I feel great sympathy for Sacnoth; these talented developers have always found their titles overshadowed by higher profile Squaresoft titles released around the same time. Their most recent title, Shadow Hearts, released in mid-December of 2001, was scheduled to beat Final Fantasy X’s January release - only Square bumped up the date of FFX. And their first game, Koudelka, was met by a barrage of fans and press who were expecting another Final Fantasy, because Sacnoth’s staff was made up of ex-Square employees - when the game wasn’t a Final Fantasy clone, it recieved mediocre reviews and showed off a fine example of bias in journalism when a handful of sites and magazines said they wished it were more like Square’s flagship series. But that hasn’t prevented either of their titles from being unique and entertaining; Shadow Hearts has received much praise from us at GWX, and its predecessor Koudelka deserves almost as much for
being a solid, atmospheric first effort that broke away from RPG conventions and tried a number of new things that ended up working quite well.
Hailed as a survival horror RPG by publisher Infogrames, Koudelka certainly features its share of atmosphere with grotesque creature designs that defy the laws of nature and genetics, and a suitably creepy setting in the Nementon Abbey in Wales, vaguely based on a real-life monestary in the same location. The story told of a young medium named Koudelka Iasant, who was called to the monestary with a vision she received. While exploring, she meets up with Edward and James O’Flaherty, two other people who were exploring the abbey for their own reasons; together, they discover the dark history of the monestary and its inhabitants in one of the most intriguing stories ever to grace a PSone RPG. The atmosphere is furthered by the sparing amount of music in the game, with tracks only playing during battles and cutscenes and ambient noise backing the field and menu screens. And it doesn’t hurt that the game features the best voice acting I’ve ever heard in an RPG and a brilliant script to boot, even if all the characters (British, Irish and Gypsy alike) sound quite American.
But the gameplay is more often then not where an RPG will make a name for itself, and here was where Koudelka took the most flak. It was an RPG that had random battles as many games do, but many felt as though the idea of having random battles in a horror RPG was a bad idea. On the contrary, since none of the battles were too hard if you’re well enough prepared, the random battles were a solid way to break the pace of exploration and puzzle solving that filled the rest of the game. The enemies were, as mentioned, suitably grotesque, and although there were no backgrounds to the battless (save for the floor), they were usually over quickly enough to avoid being annoying. Curiously, the battles unfolded in the style of a strategy RPG, using grid-based movement for a character to set themselves up to attack an enemy, and although things like terrain height didn’t come into play as they often do in an SRPG, the system was fun enough. Koudelka also offered an open ended system of character development (and long before Final Fantasy X), so while the game would suggest that certain characters be developed
in certain ways, it was completely up to the player. I had plenty of fun making a 19 year old psychic medium into a total beast of an attacker, just on general principle.
But coming from a team of ex-Square employees meant that there was at least some graphical mastery at work, and indeed their was. Looking back now, the in game graphics aren’t so impressive, but the CG was often breathtaking, and helped to convey the story in a way that was mature and at times grisly. And there were plenty of insanely cool moments to the game that were helped by the great CG (many of them toward the end.)
The game may have lacked a bit of polish, and it was (and I’d say still is) unconventional, but a great atmosphere and story, plus some intriguing gameplay ideas made Koudelka as much of a blast to play then as it is now. It’s going for under $15 in most stores.
