The game's story revolves around a young woman named Koudelka Iasant, who has been mysteriously summoned by the voice of a ghost to the menacing Nemeton monastery. In her quest, Koudelka will try to unravel the mysteries of the monastery and will discover many dark and sometimes hideous facts about its gloomy past.
Along the way, Koudelka will meet up with two other characters that will become key members of the journey; Edward Plunkett and James O'Flaherty. Edward, who Koudelka saves from a certain death before allowing him to join her party, is a shady looking character that had ventured into the monastery with the hopes of scoring riches and women. And James is a bishop who has been sent to the monastery on a mission from the Vatican -- his religious beliefs often conflict with the viewpoints of both Edward and Koudelka.
All in all, Koudelka has a tremendous storyline that is filled with plenty of suspense, mystery, and horror. And it is, for the most part, extremely entertaining. Furthermore, since all of the game's dialogue is handled with voice instead of simple text and there's a plethora of cinematic cut scenes that are handled either in full CG movies or in game sequences, the game has a very movie-like feel and overall presentation.
Gameplay
However, all is not good in the world of Koudelka. While a fantastic storyline is usually enough to guarantee a good role-playing game, the story can't always be enjoyed if the gameplay isn't quite up to snuff. This is the key area in which Koudelka falls flat on its face.
The game puts players in control of a 3D polygonal character in prerendered environments in a similar fashion to games like Capcom's Resident Evil series. Though, unlike Resident Evil, Koudelka features play control that is more akin to games like Metal Gear Solid and Mario 64, which has the user press the directional pad in the direction that he wishes to move instead of the cylindrical control scheme, used in Resident Evil. It's very easy to move Koudelka around the screen and all's good so far.
Another difference comes in the fact that there aren't any onscreen monsters as the game plays out more like a traditional RPG with random enemy encounters and turn-based battles. It's in these turn-based battles where the very promising title becomes a painful gaming experience.
The way that the battle system is setup is very similar to strategy games as much as it is to traditional RPGs. The characters and enemy creatures can move around on the battlefield that uses a grid-based setup. Depending on where the character is in relation to the enemy will determine what kind of attacks or options are possible. Spells can be generally used from anywhere on screen.
The problem here is that the general pace of each of the game's battles are painstakingly slow and generally become quite tedious. Even though most of the random encounters aren't too difficult, they're generally somewhat wearisome because they just consume a large amount of your time. The characters move around the battlefield slowly, there are noticeable load times between some character's moves, and it just takes way too long to complete simple tasks. Simply put, the game's battles suck just about all of the fun out of the game.
Next to the battles, the game's other major failing comes in the form of a shortage of save points. There just aren't quite enough save points in the game, which can be a major pain for players that have to stop their game in an emergency to take care of life's everyday tasks. What's worse, many of the save points are only opened immediately after defeating a boss -- so, if a player dies at that boss he must start over at the previous saved game point.
Graphics
Visually, Koudelka is a very solid game. The 3D polygonal character models have been done extremely well and they generally animate on the Field Screen and in the in game cut scenes quite nicely. On the other hand, some of the animations during the battle scenes leave a lot to be desired and 3D characters in the CG movies are poorly animated. However, while the character animation in the CG movies are less than stellar, the character models and the scenes themselves are very beautiful and feature some of the best renders that you'll find in a PlayStation game.
The backgrounds are made up with some very detailed textures, but they're sometimes difficult to distinguish because most of the game's locales are poorly lit and a bit overly dark. Considering that the game is based in a haunted house, it's probably safe to assume that this was a stylistic decision by the game's developers, though.
Sound
With Hiroki Kikuta, the composer of the music in Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3 for Super Famicom, in charge of the music, one would think that it would be safe to assume that the game's soundtrack would be nothing less than fantastic. However, Koudelka features what must be the very worst battle music that has ever been used in a console role-playing game. It is slow-paced and it doesn't sound anything like RPG battle music should sound like. It feels more like the music that you would here during a touching romantic scene and not something that goes with battling for your lives against an onslaught of enemy attackers. It's so slow and boring that it might just put some players to sleep.
On the plus side, the game actually features some quality voice acting. While there are a few duds in the bunch, the majority of the game's voiceovers are not only passable, but also quite good.