Interesting story, dark and mysterious...
Being still a Japanese game, there is still a touch of Japanese life in the story. Gameplay however was bland, although old school, it failed to produce enough to entertain me...BUT one part of the gameplay was intriguing! The battle system consists of a roulette like counter where u have to time ur click correctly to get a hit (and the power of it) or for a spell. The difficulty does increase...and in this part of the gameplay...it excelled well on top of the rest of the bland gameplay. And thus in one aspect, the gameplay was old school (3 people in your party...ATB, attack, spells etc.) in another aspect it was also new and more player involving rather than just like watching a movie... (like in final fantasy games...summon...wait 1min...beautiful graphics and effects...the end =P). So gameplay overall balances out well.
Graphics however could have been better. It was sketchy, unclear and...although some of the background drawings (reminding me of Baldur's gate and other older rpgs of that type...) were quite...nostalgic... it could have been much better, and should have been much better. Overall the graphics were a let down.
Sound was ok. Nothing special, and nother extremely bad...although voice acting was sometimes annoying (during battles) every other time, the translations and dialogs, were quite well.
So overall, I recommend this game only to RPG fans like me, or those who enjoy it after they rent the game for a few days. OR it can also be for people like me who like to play (if the game is in a series) the games in chronological order so I won't miss out anything based on the story. (yea i played koudelka first...although u really don't need to...although some characters come back...)
Shadow Hearts is bigger than Koudelka but is still too small and not long lasting. So hopefully when I play SH Covenant it would be bigger and better =P