I've played precious few RPGs in my lifetime. Although I find them very interesting and fun, they are also very time-consuming, and given the amount of time I have to play games these days, I usually narrow down the field before choosing one or two to get involved with. Given the critical acclaim of the Final Fantasy series, I broke down last year and bought both Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8 for the Playstation and played them for months. These games completely saturated me on the "pure fantasy" RPG front, so I went looking for something in a different genre and ended up with the Fallout series, two RPGs based in a post-apocalyptic world with a very different atmosphere and storyline. I enjoyed the change of venue, and so I was very enthusiastic about the release of Koudelka, a survival horror RPG--I love creepy movies, and given how much fun I had playing Silent Hill, I expected Koudelka to be a solid hit. Unfortunately, Koudelka falls far short of being a classic RPG and should only be played by diehard fans.

What's Going on Here?

The plot in Koudelka revolves around a young medium, Koudelka Iasant, who has been spiritually called to the Nemeton Monastery in Aberstwyth, Wales, in 1898. She arrives on Halloween and finds the main entrance to the monastery locked. She manages to climb onto the roof of the monastery and enter through one of the windows on the top floor, only to find Edward Plunkett nearly fatally injured by a monster. Edward, an amateur poet and treasure hunter, is saved by Koudelka, and they begin exploring the monastery in search of an exit. Shortly thereafter, they collectively rescue a priest, James O'Flaherty, who has been knocked unconscious by another monster. James has recently arrived at the monastery with the goal of retrieving a valuable artifact for the Vatican. As you explore the monastery, you discover that things are not as they seem, and the three characters themselves have as many secrets as the monastery does.

The story, told through the use of CG movies and long dialogues animated by the game's graphics engine, is fairly solid; I felt compelled to investigate the monastery and the creatures inside. I did feel that some of the dialogue was directly aimed at controversy, specifically the spiritual conflict between James and Koudelka (fervent believer versus staunch nonbeliever)--given the atmosphere of the game, I found it pretty unlikely that the characters would stand around gabbing about religion. Koudelka does have a mature storyline, which could be disturbing to the younger players.

Overall Plot Grade: B+

How Did it Sound?

The sound in Koudelka can be easily divided into two parts: the sounds, voice acting, and music during the exploration part of the game, and the sounds and music during the battle sequences. There was a huge difference between these two, almost as if they were two different games that were fused into one in a haphazard fashion.

The sound during the exploration part of the game is definitely above average. The ambient sounds of the dilapidated monastery are at the perfect volume, just loud enough to leave you asking yourself, "Did I just hear that?" The music while exploring is symphonic in nature and is the perfect complement to the visual appearance of the monastery. Although this was hinted at prior to the game's release, the voice acting is definitely above par and syncs perfectly with the movies. Koudelka has a consistent insincere tone that lends support to her personality, and Edward's naïve comments also support his character. The priest's voice, however, was very out of place. According to his game-supplied bio, James is supposed to be in his early fifties, but his voice sounded much closer to early twenties.

Unfortunately, the sound during the battles in Koudelka is practically unbearable. It's not that the grunts, groans, and clangs are not appropriate; those sounds were done well enough. It's the repetitive MIDI-fueled music in the background that grates the ears and makes the battles seem longer that they really are--and if you read the gameplay section below, you'll understand why this is a very bad thing.

Overall Sound Grade: B

How Did it Look?

The animated movies in Koudelka are breathtaking. The characters' movements are fairly fluid, and the backgrounds are very well-rendered--these are likely some of the best animated sequences on the Playstation, ranking right up there with the movies in Final Fantasy 8. (If you look for screenshots of Koudelka, I'll bet dollars to donuts that you can find plenty of shots from the movies but very few from the gameplay and battles ...) In addition to the fully animated movies, there is an abundant supply of conversation between the characters, animated using the game's polygon graphics engine. What amazed me about these was the completely realistic physical motions of the characters while interacting--it was almost as if the developers had actors in sensor-wired suits performing the scenes, and recorded the players' exact motions to animate the onscreen characters. Even though the characters are fairly pixelated, the accuracy in their movements adds immeasurable realism to these scenes. If the graphics in these sequences were slightly better, Koudelka would have set a new standard for movies of this type.

While exploring the monastery, the static prerendered backgrounds perfectly reflect the expected atmosphere of the locale. (I found it particularly interesting that the Koudelka website treats these as a feature, calling them "fantastic non-interactive scenes.") Given the level of detail of these backgrounds, it is apparent that Sacnoth spent a great deal of time making this part of Koudelka's gameplay look as good as possible. The only character you really control while wandering the halls is Koudelka herself, and I'd place the character animation graphics somewhere between Resident Evil and Final Fantasy 8.

While battling creatures in Koudelka, however, the level of quality in graphics presentation drops almost to zero. The biggest problem I had with the graphics in battle scenes took place after an attack was complete, and the battlefield was being redrawn before the next "turn." You can see, in vivid detail, all of the redraw steps that take place before the battle continues. First, your character is redrawn. Then your character's weapon magically appears in his or her hand. And so on and so forth. It takes a full three or four seconds for each step to be redrawn, and even then, your companions haven't necessarily been drawn when the focus switches to them! This delay makes battling creatures a serious chore instead of fun entertainment, and the game should never have been released in this state. The battlefield, as well, is unexpectedly empty of any features, and it looks the same regardless of the location where the fight started. (That is one thing that the later Final Fantasy games did extremely well--the battlefields were made somewhat unique, representative of the current locale.) Other than these serious flaw, the graphics during the battles were sufficient, with a wide variety of gruesome enemies to fight. Some of these guys were truly nasty looking, so on that front, the developers did a great job--but not good enough to save the battle graphics, or for that matter, the grade I'm going to give Koudelka's graphics overall.

Overall Graphics Grade: B-

Was it Fun?

This is where Koudelka simply falls apart. Exploring the monastery is great fun--it's just unfortunate that you don't get to do it for a significant amount of the time that you play this game. I'd say at least 60 percent of the time spent playing Koudelka is battling undead creatures--even battling the simplest enemies takes a massive hunk of time. Some of the "boss" monsters take upwards of twenty minutes to vanquish--but twenty minutes of strategic battle might have been a great thing, except for the fact that at least half of that time is waiting for the battle engine to make up its mind and render the screen. The combat seems completely nonsensical at times, with no rhyme or reason apparent for choosing which character on your team to get an attack turn. Sure, you can run away from many of the random encounters in the monastery but for a critical fact--there is no armor, and very few weapons, available simply by exploring the many rooms. Virtually all of your valuable items must be gathered through combat ... sounds like a vicious circle to me. The feature of being able to move your characters around on the battlefield did not significantly add to the experience, so I will state this as plainly as I know how--battle in Koudelka is not fun.

There are other problems with Koudelka that should have been solved before the game was released, although the gameplay outside the battle was pretty much bug-free. After completing a battle, I found that pressing the directional buttons on the controller often had no effect. It took a few seconds, and many button-presses, for my frozen character to come back to life. Speaking of controllers, I find it insulting that this game's advertising proudly proclaims that Koudelka supports the Dual Shock controller, when in fact, the analog joysticks are not supported. There is the occasional shudder of the controller during battle sequences, but otherwise, it's basically a standard controller game. (For those of you unfamiliar with the console, this is a higher-end controller with dual analog joysticks and vibration functionality.) The analog joysticks simply should have been used--there's no excuse for not providing that capability when games like Resident Evil are being rereleased with the analog joystick support.

The puzzles in the game are typical for the survival horror genre--find this object and give it to this monster, find the key, get around this obstacle, etc. Given the extended battle sequences, I found it fairly difficult to stay focused on what the next goal was, and just as I figured it out--you guessed it--another battle began, breaking my train of thought and boring me to death.

Overall Gameplay Grade: D

It seems to me that Sacnoth took one game (a great-looking gothic horror adventure) and combined it with another (using a sorry excuse for an RPG engine), resulting in an unpleasant gaming experience. Unless you're a hopeless survival horror addict or a fervent completist, I'd recommend that you stay away from Koudelka. If you want to play a good RPG, go for Final Fantasy 8 or Parasite Eve (probably the original survival horror RPG)--you'll be much happier. A final reminder that Koudelka is definitely for mature gamers only.

Final Grade: C