Koudelka

"The only good horror RPG out there"

Koudelka, an all too overlooked game.

Story: It is somewhat of a Romanticism horror tale.

Gameplay: The biggest gripe most people have about this game is the battle system. I for one think it is the best battle system in an RPG I have ever come across. It is on a grid with turn based combat. You get to have the characters move and perform an action on their turn. Actions include attacking, magic and the ever necessary change weapons. In connection with the battle system I have to say the enemies are just completely weird, yet wonderful. The complete bizarre nature of some of the foes show some real insight into the horror genre by the creators of the game. I mentioned the ever useful ability to change weapons in battle. This is because of the annoying breakage factor of weapons, which really gets annoying when you have to change and there are no weapons the character has decent combat levels with (a dilemma prevalent mostly earlier in the game). Also leveling up gets hard as once you clear an area the enemies seem to give out much lower benefits in defeating them. Now about leveling up. This is a great feature how you get attribute points to place wherever you want to. So you can train any of the three characters however you want. Who says Koudelka HAS to be the primary spell caster? You can make her a master of fist combat if you want. In the realms of weapons, armor and magic there are a few things to take note of. The items gained are very random and (as it was for me) it is possible to get absolutely NO good armor throughout the whole game. In the same respect it is possible to get hoards of elemental chain mail and be uber defensive. The weapons are widely varied from pistol to sledgehammer to sword, its all here. Finally I will touch on magic. There are only a handful of spell available but they are available to all of the characters. The more a character uses the spell the stronger it can get. Unfortunately at times your MP reserve can get a little low so learn to use the magic sparingly as the number of MP restorative items wears thin.

Graphics: Darkness. And I love it. Play this game alone, in a dark room, at night. Trust me. The environment is completely perfect to the game and I could not ask for anything more.

Audio: Yay! Good voice acting. But on top of that, good dialogue! The cut scenes with character conversation is typically pretty entertaining. I rather enjoy the battle music, not quite appropriate to the genre, but fits in as best as it could considering you practically have to have something a little more upbeat when a fight starts (except for dramatic combat of course).

Difficulty: This is not all that hard of a game. From time to time there is a boss who may drag you through hell and high water before you can beat it; or an item for a puzzle gets accidentally overlooked; but nothing particularly daunting to the player. The leveling up factor does increase the difficulty factor at times, but not too severely. I think the item randomness is much more of a hindrance than experience.

Replay Value: Being as short as it is, the replay value can be viewed as either high or low. To play it in close succession will only result in the game being stashed away somewhere or forgotten about. But as something you play only once a year or even less frequently it still provides as great of an entertainment value as that first time through.

Rent of Buy? Considering the typical price of $20 USD I say go out and buy it. If nothing else it will be one of those games you cherish even if it gets minimal gameplay.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/31/03, Updated 03/31/03