Koudelka

"Mature, dark, and full bodied. A game to be enjoyed to the very last drop."

Koudelka is like a good red wine. Mature, dark, and full bodied: it benefits from keeping until you are old enough to drink, and to appreciate it's intense and subtle flavours. This is an intelligent, beautifully crafted game that deserves wider recognition than just from Shadow Hearts devotees. But it takes a special kind of palate, or player, to appreciate its deepest delights. This is an old and increasingly rare game with impressive provenance. It was the game that gave rise to the Shadow Hearts series, and was conceived, written and directed by Hiroki Kikuta together with his company, Sacnoth. He wanted to make an RPG that was for adults, and had Gothic and horror themes. This is not cola for kids.

The events of Koudelka take place in the year 1898 and in one setting: Nementon monastery, an ancient building, now privately owned, and with a long and troubled history. There are no other locations, and the game begins, after an atmospheric FMV, as Koudelka enters the monastery through an attic window. You don't know why she is there, or what she might find. The setting adds to the sense of claustrophobia and confusion as you track around the hallways and vast spaces finding odd clues, dolls, bits of broken stained glass and old letters. There is more than one mystery to be solved here and you may be unsure what is real and what is not. This blurring of fantasy and reality is accomplished with great style, and there are shocks a plenty: yet they are subtle ones, often conveyed through suggestion and in visions.

The story involves three disparate individuals: the eponymous heroine, Koudelka, a lonely, embittered, yet impassioned young woman with gypsy powers of insight, Edward, a somewhat callous adventurer, and James, a self righteous bishop who has travelled from Rome to track down a mystical manuscript, the Emigre Document. They meet by chance at Nementon, and, despite mutual antagonism, end up as allies. Their purpose in being at the same place slowly emerges as more and more disturbing past events are uncovered, and some more recent ones too. Evidence of heartbreaking tragedy and dreadful deeds abounds, and their own lives are put in danger by the current occupants, as well as all the monsters they have to fight.

You have the freedom to customise your three characters as you wish, although each comes with their particular strengths and weaknesses. Edward is the strength attacker and can increase his proficiency in wielding his fists and many other weapons, Koudelka is strong in magic, and Edward can do both. You gain points as you level up and these can be allocated to increase life, magic, strength, piety (an interesting one that...get it too high and although resistance to enemy magic increases so does resistance to healing magic from your allies), and other things. Weapons and magic can also can be levelled up, and you increase each character's effectiveness by repeated use. So, for example a level three (the maximum) in guns means that you could fire three shots in succession. This also means that you don't use every spell and every weapon, as it takes time to increase these levels. Weapons can break after too much use and you have to be on your guard in case of this, and to keep a look out for more weapons and items. One slight annoyance is that your inventory is limited, and especially in the early stage of the game, when you have to collect various items that will solve puzzles, the space available quickly gets used up, and you have to ditch things that you would prefer to keep.

The battles take place on a grid, where you can place your three characters and then move them forwards towards the enemy. They can move too, and you engage them in physical attacks from adjacent or diagonal sections of the grid. Magic attacks can be from a distance. Each move and every attack requires its own animation which makes the battles slow in pace. However I enjoyed the grid system and the slow pacing, though every action does take an insanely long time to complete...

These are the basic rules of the game and as such are not that hard to understand or to implement.` However this is not the whole story. As I mentioned in the introduction, it takes a particular kind of player to enjoy this game. So what are the qualities needed to appreciate Koudelka?

Firstly, be patient. Although the game is not long, (around 25 hours) despite coming on four discs, it is infamous for the long drawn out battles. Each ordinary battle can take up to 5 minutes to complete because of the deathly slow-paced animations. I don't object to this because I love the battle music, probably the best ever composed. And death is the theme of the game. But if you are after the kind of gameplay that will quickly quench your thirst for battle then maybe you should not even bother.

In fact the slowness of the battles adds to the creepy atmosphere and the accumulation of disturbing images and fears. The designs of the enemies are truly monstrous. There is not a lot of recycling so you can be surprised over and over again with the appearance of the next gruesome spectre. Since the place is imbued with the spirits of those who have died in horrible circumstances many of the monsters are truly that: monstrous. You will encounter severed arms that creep across the floor to attack, or a feminine slow moving figure that has been cut off through the torso and the ragged edges and central bleeding mess are revealed when it bends towards you to deliver a magic attack. There are distorted children that cry when hit, and walking corpses with shards of bloody broken glass where their heads should be. These visceral delights need the slow battle animations to be fully appreciated.

Secondly, stay alert. There are many cutscenes and FMVS and they are all integral to the plot and the development of the characters. This is not a game where you should skip the cinematics. The FMVs are stunning, with elegantly crafted short scenes of the main characters and the others they come across. The script is also excellent: intelligent , erudite and thoughtful. The cutscenes are fully voiced and completely credible and interesting as the characters bicker, discuss the poetry of the day, and engage in intense theological debates. They are a match for anything on the PS2. The sounds and music are wonderful. As well as the excellent voice acting, strangely all American, despite the setting in Wales, the music is all original and composed by the game's creator, Hiroki Kikuta. There are haunting themes which are both sad and moving, and since the place is a monastery, the church music of unaccompanied choral singing has a particular resonance amidst all the gloom and horror that unfolds. At other times there is silence, and the place echoes to the sound of footsteps as the three adventurers walk down a long dark corridor, or you simply hear the creak of an old metal gate as it opens, or the clank of chains and chime of a clock. All these add to the atmosphere of ruin and decay.

Thirdly, concentrate on the experience and don't expect to be diverted with other things. There is nothing extraneous here. No sidequests, no towns or villages, no unnecessary non playable characters. There are no shops and no money exchanges hands. Weapons, such as swords and guns, knives and axes, are found or dropped by defeated enemies. There are no distractions. The flavour is concentrated and intense.

Finally you must first swirl the wine in a large glass and sniff the aroma, then slowly sip and allow the heady mix of taste and scent to infuse ...er..sorry. The wine metaphor has rather overtaken my thoughts for a moment, but the point holds true for the game. Take it in slowly. Don't rush through for a fast finish. This is not a glugging game. You must allow every aspect of the developer's art to speak to your senses. You will become immersed in a world of black magic, heretical alchemy, grotesque monsters, horrific deeds, and desperate people. And be prepared for a truly amazing cut scene involving, yes, you've guessed it: copious amounts of wine.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/01/07