Description
The Journey - The Horror - The Will to Survive

A Gothic Horror RPG set in the late 19th Century. An Epic tale of murder, mystery and mayhem. A Beautiful yet troubled woman named Koudelka who is summoned to unravel it all...

Review
A fantastic story mired in a broken battle system and search function

When you hear the letters SNK, you immediately jump on an arcade stick and prepare to beat down. That however, will not work in this case; it’s SNKs early attempt at an original IP role playing game.

Let’s start with the positives; the cinematic sequences are great, in fact when the original time frame is taken into consideration, they’re damn near gorgeous. Koudelka and her two companions are beautifully rendered and animated, and there’s a surprising amount of emotion shown. Though a bit sporadic in when the movie clips show, they none the less help move the player along. Truth be told, you’ll need all the help you can get.

This is where the ol’ gal begins cracking at the seams; in the game play. Now thinking about it, there are more or less three different games on the disc: the adventure game, the strategic resources game, and then the broken tactical battle game. Our adventurous part deals with the actual exploration part. Set-up exactly like Resident Evils but with better handling, your lead walks around pre-rendered backgrounds and must constantly press the X button to explore every nook and cranny the game throws at you. Most curse word inducing about this choice is that many of the most important items or clues you need are the least detailed. In fact, sometimes the non-playable decoration descriptions are the most misleading! For example, there is a printing room where you need to use a metal plate to make a map. The two printing presses in plain site keep telling you they do not work; logic would tell you having the plate would make them function. It’s only when you walk down and press X on an obscured item that the functioning press makes itself shown. Continue this ‘hunt and peck’ style of searching to the rest of the game and you very quickly tire of it, especially since some clues are a wee bit vague.

When you get into the random battles, the game truly falls apart. From the viewpoint, it is set-up like a turn based strategy game; you are laid out on a grid along with your enemies. You may move a certain amount of squares, attack and use items or magic, and then change weapons. Two very glaring flaws appear within the first two fights. First, you can not surround an enemy. You can only attack it from front or either flank. Secondly, you can’t ‘run through’ a player square, so you have to run around them. This causes disasters when a character dies – you have to move over to allow a flank to open up. On top of that, your weapons can break. With no way to repair them…and no way to really replace them in a timely manner. My first time in the game, I lost both of my weapons on the second fight. Next fight, I had my ass handed to me since I was fighting bare handed.

Speaking of being bare, I went through the whole game and never came across a single piece of armor. Rings and pendants; yes - armor…no. I do not know if this was just a huge fluke, but I pretty much ran around armor less. Not exactly a good sign for a game when you can’t even protect yourself when your weapon breaks. Especially since you have the slot for it.

In closing, we’ll discuss the time frame. I ‘GameSharked’ myself perfect stats – all Level 99.  It took me 7 hours to beat the game. At 7 hours, the ending was passable at best. If you do the math on a ‘regular’ game, it leaps to anywhere from 60 – 90 hours of sheer grinding, desperate your weapons do not break and that you can reach one of the very few and sporadic save points. In that perspective, the ending is an insult, a let down, and would cause even the most emotionless person to break down in tears.

On the game’s front cover, the words The Horror are featured…which sums up its innards quite perfectly.

• Information for All 4 CDs:

  Koudelka (Disc 1)	SLUS-01051	PSRM-017070	477 Megs
  Koudelka (Disc 2)	SLUS-01100	PSRM-017840	464 Megs
  Koudelka (Disc 3)	SLUS-01101	PSRM-017850	591 Megs
  Koudelka (Disc 4)	SLUS-01102	PSRM-017860	552 Megs



• One of the very rare times SNK produced an original, non-Neo Geo system based game. Their other USA releases were all Neo Geo or Neo Geo 64 conversions.
   
• What ever you do, do NOT discard Koudelka's pendant once found. Trust me on this. 
   
• The game uses the secondary ID slot, with the description KOUPS1. This is most likely KOUdelka PlayStation 1.
   
• Added up, the game is over 2 gigs of data.
   
• This game would actually start the series that became Shadow Hearts on the PlayStation 2. In fact, Shadow Hearts starts directly 12 years after this game.
   
• Burdened by internal conflicts within the company, the original creator left the them, and the series was left to a completely different development house. These issues resulted in the game's poorly developed battle system.
   
• Despite not being mentioned on the ESRB rating, there is a scene where Koudelka and her partner are drunk on wine and sharing stories. Obviously no one played far enough to see the Alcohol content. : )
   
• The game features a character named Roger Bacon, based on the historical figure of the same name. This in-game version however, does have a comedic twist. 
   
• In what can only be considered the ultimate sadistic move for a game feature, you must fight for your Save Positions. That's right, when you get to an area where "something doesn't feel right," you must fight a boss battle to earn that Save Spot. God help you if you're battle worn when you first reach one.
   

Variants
This game has no known regular released variants.