Shadow Hearts: Covenant - Gameplay

Gameplay

The Judgment Ring from Shadow Hearts returns with many modifications and improvements. Also, battle has been greatly expanded by different types of attacks as well as combo attacks. An element of physics has been added to battles as well, which links to the types of combo attacks which can be performed.

Players can customize the Judgment Ring to their own preferences with the introduction of two new Ring items: Hit Area Expand and Strike Expand, making the game easier or more challenging. Several ring types are also introduced to cater to the different players e.g. Practice Ring for beginners, Normal Ring for amateurs, Technical Ring for veterans and lastly, Auto Ring for gamers who do not want to aim at the Judgment Ring. Players can also equip Ring Items that can have added effects to the character's physical attack e.g. Poison, Paralysis etc.

A new battle mechanism is the Crest Magic system, in which players may equip Crests to certain characters to allow them to cast different types of elemental magic. Players collect new crests and gain access to more powerful magic. The crests may also be positioned in a key item called Solomon's Key; positioning the crests correctly will unlock new spells for each crest for a certain region. Most of the crests' names are derived from demonology.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant also includes "Hit Classes" which are incorporated with the physical and magical attacks. These include: Standard, Hard Hit, High Angle and Knock Down. Depending on the "weight" of the opponent monster, you'll be able to do more damage when connecting a combo during battle. Conversely, if an attack with an inappropriate Hit Class is used to continue a combo, the end result is a missed attack, or rather, a Combo Break.

For example, a Standard hit will simply push an enemy behind while attacking. This allows for any other type of Hit Class attack to be connected to do a Combo. A High Angle and Knock Down combo attack is another similar example. However, say if a Knock Down attack is applied to an enemy who has a "Heavy" weight followed by a High Angle hit, it will most probably miss since the enemy is still Knocked Down at that moment when the combo attack is made.

Combo shortcuts are also introduced where players are able to assign physical/magical attacks onto the controller buttons. This reduces the time taken to create a Combo attack as one character can attack immediately after another with a simple press of the button. However, this makes the game more challenging as players have to decide quickly what kind of attack they should follow up next as the combo shortcut menu appears only for a short amount of time i.e. when the preceding character is in the midst of launching his/her attack.

The shop system has been improved since Shadow Hearts. The player no longer has to perform the Strike Rings from the lowest level to the required discount level. Instead points are given when a successful discount purchase is executed successfully. The points are accumulated and the player's shop discount rank is leveled up once the points reaches a certain value. As the discount rank increases, so does the percentage of discount the player can try for is also increased. This applies to raising the selling price of items the players wishes to sell as well.