Flawed, but still great.
*THERE IS A SPOILER ABOUT THE FINAL BOSS IN THE 'BAD' SECTION*
GOOD:
The humor is fantastic.
The storyline is quirky and odd but very engaging.
The battle system, like in all Shadow Hearts is, at the core, what makes these games great and what sets them apart from other turn-based RPGs. Long live the judgement ring!
BEAUTIFUL CGI. For something made so long ago, the CGI movies are truly impressive. On the PS2, they stand out, even now.
Who doesn't like revisionist history?
BAD:
Unskippable battle animations. 30-45 seconds for an attack is entirely too long. They aren't even that interesting.
The sound, aside from the CG, is pretty rough. Characters shooting Japanese text, special attacks that have characters channeling their mothers for strength and zombies that sound like women under duress as they attack just doesn't do it for me AT ALL. I listened to CDs while playing this game.
There were entirely too many sidequests that could only reasonably be found using a walkthrough. Just once, can I get a videogame where I don't need a walkthrough to get the "good ending" or all the best weapons? Is that asking too much.
The character models are just ridiculous. I got sick of fighting enemies that didn't look like anything. "Oooooo..... another blob, lets fight!" I mean, really, the finally boss, which is supposed to be an "alien god" (it somehow manages to work) has guns mounted on it? Really? God has machine guns mounted on his chest? Come on now!
I've played both Shadow Hearts and Shadow Hearts 3, and for someone not enthralled in Japanese gaming, I would suggest Shadow Hearts 3 over the original.
However, the good outweighs the bad enough to make this a wonderful, engaging game. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who has tired of the repetition of just pressing 'X' over and over again in countless Final Fantasy clones.