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Monday 12 December 2016

Koudelka Review: The Curse of Grief.



Koudelka

   Getting straight into the review, this little gem of a PSX game was released in 1999 by the game company Sacnoth. It was on four discs and featured a chess-like battle system with a unique but interesting set of weapons and magic usage. It followed three main characters journeys into a Gothic monastery filled with frankly disgusting monsters with surprisingly depressing backstories that genuinely drag you into further into the world of Koudelka. The lesser-known prequel to the popular RPG series Shadow Hearts.

   Based in Wales, specifically Aberystwyth Koudelka follows primarily the story of... you guessed it! Koudelka, whose draw to the Nemeton monastery by the spirit of a girl named Elaine. Once she gets there she finds a thief named Edward in a dying state. After a frankly creepy confrontation with a twitchy werewolf creature, she heals Edward and continues into the Monastery with him accompanying her. Further in they find them annoying and overly religious (and not the nice kind) Irish James.
   Unfortunately, due to it's time of creation Koudelka lacks somewhat in the graphics department even for a PSX game, with some of the camera angles and pre-rendered background making it overly difficult to actually see where doors and important interactive aspects are. This, mixed with the dodgy control scheme for exploring can drive you insane at times. incorporating a random encounter system that triggers far too often can actually drive a person insane, especially if you have no idea what you're doing and you just want a couple of minutes of peaceful investigating without having to stop every 30 seconds to fight a large spider that'll die after one swift strike from a butter knife.

   With battles, while the actual battle system is almost flawless and provides a pretty interesting and, for want of a better word, fun bit of gameplay. Overall following a chess-like system, characters can move within a certain radius during a battle, with the typical style of needing to be a certain distance away from or close to an enemy for certain physical weapons to work. However, they've incorporated the use of firearms, ranging from pistols to shotguns and crossbows. What makes this an interesting aspect of the battle system is the use of reloading. You still need to collect ammo for each firearm, and in battle when a firearm is in need of reloading you have to waste an entire go using the ammo in the inventory. This may seem quite annoying, but a firearm is perfect for a magic character and provides not only a safe range to fight from but also quite a decent amount of damage. This leaves the player with the question of which would they prefer? Another plus side being firearms don't break, whereas swords, axes, spears, etc all break after a set amount of uses.

   The breakage of weapons is a  massive nuisance to the game. As with each weapon a character can level up their use in that type. This makes battles go a lot more smoothly as for each level there's a chance for the character to attack multiple times depending on the level (to which the animation is usually pretty badass). So when your kick-ass pipe suddenly breaks and you don't find another pipe for the next half of the game, it gets so.... so frustrating!

   In terms of character development and story, Sacnoth hits the nail on the head. Koudelka's incredibly cold and brash personality is so beautifully constructed and provides some great humor and personality to the game. Along with Jame's character development from an arse of a priest with horrible morals, to a slightly okay one. It all works together to make a very heart wrenching and disturbingly Gothic plotline.

   Koudelka is let down slightly in terms of its RPG status. while it has a great turn-based combat system, with an amazing story that lives up to that of an RPG, it's not the kind of game where you can limit yourself. It's practically impossible to do a low-level play through with any form of limits as each boss gives you decent level-ups and there are a lot of boss fights. And with the right application of stat points you can get incredibly over-powered pretty early on. Still, a lot of the boss battles can just thrash you and make you want to cry.

   Overall, it's slightly a victim of it's time, but still it does it's best to create a very atmospheric and interesting game. The battle system has some flaws but still provides you with some decent battles and inventive styles to fight in. The story really draws you in and despite it's PSX status it's definitely worth the buy.

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