An interesting little game. I had never heard of it until recently when finding Shadow Hearts led me to Koudelka, and the idea of a horror turn based RPG appealed to me because we don't get many RPGs in that genre.

Far and away the best aspect of this game is it's story and characters. On their own they're unremarkable but this game has surprisingly amazing voice acting. It does feel a little campy and the line delivery can be awkward at times, but for a japanese PS1 game I was just shocked at the voice acting. The way the characters talk feels totally unlike most other games. The cast spends much of it's time together berating each other and arguing, which is honestly really entertaining and funny, but the way the characters speak is what stands out. They talk over each other, mumble, and talk to themselves in a way that feels very natural. That isn't something you really see much in any kind of acting these days. The acting honestly makes you more invested the story, waiting to see where it will go and what will happen next, even if it's a pretty simple story. There are a few standout scenes with the characters that are just full of great lines and acting, and honestly if you can stomach an older game I'd say it's worth playing just for that.

I just mentioned "stomaching an older game", and you definitely have to. The game plays exactly like a classic Resident Evil game... however with tactical turn based combat? A cool idea in theory and what actually drew me into the game, but I very quickly realized this game would simply be better if it had copied the Resident Evil style of gameplay as well. The combat is slow, sluggish, simplistic, and worst of all, boring. There is little variety in the way characters fight, how the enemies fight, and how the weapons work. It uses a simple RPG stat system with simple enemy weaknesses, but none of it feels fleshed out enough to warrant this system being in the game in the first place.

This game visually is pretty nice too, it has a decent amount of FMVs that look pretty decent for the time. The backgrounds are really nice, and the enemy designs are fantastically creepy (though its disappointing they all blend together in combat). The music is actually not bad! The problem is that there's not enough of it, and what's there just does not fit the game, and feels like it would better fit in some kind of adventure treasure hunting game? Very jarring...

Overall I think it's an alright game, and one I'll probably end up looking back on fondly. I think I'll always remember the voice acting most of all, really standout.

This game ended up being a huge disappointment to me. You can tell they lost steam with this one, whereas every previous title improved on the last, this one feels like a step back in every single regard. The story starts with an interesting concept, finally bringing humans into the plot, however their implementation as well as the new villain all feel very poorly written and not included in a meaningful way. The plot is a lot less personal than the last game, and I can't help but feel like the plot of Zero 3 would have been a better note to end on for the plot as a whole and the character of Zero. I can tell they wanted to try something new but I don't think it worked, though I do think the game had a satisfying conclusion for Zero as a character. The stage design feels very... unsatisfying. I wouldn't call it frustrating in the same way Zero 1 was, it just doesn't feel as natural to go through, almost too simple. The addition of weather essentially as a difficulty is actually really cool, but when the level design is already pretty bad there's not much it can do to salvage it. Along with tying the EX Skills to the weather, I really felt demotivated to try and get high ranks which I did for the previous two games. The gameplay has also been downgraded, the new weapon they introduced feels extremely gimmicky and clunky, and almost none of the enemy skills you can get with it feel fun. Not only that but the already mediocre level design features several moments where you have to use the weapon to traverse and its very awkward. They have once again overhauled the chip system, making it noticeably worse. Elemental chips are now tied to weapon abilities which feels very counterintuitive as you can't use your favorite weapons and combos without tying them to an element, and many are mutually exclusive. The game also introduces a new crafting system which is just completely unnecessary and makes you grind, probably to extend the game time as this game is also much shorter than any of the previous ones. The cyber elf system has ONCE AGAIN been redone, and it's not bad... per-se... but its just annoying as I feel they finally had it going alright in the last game and now they felt the need to change it again? The bosses are also less well designed than any of the previous games, both mechanically and visually. The aesthetic of this game feels a lot less cohesive than its predecessors, though the art itself is still top notch. One of the saddest aspects of this game is the music, the past two games had some of the best soundtracks in a game and this one is sadly not up to par minus a few tracks. This game just seems to have a huge problem with trying to shake things up and do everything "new", the problem is that all of the changes are just flat out worse than anything they've changed before. I'm sure this game isn't as bad as I'm feeling it is right now, but coming right off the tail of Zero 3 it felt super disappointing. Seeing as this is the final Zero game though, I think all four games do come together nicely when you play them one after another as one big story.

Once again an improvement on literally every single part of it's predecessor. The narrative is a lot more cohesive and generally stronger, having a more personal tie to Zero as a character was a great choice. Most of my issues with gameplay in the previous games have been addressed, the penalties are a lot less harsh letting you acquire all the EX Skills more easily. There's a larger variety of EX Skills and the new chip system allows you to finetune the way you wanna play a lot more which I loved. The Cyber Elf system has been streamlined, it's much less confusing and allowing you to equip two elves without consequence was a great choice. It stops the game from feeling too difficult if you don't want to use elves but too easy if you do use them. The bosses felt much better designed and weren't as easy as the second game. The art once again is one of the strongest elements of the game, the stages, enemy, design, and especially boss designs are top notch. The music is on par with the second game, but personally there were a couple more tracks I really liked in this game. Easily the best Zero game I've played so far.