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.
