepetto is probably the closest this series has to one. He has the highest magical attack and can boost his elemental power with Cordelia's dresses, but Lucia and Anastasia are both faster, magical power is weaker than physical power, and the two women have special skills that make them more useful (Lucia's Aromatherapy and Anastasia's Snaps).
    • In the first game, Zhuzhen is a decent character, and the only character who can reliably hit all non-Light elemental classes. But after Margarete rejoins and Halley is required for the next two dungeons, he often hits the bench.
  • Tough Act to Follow: From the New World had the daunting task to be the sequel to Covenant, while the game is far from mediocre, not having Yuri, among other things, have made fans of the series a bit unhappy with it.
  • Uncanny Valley:
    • Averted because of the stylized characters (Rasputin looks like a cartoon villain), but in Covenant, there's the "Miracle" scene in which, for once, the Uncanny Valley turns out to be more funny than creepy, because Yuri tries to make a sad face... but it looks so ridiculous some people who would have cried at that scene suddenly found themselves stifling back laughter. This has become a very minor meme in itself.
    • Played straight with most enemies. Such as the boss from Covenant that is a giant spider with human fingers for legs and mandibles, a human nose placed in the middle of it's head, and a realistic human mouth with teeth and lips.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Mao in From the New World, namely due to the Cross-Dressing Voices in the English version. In the Japanese version of From the New World, Mao is voiced by Kujira, who is definitely a woman. She sounds very similar to Orochimaru, though.
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