In Koudelka, evil demon monster owns YOU!



... Do you see that? That is the punishment you suffer for missing A SINGLE, MINUTE, OBSCURE detail earlier in the game; you CAN'T FINISH IT!
You just run up to confront the final boss, ... and before you know it, you as the heroes in the game are handed the same horrible fate as a Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The walkthrough I had consulted while playing through this made mention of a "bad" ending, so I found that such is the end result for heroes with poor treasure-hunting skills.


For those who do not know (and more than likely you do not, since this game is rightfully considered a general failure by the gaming public, although overall I think it's okay - probably only God knows why), this is to my knowledge the only game attempting (read: attempting) to combine survival horror with RPG existing on the planet at the moment. Three surprisingly cool but not-very-developed characters venture into the same broken-down haunted monastery one night, run into each other, and spend the rest of the evening wondering what the hell sort of maniacal evil is hanging over the place, and for what reason. Koudelka is a snarky woman with mysterious telepathic powers who is drawn to the monastery by the spirit of the woman haunting it, Edward is a dumb adventurous lug who lives the life of a pirate and came to loot the place because it used to be owned by a wealthy nobleman, and James is a preachy bigot who was ordered by the Vattican to recover a valuable document once stolen by the monastery's former owner because it contains the secrets of black - therefore forbidden - magic. Eventually, all in the anti-climax of just one document you find laying behind a gramophone (a gramophone - of all things?), you find that the former owner, Patrick, lost his wife Elaine when thieves broke into the monastery and took her life, and he used the FORBIDDEN DOCUMENT to find how to bring her back to the land of the living. It didn't work, and now Patrick had a lot of blood on his hands from all of the human sacrifices he made as well as a now-restless dead woman's spirit wondering about. The monster that was created in Elaine's place during Patrick's vague satanic ritual must now be destroyed (and how the party even figures this out is beyond me) if Elaine is to go free to Heaven, so there we go. James used to be hopelessly in love with Elaine and then turned to a career in being the Pope's main lackey when she chose Patrick over him in order to forget his loss (I probably would have turned to alcoholism, instead). In any event, Elaine comes out of a painting (what was her ghost doing in there of all places?) to beg James to destroy afore-mentioned monster posing as her dark, twisted half, so now James has a personal determination to see this thing through, Koudelka was brought here in the first place to see what Elaine's spirit was calling her there for, and Edward tags along as well because he's always looking for a good brawl (like I said before, he's the equivalent of a big stupid guard-dog).

...... But Heaven FORBID you dare send this plucky trio of mortals to confront the big E without retrieving Koudelka's pendant that she lost on the roofs of the monastery while breaking into it at the beginning of the game. That's right; if you do not find the pendant lying obscurely on the side of a fountain that you come across at only one point during the game beforehand, then Elaine's monster-double breathes pure DEATH directly into your face without so much as a whimper. (Well, okay, maybe you scream in pain for a second or two before her dragon breath burns far enough through to vital organs and then you truly die, but that's beside the point.)

.... What kind of backhanded blow across the face is that? Unless you are wise enough to think of using an Internet walkthrough like I did (or dumb enough, depending on your point-of-view, since Internet walkthroughs are notoriously poorly-written). Imagine being any of one of these three human beings as this is happening. You were so determined to be a hero and free Elaine's poor soul from its hellish shackles, and then, simply because you failed to have super-hero-level powers of observation at just the wrong moment earlier that night, you fail before you even have the chance to make a decent stand. ... Would you not wake up in the afterlife feeling like a complete wank?!

*sigh* This is almost the exact same problem with those few specially-chosen games like Contra or the Power Rangers; you can't finish the game period simply because you chose not play through on the hard setting. This kind of stuff just the makes the player livid with a lack of desire to ever play through the game ever again. I really feel for those who did not use outside help when playing through Koudelka for the first time, because odds are they did not find and recover the pendant, considering it doesn't even sparkle or anything to draw your attention to it - although I will admit that Koudelka often turns her head in the direction of objects of interest whenever you enter most rooms, although that isn't as obvious - and therefore your GAME IS OVER. Start from the very beginning and consult a walkthrough this time, unless you had the foresight to create various save files throughout the monastery in anticipation of just such a problem. Koudelka never even indicates that the pendant is of vital importance to recapture for its apparent anti-dragon-breath properties.




On the plus side, this game almost compensates for such a craptastic element by rewarding you with a victorious ending even if you lose to Elaine's final form, whom I failed to last against for longer than one playthrough of the battle music. And it is actually not bad at all; the only problem I had was that, unrealistically, neither Koudelka nor Edward make any mention of James's heroic sacrifice to save Elaine, which probably in turn kept them both from getting killed themselves. They just ride off into the sunrise as though nothing of consequence happened over the course of the entire night. .... Yeah. I'm not tired, wounded, feeling shaky, or internally bleeding from multiple monster encounters, either.

By "only game", I assume you're not including RPG Maker.

Or Parasite Eve 1 and 2?

Wait, are you saying that there is a point in the game where you can no longer go back to get the fool amulet? That you could permanently screw yourself over? Yeah, that's beyond stupid. I remember you telling me you were playing this, but I had no idea. Lol.

Also, I would just like elaborate on your statment at poorly written walkthroughs... because it's true. It seems that Sturgeon's Law again comes into affect here. Probably 90% of all walkthroughs seems to be lacking in something that you honestly need. I remember my first time through Star Ocean for SNES. I was greatly under leveled and was having trouble with the final boss. And the walkthrough I was consulting said: "I was level 110, and had no problem with the boss"

Well thanks for the help, you tagnut. I can't tell you how many times SK and I were playing through all the Zelda titles and had to skip around from FAQ to FAQ trying to find out some vital information. IF IT IS SO VITAL, ALL OF THE FAQS SHOULD HAVE IT. I eventually wrote my own FAQ for Chrono Trigger... just because I love the game, and because I know I can do better than all the other retards. Though when giving it to gamewinners, my ascii maps were too long because they used word wrap and ruined them. Ah well...

Anyways, I understand where you are coming from. For Koudelka, that was a very bad idea. And completely unforgivable for not making it more obvious... and should be condemed to hell if you can't go back at the very end to get it.

What do you mean by "finish the game"? Are you talking about simply you miss on a final boss battle and that is it or that there is further storyline, dungeones, towns, etc. that you no longer get to encounter? Because if it is the former I am not as upset by this. You essentially completed the game, you just didn't get the ending you wanted and from a gameplay viewpoint yeah it sucks to not play the final battle, but from an experience viewpoint it is lame that everygame has you winning a final battle to end the storyline instead of having a "complete" game where the hero doesn't win, doesn't set eveything right, but goes through the challenge to get there.

I admit however, that if the pendant was going to be the key determining factor, that should have been clear. If the game treated it as you need to pay attention to the storyline rather than go through the motions I'm OK with the ending being as such if you didn't pay attention to a certain extant. But if it is something you simply would have never known to look for and just happened to be fortunate to find, then I admit, that IS lame.

The thing was, if it is just a question of good ending/bad ending cinemas then I thought this was common in a lot of games. One game that came to mind was Shadow Hearts, but then as I watched your good ending, I saw a character that I have seen in Shadow Hearts and I thought "Is that Roger Bacon!?". Then I thought oh now I know where I have heard the name "Koudelka". It is a predecessor to Shadow Hearts. I was wondering why you didn't include them in the group of Horror RPG, (also the Shin Megami stuff) but maybe Koudelka is more truly survival horror, i.e. inventory management, item and key finding, etc. I never played it.

And now you have me wanting to play it because I love the Shadow Hearts games and survival horror so I'm glad you brought the game to my attention, but if I can find it (since it is a PS1 game), then UGH! I now know the spoiler. Oh, well.

Actually, the tactics game Vandal Hearts II comes close to doing that SK. In order to get the best ending the player has to get the Vandal Heart sword about 6 to 8 missions before the ending, but the thing is, about 2 missions into those 8 missions, you can save and if you overwrite a save before you began those missions you can never go back and get the Vandal Heart.

And about what Bo said, if you get this sword, the game is completely changed, since it pretty much decides whether or not half the main characters in the game live or die during those missions.

Also, there is no mention of how or why to get the sword in the game, other than a few obscure references in the game to hidden items and the sword from Vandal Hearts I.

Bo wrote:


I mean that you do not even have the chance to fight Elaine; she makes history of our poor pendant-less heroes the second they march up to her. And therefore, I do not consider that any sort of ending at all, much less a "bad" one. I mean, again, I did not personally experience this for myself since I used a walkthrough, but since the youtube video ends at the heroes' skeletons clattering listlessly to the floor, I assume that this is pretty much it, perhaps with nothing more than the game over screen to follow. I mean, what the crap is that?! Try to understand that one from the heroes' perspective. Now, on the matter of how much this screws over the player, I would have no complaints on that if, for instance, in the case that you failed to retrieve this stupid anti-Elaine pendant earlier, then just before entering the bell tower where the boss was waiting, Koudelka briefly spoke on not feeling confident or secure enough in proceeding forward without her pendant. Even without her outright pleading with the others to go back with her and look for it, her saying something like that I think would give fair enough warning, but then the game would also have to ensure that you could go back anywhere else in the monastery that you pleased so long you did not go ahead and step through that one final door. But there's the thing; according to the walkthrough I was using, pretty much once you enter disc 4 - which starts a few flights of stairs and one huge, ominous doorway back from Elaine - you cannot turn back, and there is at least one or two more chances to save the game on the way up to her, so unless you made other files throughout the game instead of overwriting the same file over and over, then you're just shafted, I suppose. So much for exorcising a haunted monastery of its insane ghosts before such evil forces extended further beyond the outer walls of the place; Elaine just gives you one of the worst middle fingers imaginable and calls it a game, apparently.

Now, as to recommending this one to you, Bo, if you liked Shadow Hearts which you seem to say is a successor to this game, and you do not mind a slow-paced, one-dimensional style of fighting in RPG's, then go for it. I think most gamers have considered it a failure, but for me personally, it is just barely redeemed to a "not too bad" rating in my eyes by characters that do not suck (not terribly, anyway), good, believable voice acting, and a pretty fascinating storyline, albeit one that is pretty much handed to you in full on a single plate all in the course of just the five minutes it took to read Patrick's diary (all I knew before that point was that monsters haunted the entire monastery, and for some supernatural reason that fact didn't even seem to phase the two crazy old caretakers who have made a career of slaughtering every thief and brigand to set foot on the premises. Also, I really thought the customization of leveling up your party members that the game allows you as the player to fully control was a genius idea in my opinion, too, and was by itself enough to help me endure the awfully dull random battles. On top of that, as I said before, I did not know of any other game to date that fits in the same rare category as this one (I do not perceive Parasite Eve or Nocturne to hold much at all in the way of horror). so to me Koudelka has opened my eyes to a new world where survival horror intertwines with role-playing, and it is one that I would be very interested to see explored more by game designers in the future, even if Koudelka seems to have been considered pretty much a failure on both accounts. Hey, we can't always get it right on the first try.

In fact, I intend to look up a few games like this that may have been made already, including the Shadow Hearts that you've mentioned, and try them out eventually.

Shadow Hearts are by far my favorite RPGs but they are clearly more RPG than survival horror. They are closer in gameplay to Xenosaga than Resident Evil, but they still have horror elements like the monsters are definetly more horror-iffic than fantasy or sci-fi-esque, and some scenarios, and environments are dark/gothic, especially in the first game. But for the most part you won't be scared. Apparently there are world/history connections between Koudelka and Shadow Hearts but otherwise there may be a lot of differences.

I know a lot about survival horror but not about RPGs so someone else might be better to ask, but as far as I'm concerned the Shadow Hearts series are the only RPGs I consider to be as good/if not better than most survival horror games.

What I mean by that is that I am sure that many people will say there are all kinds of better RPGs but what I am saying is that even though Shadow Hearts does not give you the survival horror feel, it still pulls you into its darkness and immerses your mind into the a gothic world as good as survival horror in my opinion.

I hated it when games throw that crap at you.

Persona 3 had the nerve to have a 3 way 3 choice event, that you had to do just right, or else you had to do it over again. I was downright frustrated that I had to do this. I eventually looked up a FAQ just to figure out the sequence. It still angers me a bit.

What really boils me over is that this obviously stupid element appears in Persona 4. I mean, why didn't the developer's learn their lesson?!? Now it's a 4 way 6 choice event. So I have to pick the right choice out of four, for 6 windows. That's absolutely ridiculous. Nobody could do this without a guide. I mean, it's not obvious at all what you have to do, since the choices are so similiar.

No guide? You're clucked.

And the game just ends if you lose. And you miss a big chunk of the story, gameplay and obviosly ending.

This isn't even mentioning the part where you figure out who actually killed everyone. I won't spoil it, but I had absolutely no clue and I'm lucky I just crapshot the correct answer.

...Sorry for dragging on, but if this post has any purpose, it's to let you know I've been there, so I feel for you.

.... Really. Persona is that bad about this kind of problem? 'Sounds as though I may not even want to bother ever checking those games out at all, then, as Kajak once boldly insisted on when he advertised the Persona series to me.

...... Unless of course "the Persona chicks" are truly just that "hot", as he seemed to keep saying. ^_^

Oh, the Persona games are quite good. Every game has one thing or he other that bites you on the butt. Don't recall having any major choice thing like 1ce mentioned in P3. The only real thing I can think of is given the choice to kill someone or not. As for P4, yep they definitely do that. It wasn't all that difficult though, most of the choices were kind of obvious that it wasn't them. They also give you a few chances to get the right one. So it isn't anything that bad, but can be somewhat inconvient.

As for Koudelka, it was one of the most disapointing experiences I've had in a while. Maybe because I played Shadow Hearts first then found out about the game that started everything. Loved the premise, but the combat is so broken. Weapon's breaking wouldn't be as annoying if it didn't happen so frequently and that the good stuff doesn't just fall into your lap. Perhaps the most annoying part is the gap between the regular monsters and the bosses. You can be tearing the crap out of everything then go up against a boss (unoptional too) that you bearly do any damage to. Normally I would level up my characters some more to take him down, but then I run out of weapons and I'm clucked. My experience with the game, anyway.