Yuri Hyuga is a youthful harmonizer who can shift into a demon. He meets Alice Elliot, a young British girl whose father has been brutally killed and is being pursued by a mystery warlock named Roger Bacon. Yuri and Alice traverse pre-war China, encountering demons, terrible magicians, and the Japanese occupation force. The adventure finally leads them and their friends to Europe, where they must face their ultimate adversary while learning the truth about their pasts.
Shadow Hearts is a Japanese-style role-playing game set in a historical period (China and Europe in 1913, one year before World War I) with mystical elements thrown in for good measure. The game has a plot and stylistic similarities to Koudelka, which might be called a sequel. The user controls a party of characters (up to three active combatants) through pre-rendered environments. Combat with regular adversaries happens randomly, and characters utilize ordinary attacks or cast spells during battles. In addition to the standard HP and MP bars, each character has a particular SP (“sanity points”) meter. In a fight, the sanity bar slowly depletes; when feelings run out of SP, they become insane and uncontrollable until their sanity is restored using supplies.
The game employs a typical turn-based combat method for the conflicts, adding a feature called Judgment Ring. When a character attacks, a ring with a spinning arrow emerges at the top of the screen. The strike will be more robust if the player pauses the needle while it is over a vital spot on the ring. On the other hand, missing the greater hit area will negate the strike entirely. Various sorts of assaults have circles of varying difficulty; typically, the smaller the hit area on the ring, the more potent the spell. The Judgment Ring may also be utilized to help the player cut prices at stores and is required to solve various puzzles.
Except for Yuri, all characters gain new skills automatically as they level up. Thanks to his demon-fusion talents, Yuri can absorb soul energy and use it to achieve numerous fusion forms. When Yuri transforms into a demon, he receives new skills and rejoins the team as a controllable character. He must also visit a graveyard in his mental realm on occasion to confront his inner demons and purge Malice, the negative vindictive energy accumulated by the party by murdering opponents.
