When I first heard about Koudelka I wasn't totally sure what to expect. It was said to be a hybrid title, somehow straddling both Survival Horror and RPG genres. The only games I'd really describe that way previously are the Parasite Eve series and even there, an ATB system blends with lots of movement capabilities to form something that feels much more fluid, despite technically being turn-based. Koudelka handles combat with a fully turn-based separate screen encounter mode complete with magic spells and grid-based movement. However, if you saw pretty much any screenshots from outside of combat, you'd think it was just another 3rd-person, fixed camera, turn of the century Survival Horror game, as it is otherwise tied to that genre pretty closely, perhaps even more so than Parasite Eve which is much more married to its RPG-style narrative. And yet on the flipside, combat-wise, at least by my personal definition, this game is barely manages to be a Survival Horror game in that it does have limited ammunition and some minor resource management aspects. Koudelka is a bundle of contradictions that at some times loses its way because of it, and at other times creates something uniquely and tragically beautiful.

While the blend between the two genres is perhaps the most interesting thing about Koudelka, I feel like that's also it's greatest weakness. The RPG gameplay feels really jank and like it was thrown together at the last minute. The system itself is simply not very good and frankly doesn't seem planned at all. The stats are basic and are fully customizable for each character, meaning they're good at whatever you choose for them to be good at. There are pros and cons to that, but the characters each seem to have a particular style to them that would suggest certain builds even though the actual system undercuts this. The system is easily breakable if you're patient enough to grind out turns of buff/debuffs, but I generally didn't bother as the game is almost painfully easy as it is with the exception of the optional boss and the end boss. The only time I died aside from the ridiculously overpowered optional boss was against a boss I thought I was supposed to die to because you can't win and it turns out—though the game doesn't tell you anywhere—you have to press a certain button to get the flee option to appear which I only discovered through Google. The battle system also doesn't seem to agree with the context of the game considering at the start of the game, Edward is surprised when Koudelka is able to heal him since she has magic...but immediately after that when he joins your party, he has access to every one of the same spells and you could make him a fully committed spellcaster if you wanted. At first I found the very barebones combat somewhat charming as a product of its time. But as the game went on and I got into more and more of the very slow-moving random encounters, I found myself using the fast-forward function on my emulator to skip through the combat since I knew there was no real threat and the fights weren't engaging. As much as this greatly improved my experience once I got too tired to deal with the repetitive encounters, it doesn't speak well of the game on the whole that skipping big chunks of it improved the experience.

With the bad out of the way, I really enjoyed most every other aspect of the game. The game doesn't have the dread that comes from the difficulty and punishment a good Survival Horror typically features, but the rest of it works well as a worthy entry into the genre space. There are a good number of item puzzles, spooky environments, and and often impressive background art considering the PS1 era limitations. I also think this may be one of my favorite attempts at exploring a gothic castle in a Survival Horror game. The rooms feel like they fit the setting, are varied, and are generally pretty interesting and help to flesh out the story and backstory through environmental storytelling. This is helped by the fact that this isn't a game in which modern characters are exploring an ancient castle. Koudelka takes place in 1898 Wales, giving it a much more fantastical and eerie feel to the setting when you don't have the background knowledge that beyond these walls are the internet, widespread radio and telecommunications networks, or powerful and efficient firearms and vehicles that could plow through your foes if you had them. Instead, Koudelka's magic (okay, all your characters' magic since everyone has magic apparently), some scrounged-up melee weapons, and a few basic firearms are all you have to face the horrors of the Nemeton Monastery. I also appreciate how the game straddles this boundary in time and history as much as it does its genres. The existential displacement inherent in the major social, political, and technological changes as the 19th Century came to a close parallels wonderfully with the feelings of yearning, loss, and angst the protagonists personify.

As an aside, it's interesting to look at games like this in the context of their time with marketing like the above when "sex sells" was very much in its prime. Because despite the above ad's promises, aside from a number of eye-rolly pixelated panty shots, the game is not really all that sexy. Any attraction between the characters is at best implied vaguely, and the plot's themes of love and longing are not really explored heavily from a sexual angle. There's romantic pining and jealous resentment, but lust rarely seems a part of the equation beyond implications you have to read into the circumstances. It's just interesting that if I saw an ad like the one above for some game coming out on Steam next week, I'd definitely pin it as a porn game, but that's really not at all the case here. Times do change I suppose. This was also a kind of weird trend given that much of the game's audience was likely too young to buy/afford the game themselves and had to ask a parent to please buy them the game with the sexy goth dom mommy on it.

Side note: that gamefaqs quote is a hilariously weird way to praise a game. In case it's too low res to make out, it says "Even if you don't like survival horror, or RPGs, you should try to use a FMV ripper to watch the movies."

While I wouldn't say it's groundbreaking in most senses, I generally found the story surprisingly compelling and like it leveraged the better side of the blend in genres. There aren't a lot of survival horror games that cover a historical period like this one and few that are quite so gothic, even today. But the story and characters I feel bring in more of the RPG side of the game that brings the story into more of a developmental focus. There is a surprising number of FMV cutscenes and lots of in-engine voice-acted dialogue scenes throughout the game. So much so that the game is maybe 8-12 hours long and yet comes on 4 PS1 discs (by comparison, the original FF7 was roughly 30-40 hours long and came on 3 discs). But this attention to actually developing the story and having several detailed interactions, and even goofy PS1 cutscenes, really made the game a lot more immersive. The characters, to an extent felt more multi-faceted than I initially expected as well. One of your characters, James, is a clearly bigoted and often closed-minded person, though you do at least start to understand his worldview and the ghosts that haunt him. While I never came to like him, he served as a good foil to help me learn more about Koudelka and Edward by how they bounced off of him numerous times in the narrative. There are other good scenes where, perhaps a little too out-of-nowhere, the characters launch into monologue or musing that on paper I felt I should be more annoyed with but actually worked for me. One of my favorite such scenes is a somewhat random moment when Koudelka and Edward are waiting on James to put something together and start drinking together, suddenly oversharing their insecurities and arguing over who is more pathetic with both of them trying to take the gold medal. This is one of the longest cutscenes in the game and while at first it felt really on-the-nose, I actually did feel a real connection by the end of it between the characters and to me as the player. Of all the things I didn't expect from this game, such a heart-wrenching scene was probably #1.

I've hinted at it plenty throughout this review so far, but I think overall Koudelka has great presentation for its time. The cutscenes' visuals aren't significantly better than other later PS1 games, but they're not significantly worse either. I also think that outside of Metal Gear Solid, this game has the best voice-acting work I've seen in a PS1 game. While that's not a very high bar (few PS1 games even had voice acting after all), it still really brought the characters to life. The scenes come across almost like you're watching a theatrical production in a way that somehow manages to deliver without the pretension you might expect. Koudelka's voice actor especially I thought was super impressive and felt very natural in her delivery. I will caveat that the voicing wasn't always consistent and there are definitely some goofy-sounding lines that feel out of place with their delivery. These don't quite break the tone of the game, but stand out. The music I am conflicted on. There's mainly only 3 battle tracks, 1 for random encounters, 1 for boss fights, and 1 for the end boss. I found these tracks generally decently good on their own; however, they all sound much more like mystical fantasy RPG music that might be fine in another game, but really detract from the gothic horror tone and make the encounters feel even further removed from the world and tragic story. The environments I think generally look great for a PS1 game. They can be grainy and pixelated but there's still a consistent styling theme to the castle that runs through its many rooms, despite their number and variety.

Koudelka is a game I actively looked forward to playing every day for the week that it took me to finish it. I generally didn't feel up to playing more than an hour or two at a time, but I still consistently anticipated my next session with it. That is generally the hallmark of a 5-star game for me and I was considering giving it just that before I thought more on it. But I don't feel I can really justify 5 stars when I found its primary gameplay so broken I actually made an effort to skip it. Still, the fact I can say all that and give the game 4 stars I think speaks to how much I do like the things I liked about this game. Koudelka is actually the first entry in the Shadow Hearts series, which is yet another game I pretty much know nothing about beyond seeing an ad for it in a gaming magazine 20 years ago (which was my knowledge of Koudelka until recently). From what little bit more I've read since playing this game, it sounds like the series decided to lean more into its RPG side than the Survival Horror. Despite that being the side I think was generally worse with this game, I'm still interested in giving the next game a try, which I think speaks a lot about the strengths I found in this one. I'm ultimately not sure I'd recommend Koudelka to most people, especially if you have a hard time with older games, as it definitely shows its age. But I'm personally really glad I didn't let the janky combat and misleadingly sexualized marketing push me away from a surprisingly compelling experience.

Koudelka is a cute and unusual blend of the old-school adventure/puzzle games with the jRPG genre. Playing it is like exploring a big mansion in the Black Mirror game while constantly fighting monsters in turn-based battles. The monastery at night setting is moody, there's a touch of mystery, the story is nothing special, but it's intriguing and fits the setting really well, and the characters' English language voice work is done surprisingly well. Combat is simple and easy, and I enjoyed it for a good portion of my 12-hour walkthrough. The adventure/puzzle side of the game is easy as well, but there were a couple of key items that I missed, so I had to backtrack quite a bit, which was annoying as random encounters get in your way about every 30 seconds.

Koudelka is not great and I'm not a fan of the jRPG genre, but it's a pretty enjoyable game. It was nice for a change to see a game from this genre that's not like 50-100 hours long, is not in a fantasy setting, doesn't look like an anime, and is not about the kids saving the world.

A bit of a fun fact. I've found out about this game about 15 years ago from the old version of the Gamespot site, that had a 'similar games' sidebar section. I've figured the title is a proper name, but I've always thought it was a name of some kind of a town located somewhere in the Eastern Europe. Like Tunguska. Turned out, it's the name of the female lead, who's a gypsy.

Anyway, thanks to the dude who posted his enthusiastic review of this game on Grouvee a couple of months ago. It was enough of a push for me to finally play it myself, which I do not regret doing. Now on to the Shadow Hearts series!

One of life's small joys is to dig through the library of an old console and find a real diamond in the rough. Especially when you find one that feels so utterly unique as this one.

Koudelka is a horror JRPG that clocks in at less than 10 hours for total playtime. Immediately the game struck me with it's contemplative music and steady worldbuilding. I was drawn in by the quite mood of it's world which seemed simultaneously beautiful and haunting. The game, much like it's titular character, carried itself with confidence.

The first cutscene of the game instantly surprised me with the quality of the voice acting. With just a few words of dialogue, I already understood the personalities of each of the characters. A psychic, a thief and a bishop, as the game carried on, these characters and their interpersonal relationships developed in intriguing ways. It would be an understatement to say these characters had great chemistry. From the very beginning their ideologies and personalities clashed in ways that was always entertaining. They all had things they cared about and things they stood by. Much like the voice acting, the writing was also effortlessly natural.

Although relatively short, the game succinctly conveyed what it had to say. Love, death, loneliness and god are just some of the subjects it covered. Yet, despite the grandiosity of those topics, the game never stopped feeling grounded. It does so by inviting the player to empathise with it's characters, including the antagonists. There is no good or evil here but just humans struggling with their mortalities.

When the credits started rolling, I did not feel pity for the characters. Rather I felt a quite understanding with them. Life can feel complex and overwhelming at times but it's comforting to know everyone is grappling with it in their own ways.

Set in a haunted Welsh monastery in 1898, the game follows psychic Koudelka Iasant and two companions as they uncover dark secrets and battle supernatural enemies. The atmosphere is rich and gothic, with strong cinematic presentation and an eerie soundtrack by famed composer Hiroki Kikuta. While the story and setting are intriguing, the game suffers from clunky combat mechanics and pacing issues, which can frustrate players expecting a smoother RPG experience.

Despite its flaws, Koudelka stands out for its ambitious genre fusion and storytelling, and it laid the groundwork for the Shadow Hearts series, it's a cult classic worth exploring for fans of horror-themed RPGs. I would only recommend this title if you are really into, either survival-horror, or turn-based combat RPGs, otherwise it'll be a miserable experience.

Though, for the fans of these genres, which is my case, I love both of them, this is a complete blast and one of the most unique games that I've played from the PlayStation platform. I never played it back in the day, but I played it after I already developed my taste for these kinds of games, and I wished there was more that tries to mimic this style, especially in the indie industry, which would be a perfect fit for this style.

2/10

Full disclaimer: I did not beat this and only played it for maybe an hour and a half or so. For most of that time I wasn't enjoying myself, and I'm too old to give too much time to games I'm just not digging.

I wanted to give this a shot because I'm only into specific horror games (usually those where I'm not underpowered, such as F.E.A.R.). So, a turn-based horror JRPG works for me. Parasite Eve is my favourite RPG of all time. I also really like the first two Shadow Hearts games so it was nice to see what the devs did before.

The story seems interesting, even early on. Some of the dialogue is a little dull but I could also see that it digs into deeper themes. I think that I would have enjoyed this aspect immensely had I been able to stick with the game. The voice acting is pretty good. It's not as wooden as some of the early voice acting. I don't have much of a problem with that. It could be better, sure, but this game isn't the most polished from front to back, and it doesn't diminish from the dialogue much.

There's also a decent amount of depth. Always enjoy putting points into stats. Specifically, PIE is interesting in how it builds resistance to magic in the most literal way possible, making you resistant to healing as well (I wouldn't have known this had I not watched a video). I generally like when spells/weapons level up the more you use them, as well. It's done well here.

Before I go into the negatives, and ultimately why I kind of can't stand this game and stopped playing, here's my experience, in loose order:

Get instantly invested with a nice opening. I think Koudelka's a cool chick. Walk around awkwardly in pre-rendered backgrounds that are kind of murky (but hey, it's PS1), clumsily search for items that are sometimes easy to miss. Fight some random encounters, etc. Get in a fight with a giant plant where two things happen, I wonder what the hell is going on with the light pipe (then I look it up) and Edward stops doing damage at a certain point and I guess I now have to cast a spell? Then I notice that happens in some random encounters. But back to the rest of the game. Yeah, Koudelka's definitely a cool chick. I watch her blast religion. I'm religious but I respect her hustle. Move ahead a while, my weapon levels up during battle, then breaks. Now it makes sense why I have multiple versions of the same weapons. I turn it off.

The battle system makes me not want to play this game. I kind of like how you can essentially trap enemies by advancing quickly. That's about it. I wouldn't mind moving around but it's painfully slow. I wouldn't mind attacks but they're painfully slow. Watching me or an enemy for a few seconds after attacks, that's my favourite part. This combat wastes more of people's time than I do. If someone would like to explain to me how suddenly doing 0 damage in the middle of a random encounter with attacks that were working enhances the experience I will listen. I was already hugely annoyed by how clunky this game was, and not in an endearing way, that by the time my first weapon broke I think I was just looking for the final nail in the coffin. There it was. It's a shame because the enemy designs are cool.

So, basically, I dig the atmosphere and some of the technical stuff. I hate actually playing this game. And I understand that some of it is just PS1 jank, compounded by a developer that's not exactly AAA, but I still have to say that I played Parasite Even within the last 10 years and it STILL slaps (though obviously has some jank).

This is a game with 10/10 ideas and ambition packaged in a game that plays like a 1/10 (outside of the systems). You would think that this would mean that I'd give it a 5/10 or so, but what is math? I'm giving it a 2.

I know I've been snarky. I'm just a hurt man hurting people. In all seriousness, I desperately wanted to love this. I don't feel happy being one of the few who isn't proclaiming this as an "underrated/overlooked gem," but I have to be honest. I just can't stand playing it.