No, it was pretty damn great.

But for a better example as to why all the cool people like this series, try this: http://poetv.com/video.php?vid=26490

Shadow Hearts was good, but massively overrated. It suffered badly from a lot of RPG no-nos, like endless random battles, a dearth of save points (which makes said battles even more annoying) that that spinning wheel system which, while not a terrible idea, was executed badly.

I give the game points for it's setting and probably being one of the better RPGs with a horror theme to it, but the gameplay was pretty mediocre, I thought.