I'm 4 hours into Shadow Hearts Covenant now, and the game is fun. Combos are a fairly cool addition from the first game, but I don't like that you now have 4 people in combat instead of 3; it seems like they just decided to up the number of enemies you fight due to that reason which so far has made every encounter feel a bit too long.
Also, due to having so many enemies surprise attacks are insane; like enemies using group attacks in a normal surprise encounter basically killed 2 of my 4 party members before I could do anything. I don't think I've ever had that happen in an SMT game... although in Nocturne there were a couple times were my main character got one shotted for an instant gameover. I didn't lose that fight in Shadow Hearts Covenant though, luckily my strongest fighter and the person I use as a healer were alive so it just took a while to kill everything. I actually haven't gamovered yet in Shadow Hearts Covenant, but I don't remember the first game being all that hard either.