YMMV / Shadow Hearts

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Coming in the opening scene no less. Yuri confronts the Big Bad on the train in the beginning of the game, and the Big Bad summons an imp with a scythe that proceeds to cut off Yuri's arm. Yuri reacts like this is no big deal, picks up his arm and puts it back on before killing the imp. No one acts as though this is weird and it is never brought up again!
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Most players will use Yuri and Alice. Yuri because you Can't Drop the Hero. Alice because she is forced into the party more than anyone else, is the White Mage, and is the heroine. The third party member is a wild card — Margarete because she has a higher chance to deal Critical hits, Keith because he has the second highest SP (Thus requiring the player to use fewer items to restore his SP), or Halley because of inertia from being put into the party fairly late into the game. Zhuzhen is often benched after China, though he's not bad.
• Contested Sequel: A very unusual example, given that fans of Koudelka tend to also hold Shadow Hearts in high regard. The contention comes from questioning whether the latter needed to be a sequel in the first place, especially considering that it didn't advertise itself as such. Beyond the obvious changes in tone and setting, another major point of controversy is the treatment of Koudelka's character in the first game. The fact that the driving force behind Koudelka wasn't involved in the development of the later games doesn't help matters.
• Evil Is Cool: Albert Simon, a refined, affable gentleman who kicks all sorts of ass with his ungodly magical power.
• Game-Breaker: The keys. They allow you to have three, five, or seven turns on the Judgment wheel. This means you can, if you're good enough, attack twenty one times.
• Low-Tier Letdown: While far from useless due to having the widest elemental coverage out of all characters besides Yuri, as well as learning a strong healing spell that also cures the Paralysis status effect, Zhuzhen is often considered to be the worst party member. This is mainly due to his stronger spells being too expensive to cast freely, having low HP, his poor physical offense and defense, and terrible speed. By the time Keith or Harry join the party, Zhuzhen often finds himself never being used again.
• Magnificent Bastard: A former mage of the Vatican, Albert Simon desired to better the world, but the prejudice he suffered as a heretic for trying to reform the Church to serve the people turned him to dark magic. Still remaining peaceful, when his apprentice Rasputin got corrupted, Albert finally decided to destroy the world by summoning God and rebuilding it. Needing a light and dark source of magic for the ritual, Albert masterfully manipulated everyone to achieving his goal, while remaining a true gentleman. Leading to a final confrontation with Yuri and co. with an agreement that they'll leave the fate of the world to the victor, and despite losing, Albert took it gracefully, believing in Yuri to face the dark future, even assisting him by using the last of his power to send Yuri's team to fight God and help him master Amon as a Spirit Advisor. A truly worthy adversary, Albert Simon was a sorcerer to fear yet respect with his cunning and graceful manners.
• Narm: The Sea Mother is telling Yuri and Margarete about Li Li's tragic past, and the scene where her father's drowned corpse shambles out of the shore and into Li Li's room is meant to be horrific. However, the questionable English voice direction makes it unintentionally hilarious instead, with the old woman inexplicably voicing the exact sounds being made (first by him, then by the gulls, then by the creaking door), as if she were telling the story to little kids and not two grown adults.
  "Shloooop! Shlooooop~! Skree skree! Crea-a-a-cree-a-ak."
• Nightmare Fuel: has its own page.
• Rooting for the Empire: Albert will be a true gentleman through-out the game, but at the end reveals he can basically undo all the damage he has caused and even offers to let the heroes sit back and watch since he bares them no ill will and considers them some of the few good parts of humanity despite coming to blows with them. Even Yuri needs to think on it for a moment before he just decides he can't risk Albert being wrong about resetting the world. Still it may be a little hard for some players to remember they are supposed to want to defeat Albert. It's a Gut Punch moment when the first Shadow Hearts ends with announcement that World War I has started - confirmation of the disaster Albert felt coming. If you play the sequel and find out what sent him off the deep-end in the first place, this only drives the point home further that Albert had some pretty valid concerns, grievances and intent to resolve them.
• Scrappy Mechanic: In this game, to do anything, you need to press the action button at the right time three times. Anything. This includes attacking, spell casting, using an item, searching a place for an item that's right in sight. And would you believe this very same mechanic somehow wasn't horrible in the sequels?
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While not perfect, Shadow Hearts was considered a very solid and entertaining JRPG, and a big improvement on Koudelka, which had been regarded as having interesting ideas ruined by clunky gameplay stemming from Executive Meddling.
• That One Boss: The Duel Boss between Alice and Arcane Olga. The fight is on a timer because of her Sanity Points (the lowest in the game), and taking a turn to restore them could get you killed. And Olga can poison you. The fight boils down to spamming Alice's one attack spell and hoping to get it over with before she goes Berserk.
• That One Level: The Temple Ruins is a labyrinth of Cut and Paste Environments, where the party is split in two and cannot use magic and/or items during battles. It also has many empty treasure chests and dead ends.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Paying Meiyuan to upgrading your weapons is pointless, as you can just wait to buy new equipment in the next town. The only time it is worth it is when everyone have their ultimate weapons, but it's still very expensive.
  • Level up enough, and the Sanity Points system eventually becomes this for the rest of the game. Early on in the game where most characters are at a lower level, the player will sometimes need to keep an eye on their SP and prevent a character from going Berserk, an ailment that causes the combatant to lose control and use random actions for the duration of the battle, and gain no EXP, unless they are cured beforehand. The more the player levels up their characters, the more likely future battles will be over long before any character is at risk of going Berserk ever again, especially when considering that everyone's SP is fully restored after every battle. Boss fights will be somewhat of a risk though — unless you exploit the Game-Breaker keys (letting you go 3-7 times at once)
• Values Dissonance: Meiyuan will, when given a male character (ie 2/3rds of the cast) apparently get a little... too handsy with them and cause their SP to go to zero in a cutscene. This would be considered dark comedy back in the Turn of the Millennium, but be considered homophobic to a more modern audience.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Halley, thanks to his gender neutral (But sometimes feminine) name, longish hair, and slender figure. It gets cleared up pretty quickly for those who actually play the game.
  • Funnily enough his friend, Chris, is often mistaken for a boy due to her androgynous profile picture, sturdy build and boyish fashion sense.
• The Woobie: Alice. Her father is murdered in front of her, people slaughter just to get a hold of her, she's tortured by Dehuai, and ultimately gets her soul killed so she can save Yuri.