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.

It's clunky, outdated and really slow but I just really liked it. A large reason it's because it is a combination of my two favorite game genres: Survival Horror and JRPGs. And it leans more on the JRPG side of things than Parasite Eve for example. The enviroments are pretty nice too and the dub is probably the best of the time (not that it's hard to be). Also, it made me like the first Shadow Hearts even more in retrospect. 7