quando eu fiquei sabendo que Hiroki Kikuta era viciado em ler tudo fez todo sentido

há uma inerente distorção na percepção de outras culturas vindo de qualquer lado do universo. se a gente adora atribuir "tradição e modernidade" pro japão, não é surpreendente que eles atribuam "samba, futebol e alegria" para nós. e sinceramente, não sendo simplista e nem racista acho que ta tudo bem, viver nesse mundão gigantesco é muitas vezes não entender os outros.

mas Koudelka quase que imediatamente começa citando Lord Byron, e ai começa a citar eventos reais da Inglaterra, lugares reais, escrituras e mitos ocultos, tribos ciganas, e eu não fico pensando que esse homem tinha algum tipo de reverência ao ocidente nem nada, não em um nível como o Kojima tem (affectionate), mas sim que esse homem é viciado em saber, em entender, em estudar e pesquisar. Koudelka lida com personagens e eventos reais junto de personagens e eventos que não são reais. é difícil terminar o jogo e não sair procurando se o monasterio Nemeton existiu mesmo em Wales, ou se existiu mesmo os documentos Emigre. é mais difícil ainda quando você descobre que um dos membros de sua party é alguém que existiu de verdade.

Hiroki Kikuta bebeu Wales e a Inglaterra inteira, integrou no seu jogo e criou uma das obras de realismo mágico que se passa no ocidente mais curiosas e únicas de todos os tempos. sei que Shadow Hearts segue o mesmo estilo, mas há uma finesse aqui que é difícil de ser replicada.

uma direção de cutscene que sinceramente deixa MGS com inveja, é uma pena que Koudelka esteja renegado a ser apenas "o precursor de Shadow Hearts" (a descrição do próprio IGDB e daqui é extremamente nojenta) porque há poucos jogos especiais dessa maneira que avançaram e influenciaram um meio artístico inteiro sem quase ninguém saber

Koudelka

A game... Jajaja, era otra época. La ambientación y el doblaje son la polla, el diseño de enemigos también está guay.

Por otra parte el guión es un poco raruno, la traducción creo que hay partes que están mal, los RE me han estresado un poco.

(6/10)

No es mi saga.

genuinely one of the most impressive games on the PS1 in terms of presentation. everything from the animations, music, naturalistic voice acting, settings, and so on comes together so well. a true feast for the senses. it feels so uncommon to play a game where the main characters are at each others necks like this which made for an interesting dynamic.

i even enjoyed the combat system which at a glance seemed to be more difficult than it ended up. going for most of the content in the game (i collected the rare weapons, did backtracking for optional puzzles, fought the superboss, upgraded all weapons and spells except for Revive and one handed knives, etc.) had me so overpowered that i didn't have to think much about any of the later game encounters and i could just smack or blast things with whatever spell and they'd die within two rounds usually.

the animations and loading in combat are a bit slow and i could see how playing this on actual hardware would be a bit of a slog but being able to fast forward on duckstation got around it.

absolutely deserves to be more popular than it is. can't wait to dive into the Shadow Hearts games eventually too.

Wanted to play this before going through the Shadow Hearts games. Yes, the combat is just as slow and painful as everyone says (and is also on a grid for some reason?) and has a lot of random encounters as you're trying to explore which is a real Old RPG pet peeve of mine BUT I'm really forgiving on this one because I was absolutely enthralled the entire way.

The vibes in Koudelka are unmatched. This game has such a sense of style in every single audio and visual aspect, and so much of it is made up of things that you rarely see in video games. The story is told in what I can only explain as theater-like segments that are voiced and motion captured (in 1999!) by stage actors which brings these characters to life so much. The way characters will subtly talk over each other and react to each other in a natural way makes you actively realize how clunky video game voice acting usually is, even in games that pride themselves on being 'cinematic'.

The environment design and UI is absolutely gorgeous, and fully commits to this vaguely European gothic aesthetic. The music is RPG-like but is fully aware of it's surroundings and is used sparingly to hold the mood and tension of the game.

It also just uses the PS1 Hardware incredibly well and pushes it to its limits. This isn't always a good thing - load times in battle are weird and slow as it seemingly often can't render in all three characters and enemies all at once - but overall this means that you get some of the best looking character models, environments and cutscenes from the entire PS1 era.

For this reason it also is probably the shortest 4 disc game in the PS1 library - each disc is no longer than 3 hours long, but it also maintains such a high standard of quality across every disc. I feel like with this era of games especially, the 'unfinished, overly ambitious masterpiece' gets talked about a lot, and while far from a masterpiece, Koudelka's insane ambition pays off in such an even and consistent way across its duration.

Not for everyone, but definitely worth a go if you're feeling intrigued.

Like most RPGs, –or at least this is my experience– if you look for a guide or walkthrough when you get stuck you suddenly discover there is a lot (and I mean A LOT) hidden: secret items, weapons, scenarios, techniques... and people know how to use those hundred items that you tend to ignore.

Anyways, Koudelka is not a hard game and it's pretty unique. The enemy and character design is quite cool and only gets repetitive once you're almost at the ending, the story is compelling, the voice acting is totally out of the league of any other Playstation game and even if the gameplay os quite slow (while fighting, characters take a few seconds to react) I found it fun. I loved the cutscenes and it can get pretty parasitevesque.

On the bad side, the music, although it drags you in, can get monotonous, there are basically two themes: regular fight and boss fight. Controls are crazily clumsy, but you get used to them after a couple... hours. And you can get lost and miss that f*cking door because of absurd camera angles.

Even being 4 CDs it's not that long. It's a unique thing and even if it doesn't excel at being a horror game nor a RPG, it's fun to play and it looks beautiful. And yeah, I agree, they should call her Kooldelka.

As one of the plebs who walked away from Breath of the Wild disgruntled with its flimsy weapons, Koudelka's weapon durability system proved to be a pleasant surprise. Seeing my characters' proficiency with certain weapons improve every time they broke one meant that I ended up welcoming the notification that a weapon had shattered, rather than dreading it. Koudelka's handling of weapon durability encouraged me to experiment with different types in the hopes of seeing the extended melee combos that came with higher aptitude. The weapons also lasted long enough that obtaining one felt rewarding rather than redundant.

In terms of tactics, the final boss was the only enemy in the game that demanded my attention. As such, the combat was only inadvertently entertaining through its oddball enemy design and quirky animations. Thankfully the customisation afforded through stat distribution, coupled with the generous levelling system, meant that sitting through the sluggish encounters rarely felt like a waste of time.

Although random encounters were tame and tended to last a few minutes too many, Koudelka's story was intriguing enough to hold my attention. Developments came at a steady pace, and seeing things unfold was consistently entertaining thanks to the frenetic CG cutscenes and solid voicework. The singular quality of the performances in this game lent the characters a weird charm, and despite only spending 15 hours in their company, Koudelka's three dysfunctional leads won me over me in a way few JRPG parties do.

Putting Koudelka up against its peers one facet at a time would probably lead to a series of unfavourable comparisons, but as an experience in and of itself, the game holds up pretty well. Its pre-rendered backgrounds don't hold a candle to those of Final Fantasy IX or Resident Evil 3, nor do its encounters warrant the tinkering that other JRPGs of its era invite, but for me Koudelka remains an endearing game that admirably reworks the tone and progression of a survival horror into a curious RPG that accomplishes a lot without asking for much.

Finally played this one and what a blast!
A horror JRPG that's feels like the best theater play. The vocal performance of the actors really is as outstanding as everyone says!
The small setting with just the Monastery and the more personal stories of the three protagonists give the whole thing a really interesting atmosphere I've never seen anywhere else. Kikuta really came up with the idea to mix resident evil like puzzles with a fully voice acted (I'm talking EVERY scene!) intimate RPG story line.
I also love how the game has small little things like finding certain items changing the outcomes of cutscenes or the absolutely ridiculous choice to make a certain items be mandatory so you don't get the worst ending. What normally drives JRPG players totally mad is pretty much fine here as the game is only like 8-10 hours long. Even if you mess up and get a bad ending, playing the game again and exploring the monastery further isn't too much of an ask.
The battle system could have been better, I guess. It feels pretty generically turn based/ SRPG except when you're losing and you notice that positionining is important to actually revive your teammates.
The monster design is top notch though and so are the character stories and interactions. I really loved these flawed beings with their tragic back stories. This game is just awesome.

This was an incredibly hard game for me to put down!! Looking around the internet it seems like people think the RPG gameplay weighed it down compared to more typical horror games, but I thought the battles were impressively well-balanced (I never died once, but most boss battles did have me close to the wire so every victory felt satisfactorily earned) and allocating characters’ stats proved to be meaningful and engaging, something which other games can flounder with. And for someone like me, who doesn’t do especially well with scary stuff (I usually get my friends to play scary games so I can watch…), Koudelka wound up being pretty perfectly tuned to my exact sensibilities of wanting that creeping, dreadful, oppressive atmosphere with some abstractly-gruesome imagery, while never being anything that discouraged me from playing by being “too much” (a balance I’ve only ever really found in Silent Hill games). What an incredible little thing!! A horror RPG that even wimps like me can have a wonderful time with - and doesn’t waste that time either, clocking in at only 13 hours in my sometimes meandering playthrough. Not even to mention some of the absolute best voice acting and choreography I’ve seen in any game, let alone one on the original Playstation. What a refreshing gem to have stumbled into by accident. Going in I knew nothing, but coming out I’m leaving with a new favorite.

Ended up playing a 3rd Playthrough for a video I've wanted to make about this game for a while. This playthrough absolutely cemented this as being one of my favorite PS1 JRPG's. Everything about it is so wonderfully executed. Everything about it absolutely fucking hits. It's beautiful.

The antagonists are deeply human and the protagonists are the same. The protagonists are deeply similar. James especially.

I'm very very excited to play Shadow Hearts but I honestly don't know if it's gonna live up to how genuinely perfect this game is to me.

If you want to see the analysis I did of the game it's right over here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDxQqABH3Y0

Please for the love of everything play this game. Give it a chance even if the combat isn't amazing.

I feel like Koudelka is one of those games that sort of becomes a bit hard to appreciate without actually taking into account the context in which they were released: on a technical level, it was universally acclaimed for being highly innovative in its use of motion capture and for the creation of truly stunning cgi scenes, elements that for his time certainly led the way for new perspectives on the expressiveness of storytelling through the physicality of characters.
It is also certainly interesting how these technical factors have been applied to a gothic horror setting, created with the goal of providing an experience that is dense with atmosphere and rich in interactive cues, with many environmental puzzles and objects to collect to enhance the gameplay experience.
Unfortunately, Koudelka was also, and above all, a title with a troubled gestation, which had to juggle too many different angles without really coming to a sufficiently defined direction, ending up integrating very different influences with, in my opinion, very variable results.
It was definitely an overly ambitious project for a rookie independent studio, which had to manage an overly complex balance between survival horror, tactical rpg-like elements and genuinely wanting to push the immersiveness front.
What we are ultimately faced with while playing Koudelka is a not always satisfying experience, one that works quite well as an rpg and much less so as a horror game, with great charm and a real passion oozing from every angle, very fascinating to look at but not as original to play.

Ambitous and experimental, Koudelka has a lot going on. The combination of tank controls, fixed angles, and turn-based, grid-based combat is a good one. So is the granularity of the attribute system and richness of gear and items. While often deeply cheesy, there's an effort in the dialogue to explore the setting and to give each character some depth. But all this detail comes at a steep cost to gameplay - combat drips as slowly as molasses as animations and models load in. Even so, I appreciate the unique qualities of this one. Give more more detailed and weird pieces of historical fiction and horror in games any time.

While Resident Evil 2 is my favorite game of all time, I do sincerely believe Koudelka is the best horror game to grace the PS1. It's of course not without it's faults, with obtuse mechanics and combat that can become banal pretty quickly. But it's well realized Gothic Welsh setting is phenomenal, it's characters actually feel real and tangible (thanks to the fact that all the actors were seemingly all stage performers prior, and the impressive mocaping that required all the actors to actually be in the same room as one another. It's something uncommon now, but for the PS1, it was unheard of), an incredibly mature story that tackles some heavy topics that most horror games prior to Silent Hill 2 shyed away from, and some truly fantastic monster design that gives Ito a run for his money.

It is a game that really isn't for everyone, alienating a lot of fans from both the Survival Horror and JRPG crowd, but if you can stomach some admittedly wonky gameplay (which let's be real, neither FF7 or the classic Resident Evil games actually all that fun to "play"), you'll find a true diamond in the rough.

Koudelka sucks to play and isn't fun. In terms of a "survival horror + jrpg" merger, it basically merges some of the least interesting and annoying bits of both genres - the weird puzzly logic and backtrack slog through weird camera transitions (that in this case aren't even trying to emulate cinema, which is kinda the point of the RE camera) of survival horror combined with the "japanese role playing game"'-'s pointless onslaught of random battles, obscure combat mechanics and bosses that WILL make you grind for hours to beat them if you happened to not read an encyclopedia on stat allocation before starting the game.

Despite this, this game fucks. The setting is extremely well-researched, the characters very human and "real", the voice acting better than a lot of modern AAA titles and the writing itself manages to be interesting while exploring a combination of several otherwise tired tropes. The part that fails the gameplay, the mix of these two genres, saves the world built for this game from being a ripoff of anything. You are in a fantasy adventure, you have magic, but it's rooted in real lore and the horror genre, which makes a unique and great aesthetic without crossing into too quirky or pandering territory.

FINAL RATING: read a guide/10

Solid mix of JRPG and early horror genres, with good voice acting and interesting story, albeit a bit short. The entire game is set in a huge haunted monastery filled with secrets and in that pre-rendered ps1 greatness in which every room feels like a piece of art. I really enjoyed the exploration, even though sometimes it can be a bit confusing to navigate. I wouldn't have it any other way though, as the vibe the game is going for only works so well thanks to the fixed camera angles.

Also I feel people exaggerate when they complain about the combat being too slow, it kinda is, but it gives you a ton of options on how to build your characters and you can, for example, pump magic to one hit everything, so personally I don't think its slower compared to most JRPGs at the time, including the famous ones. However I believe the random encounters don't really add much to the game, they're pretty easy to begin with, so you don't feel threatened and even the battle music at times feel too "usual" and kills the horror vibe the game is going for. Probably for scaredy people like me that's actually good though.