Although Covenant is a direct sequel to the original Shadow Hearts, this story still works on its own, and it even gives you enough of a recap throughout that you won't be lost. And what an entertaining ride it is. At its heart lies a dark tale with demons and a dangerous religious cult, but on the surface there's some hilarious situations and laugh out loud funny dialog. The characters really help draw you in too, whether it's the vampire pro wrestler, Gran Papillion, or the flamboyant merchants that make little girl dresses in exchange for "stud" cards. There's always something to bring you back in even if there weren't an interesting and fun combat system. Thankfully that's something else you won't have to worry about.

If you played the original Shadow Hearts, you'll feel right at home with the combat system. Making a strong comeback is the Judgment Ring. The Judgment Ring is basically a way to make combat a little more active than other turn based RPGs by having you stop the spinning meter in shaded areas for each attack. You could make a loose comparison to the timing based combat of Legend of Dragoon on the PSOne or even the power and accuracy meter from Hot Shots Golf. Not only is the ring used for attacking, but it's also used for items, magic, and even buying and selling at shops.

This installment adds the concept of team combos to the mix. You can delay the current characters turn in order to make them move closer to another teammate, effectively setting up a combo. The drawback is that you're now susceptible to area of effect-type attacks. The upside is that you can now chain attacks together, like juggle combos from a fighting game. The chain can be broken if you get any misses on the Judgment Ring, but if you can make it to the fourth character, a whole new line of combo magic becomes available.

If there's any beef with the game, it's the lack of variety with the monsters and merely average character growth. As superbly designed as the dungeons are, you will rarely see more than two different sets of monsters throughout all your random fights in them. There's also not a whole lot to look forward to with each passing level of your characters. The Graveyard makes a return for the main character, and everyone else in the group has their own system for increasing their abilities, whether it's finding sheet music or fighting wolves around the world. It's just not something you have to think a whole lot about, nor do you see increases very often. At least most of the characters can use magic, and you find that throughout the world quite frequently.

In keeping with the theme, the graphics have seen a considerable upgrade as well. Honestly, as creepy and cool as the theme of the original Shadow Hearts was, the visuals were technically lacking. Well, not any more. Everything is a lot less poke-you-in-the-eye sharp and more high-quality-picture sharp. Especially nice are the characters faces, which look better than those from Final Fantasy X and animate well to boot.

The music helps set the mood for Covenant, but it's the hours of voice acting that's the real improvement in this edition. They do a fantastic job of bringing the cut scenes to life, and it doesn't hurt that they're voicing some really well written dialog.

Covenant is another great catch for Midway, and I couldn't be happier that companies are continuing to take chances on localizing Japanese RPGs like this. With any luck a larger population of gamers will open their eyes to this particular series and it will sell better than the first Shadow Hearts. It's really a no-brainer for RPG fans even with the genre being so crowded this season. Personally, I put Shadow Hearts Covenant in my top three RPGs this generation.