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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Curious Hybrid, April 1, 2001
Koudelka seems to be a survival horror game that has substituted battles from an RPG game into the action instead of "real time" encounters. As a Resident Evil fan, it was inevitable that I would have to try out this title, and in a lot of ways, I was not disappointed. First of all, the graphics and cut scenes are superb. The decrepit Abbey is beautifully recreated in the many pre-rendered backgrounds, and the characters are believeable and interesting (They fight with each other all the time, and the resulting slanging matches are often very entertaining!) As you explore the Abbey, a disturbing story unfolds, with some truly unpleasant secrets being revealed, especially in some of the written documents that appear along the way. However, I have to say that the game is let down by the implementation of the RPG battle sequences. Every now and then, at random times, there is a "woosh" and a swirl, a la Final Fantasy, and suddenly the three characters are in a huge arena, confronting a monster or three. The battles are actually very basic, you take a turn to either move position (which actually scarcely impacts on the proceedings) or cast a magic spell, or attack physically. This is followed by the enemy doing likewise until one of you is defeated. It's all incredibly slow, and after a while the battles become tedious. It's not helped by the fact that the battle music, pleasant though it is, is actually very non-threatening and relaxing! However, stick with things, and there are some real challenges to be had beating a couple of very bizarre and difficult bosses (beating the mighty Gargoyle took me well over half an hour!), and a lot of the monster designs are pretty nightmarish, so it's not all bad news. There are also lots of weapons and items to try out, which adds interest. Don't worry about the fact that weapons break after use, I never got close to running out of swords and hammers, but the infuriating thing is that you inventory soon gets full and you find yourself having to discard items you have never even used. But I enjoyed myself enough to stick around with Koudelka through to the end, so think about picking a copy up, as it seems to be going cheap everywhere now, and enjoy the sights and sounds of this brave and mostly successful merging of styles.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Koudelka: A pleasant surprise, August 9, 2001
I picked this game up never having heard of it before. What I found was a compelling story line, a unique main character, beautiful graphics, excellent voice acting, but a less-than-great battle system. The story line is definitely one of the strong points of the game; talk about unexpected twists. The plot folds out through written documents found throughout the game, secrets that your companions are hiding, and through bizarre NPCs, including a quirky several-hundred-year-old man. The characters were unique, especially Koudelka herself, who's a no-nonsense, sarcastic tough cookie. I've heard people complain that the graphics are too bleak and colorless, but I think they fit the atmosphere. Plus, it reminds you that the game takes place over 100 years ago. The cut-scenes are gorgeous; the characters' mouths match the words they're speaking. The voice-acting itself is much clearer than other games I've heard, which is good since there isn't any text to follow. However, the RPG battle system is where I started to get annoyed and disappointed. You work with three characters on a grided battle zone. The battles drag on, especially when you're building up weapons and magic spells. You have less than 10 magic spells to unlock, but they get stronger with each use. The weapons do the same; the more you use axes, your axe strength goes up. Unfortunately, weapons have a VERY bad habit of breaking after a few whacks. You eventually find an abundance of them, but during the first quarter of the game, my stomach was in knots since I was down to so few. What REALLY disappointed me was the lack of scary elements. The atmosphere was perfect for things to jump out and scare the daylights out of you, but the RPG-style battles eliminated monsters walking around. PLUS, the game relies on text to explain events. In one case, you open up a closet, see a mummy lying there and a message pops up saying something like, "You open the closet and a mummy dressed in a wedding dress jumps out at you!" Could you imagine how frightening it would be if it actually jumped out at you, accompanied by appropriate music? But no. *sighs* There are many cases in the game where scariness is sacrificed. Koudelka, overall, is worth playing. It's short enough that I was willing to sit through the whole game and enjoy it, but I was still disappointed with several elements of it.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is what you can expect from ex-Square employees, July 18, 2000
By A Customer
Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars
I love the beautifully- written horror storyline and great FMV, especially ones with the ghost Charlotte and Koudelka (almost all of them)!. Many of the pre-rendered backrounds are quite beautiful, too, and the gameplay is fun. You explore the huge, centuries-old Nementon Monastery which at times has been a place of worship, a pretty bad prison, and the home of very strange and evil people. It is 1898 and Koudelka Iasant has been called to the remote area by an unknown woman's voice. You travel throughout many floors of the monastary and as new events happen and you get new items, more areas become open to exploration. People are still not returning from the monastery, so you try to learn what has happened to them. It's kind of like Castlevania:SOTN in 3-D, but more serious. Early in the game, you get two more allies: Edward, a shady charcter looking for rumored treasure, and James, this really annoying bishop who preaches to you all the time. He's so angry and fanatical about religion you'll want to kick him out of the group. The horror is based more on suspense and terrible things that have happened in the past and are still happening, rather than zombies jumping out at you from every corner. Hardly anything jumps out at you, but it still happens sometimes. Instead, battles are turn- based like in RPG's. It is annoying how it takes so long for your characters to do anything, but you get used to it. I suggest raising agility to around 15. The battles are annoying most of the time, as in most RPG's. It's also a bit short, about 20 hours if you don't use a FAQ or walkthrough. And the story is completely read out by the characters; there is nothing that you have to read yourself. Thankfully, this is one rare case in which the voice acting is actually good. There isn't anyone's voice thats sounds at all stupid or annoying or makes you lose respect for them like in most other games with voice acting. The voices fit the mouth movements in the movies well, because when this game was in Japanese they had English voices with subtitles. A great game except for the battles! One last thing: many reviews in publications (such as the "Washington Post") said there were too few save points, mostly after difficult bosses. They didn't read the intruction booklet, apparently. In specific rooms without a visible save point, you can still save by pressing the "menu button" when the name of the area comes up, if there is a "S" to the left of the name.
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