Thankfully, the fights that matter are loads of fun, and challenging to boot. Enemies not only take up certain positions on the battlefield, but they also exist on three different height ranges: ground, mid, and air. You can combo attacks between characters, and make use of attacks that take enemy position into account. For example, one character can send a ground-based enemy flying into the air with an upward strike, while another character can follow up with an air-based magic attack. A third character could then use a knockdown type ability to send the poor flying victim crashing down, dealing additional damage. The stock gauge powers up these combos and also allows characters to perform double moves, two moves in succession, or even to pull off double combos. As a whole, the combat is quite fulfilling, although certain fights can seem to drag on for far too long.
The magic system in Shadow Hearts: From the New World is based on what are called the stellar charts. Basically, there is a node-based chart for each of the signs of the Zodiac, filled with slots that can be utilized to learn either healing, support, or offensive magic. Aside from Shania, who utilizes her Fusion ability, each character is assigned a chart of your choice, which is then filled with spell nodes. Offensive magic slots are separated by element type, with the traditional RPG elements of fire, water, earth, wind, holy, and dark. As you would expect, elements deal significant additional damage to monsters or characters of their opposite, wherein lies much of the combat strategy. Some charts are naturally more powerful than others, and you can get a good idea of a character's magical affinity by the strength of the chart that you acquire with them.
The stellar charts can be improved by visiting one of the motorcyclist shopkeepers, who can perform a variety of services to them, including lowering the mana cost of certain magics, increasing the potential strength of certain nodes, or converting nodes from one type to another. You can easily spend a small fortune customizing your charts as you please, and I'm sure many players will spend a great share of their total played time just tweaking their stellar charts and spell choices.
The storyline offers plenty to do, and with each of the playable characters having their own side-quests to explore and unique weapons and armor to find, you can be playing this one for weeks to come. There's even an incentive to play through the game a second time, as some of the important collectible items stick around for the second play through, and there are multiple endings. I had a good time playing this game, but sometimes when you're overloaded with optional quests and side-missions, it detracts from the cohesive storytelling. I couldn't really feel for any of the characters, as attractive and well acted as they were, because as soon as I got around to really getting to know them, I was off on some whole other tangent. Not being able to empathize with the characters, it's hard to keep your interest up as you plug away at hours and hours of fighting and exploration.
Shadow Hearts: From the New World is a very well rounded, excellently produced role-playing game. It suffers from trying to do too much at once, enticing you with a new character and an interesting new story direction, but then as soon as you're prepared to delve into them, it's time to move on, almost like you'd need to treat the writers for attention deficit disorder. While I enjoyed the game very much, it's best suited for role-playing game enthusiasts who have a sense of humor and don't mind a bit of a mish-mash when it comes to their epic world-saving storylines.
