SH - Finished. Seraphic Radiance tore things apart rather definitely. Really don't care about commenting on the last stretch of battles, SH1 gameplay is boring and dull.
Okay! So, where do I start. Ah, yes. The writing. By the end, my main question about the story was "okay, they had Koudelka's writers on board and used a bunch of GFAQs users for writers instead why?". This is not good. The plot generally fails, this is not news (well, neither is RPG writing failing, but). However, SH worsens the deal by trying to shoot at every direction and spectacularly failing at the things it sets to do.
It tries to establish a creepy, dark atmosphere at some point. It fails. It tries to create a conflict worth caring about. It fails. It tries to create an actually chemistry-bound relationship between its mains. It... oh, wait, it actually kinda succeeds there, thanks mostly to the one saving grace within the game's cast: Yuri. While he is not ZOMG SO AWSUM in SH1, he's a fail archetype done in a decidedly non-fail manner, being actually likable and personable after the somewhat insufferable beginning. Alice also works when interacting with him, and that's what saves her somewhat. On the other hand...
Outside Yuri, the entire cast fundamentally fails. The characters that aren't Alice and Yuri are essentially defined by gimmicks: Zhuzhen is old, Margarete is woman spy hear her spy, Keith is the vampire, Halley is shota Koudelka fanservice. And Alice... well, she exists to be The Chick. And, beyond that, the cast is insufferably shallow and dull. When they're not expodumping or doing nothing, they all act like valley girls giggling about how they made out with the school's quarterback in the locker room. Except maybe Keith, but that's because Keith shows ABSOLUTELY NO PERSONALITY until his final weapon scene, which is amusing but jarring due to the writing not establishing any sort of personality for him until before then other than "I look noble". Alice and Margarete, of course, suffer from the valley girl immaturity the most - well, Margarete when she exists, which is not a lot. It's jarring to see a serious, distinguished exorcist adult girl and a renowned spy going "tee-hee" and being generally dense every other moment. And don't get me started on Albert "I'm a derisive, subtle gentleman of evil who turns into 'Ta-ta' cheese whenever convenient" Simon. It's like all non-Yuri character were hit by the idiot ball as soon as they got into the screen and never recovered. I hear SHC actually works well with its characters and makes the whole immaturity thing a lot more sensibly, which I'm probably interested to see. But you wouldn't know they had this potential from this cast. The writers just didn't know what they were aiming for, and bit far more than they could chew.
And then, there's the Judgment Ring system. Way to go, Shadow Hearts, you're a lesson in how to handle timed hit systems inanely. They actually weren't too bad in battle, although the Judgment Ring-based anomalies and gimmicks were generally pointless. But when you have your superhumanly strong main character having to play a Judgment Ring spin to pick up a metal handle, you're delving into FF7 CPR minigame-level gameplay filler. The need to put something that inane and shallow into the game's already uninspired navigation baffles me. You also can't skip rings, and your misses overrule the hits on everything that isn't a basic physical - which is dumb. It's like they knew the entirety of their designed enemies failed too much to grab the player's attention and added that system to make players pay artificial attention to the game. There's no real tension, just mild annoyance. Blah.
In the end, the game is... uh... pretty underwhelming. I'd probably have found it awesome if I was fourteen, but eh. It's a style game whose style aged very poorly, and its fundamental characteristics are subpar to begin with. Can't really see any of the game's supposed allure by now. Probably somewhere in the 3-4/10 area? 4/10, I guess.
