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Tag Archives: Shadow Hearts

Top 20 Videogames of the Past Decade #15

15. Shadow Hearts series (PlayStation 2)

Sure to be a controversial choice, the Shadow Hearts series of RPGs were groundbreaking for their time. The first installment came out in 2001, while Shadow Hearts: Covenant came out in 2004, capped by Shadow Hearts: From the New World was the last installment to appear in 2006.

The series never leaped to the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 generation of hardware, so many people have forgotten about it. However, it was one of the first games (aside from the same developer’s first effort, Koudelka, on the original PlayStation) to delve into the horror genre from an RPG approach; traditionally, RPGs were scene as a strictly fantasy (and sometimes science fiction) genre of game, while horror was thought to be done best by the survival horror genre.

Many of the developers involved in the Shadow Hearts series had already experimented with RPG horror when they worked at Square, where they produced two Parasite Eve titles for the company before they went independent, first as Sacnoth and later as Nautilus.

While it would be a wonderful thing to see what this group could have done with the Shadow Hearts series on the PS3; however, Sacnoth/Nautilus is apparently no longer in existence and its team is now scattered to the four winds, working on a variety of other projects for other companies. (I heard one even now works selling New York hotel deals, but that’s not verified.)

Will Blue Dragon live up to hype?

Grab some gel pens and mark it down: as much potential as Microsoft’s forthcoming 360 RPG, Blue Dragon, has, it does bear a lot of potential to fall short of the expectations built by the hype surrounding the game.

Sure, the Mistwalker crew of Hironobu Sakaguchi, Akira Toriyama, and Nobuo Uematsu are something of a dream team. But with such prestigious names associated with the same title, taking on an all-new, unproven IP, the unfamiliarity of the new franchise could make the game a bit of a harder sell than many are expecting.

Think of it this way: you have the character designer of DragonBall Z, the creator of Final Fantasy, and one of the music producers of Chrono Trigger. But none of them are working on DragonBallZ, Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger. It’s something new, and fans coming to the title expecting it to be a lot like DBZ, FF or CT may come away disappointed by the differences between Blue Dragon and those beloved properties.

That’s not to say Blue Dragon will be a disappointment or a failure. Not at all. But if anyone is expecting it to sell on the same level as a Final Fantasy title, they could be disappointed. A better point of comparison would be Fable.

Fable was a new IP when it debuted on the original Xbox. It had a great set of creative types behind it. And it sold very well … for a first title in a new IP. Within a year or so, Fable 2 will debut on the 360 and is expected to far exceed the sales of the first Fable… because it’s now a known quantity.

I expect a similar reception for Blue Dragon. It will do quite well, for the first title in a new series. But sales likely won’t approach the same level as the top RPG franchises right out of the gate; that will come as future chapters are released. Perhaps by the time Blue Dragon III is unleashed, it will be able to challenge the sales figures of the top RPG franchises.

That’s what happened to Shadow Hearts. Sales figures like that are not shabby. But anyone expecting Final Fantasy XII sales figures from Blue Dragon will be setting up a false expectation of what success for the title will look like.