Remembering Shadow Hearts, and the Road Not Taken

Hey! Remember the Shadow Hearts franchise? You likely don’t, and that’s why it lived a hard life.

Don’t worry: I don’t blame anyone reading this for not remembering it, despite the series having a couple of great installments. It started through Koudelka on PSOne, a title published by SNK years before the company folded in its initial form. But the tale it established continued through the Shadow Hearts series, which consisted of three games released for PS2, and whose last installment arrived a little over a decade ago.

It stood out from other Japanese RPGs thanks to having more modern themes compared to the glut of medieval fantasy-themed examples. All three titles took place in the early 1900s, and involved countries like Japan, the United States, and parts of Europe, with a few liberties taken to the designs of each. They found an audience, but it could have been larger had the publishers involved put a little more marketing behind it; but it’s possible their budgets were too low to provide such promotion — or their care.

The games were developed by Nautilus and published by Aruze in Japan. And despite the now-defunct Midway localizing the first two installments, the third came from a then-newly established XSeed Games. (To elaborate: Shadow Hearts: From the New World was XSeed’s second title, after Wild Arms 4, in early 2006.) The inconsistent quality of the games themselves also did it no favors.

The first installment was enjoyable, but lacked polish in its presentation and gameplay. Fortunately, sequel Shadow Hearts: Covenant delivered that in spades, along with a careful balance of serious drama with clever comedy. A pity From the New World (which switched the setting to America — the “New World”) was a step down due to peculiar difficulty balancing and questionable pacing, and was clearly rushed to release despite its potential.

After the franchise put up consistently low sales numbers, Aruze decided to pull the plug on not only the SH series, but their entire video game publishing division. Their current incarnation, Universal Entertainment Corp. (no relation to NBC Universal), deals mostly with pachinko and casino games, which means they “Pulled a Konami” way before it was cool. And yes, of course one pachinko offering was based on the SH series, which they still own.

The franchise has been dormant in the form people actually liked for a little over ten years. But it recently returned to discussion circles thanks to an interview with creator Matsuzo Machida, conducted by Italian website Geek Gamer (translated by another source). In it, Machida explained that he’s working on a new title, though didn’t explain how it’s being developed. He did clarify, however, that he won’t be pursuing crowdfunding. He also didn’t elaborate on precisely what kind of game it is, meaning it could be in any genre and on any platform. Before you get the least bit excited, you should know that mobile gaming remains as popular as ever in Japan, so this may not be some kind of spiritual successor.

In the interim between the SH games and this new title, Machida worked on another game called Arms’ Heart, which released for PSP in 2010. SH character designer Miyako Kato also provided character designs for it. If you’ve never heard of it before, that’s because it didn’t take off sales-wise, and never left Japan. Meanwhile, most of SH’s development team formed feelplus after Aruze dissolved Nautilus, and worked on titles like Lost Odyssey. But since they, along with Cavia and Artoon, were absorbed by Marvelous-subsidiary AQ interactive in 2010, who knows where they’ve gone.

Before you think they’re secretly working on a new SH game, that’s unlikely. Machida also mentioned that remasters of the series aren’t being worked on either, though he’d like to handle them one day. He also confirmed the aforementioned From the New World was indeed a spinoff, and that a real Shadow Hearts III was in the planning stages, but never green lit. It was planned to be a prequel starring Jinpachiro Hyuga (aka Ben Hyuga) and Kiheita Inugami, the fathers of protagonist Yuri Volte Hyuga and Covenant’s Kurando Inugami. In fact, Kato prepared illustrations of both characters.

Sadly, Aruze/Universal Entertainment didn’t believe a significant audience still existed for further SH games, and Machida sadly agrees. The sales numbers for all three installments also show that. Incidentally, the importance of lower-tier titles has increased in the Japanese market recently, considering most people who still play games on dedicated platforms are a similarly small-but-dedicated audience. Not to mention that low and mid-tier games sold better on PS3 than on PS2, thanks to the lack of competition from A-tier titles. That means a successor or spiritual successor could do well, but its outlook is hardly positive given the aforementioned circumstances.

I’d love to be more positive about Shadow Hearts’ future, but with the way things are, it’s better that you believe it’s gone for good. That is, unless your idea of a franchise remaining “alive” is through future pachinko games. Sorry, but the year of dream announcements was last year.