The video game industry is so big that it is impossible that many of the games that come out in a year stand out or are known, it is known that many games no matter how good they are, are overshadowed by others and this is due to many factors ranging from advertising or the date of the game's release itself, therefore, it is normal to find hidden gems of the video game that over the years have obtained the category of "undervalued" because they are really good games, but do not have the merit they deserve.
One of those undervalued games, is the game of which I will present to you below, a game that mixes the genres RPG and Survival Horror, that title is: Koudelka.
Koudelka transports us to a gothic and rather gloomy world, with the right atmosphere for any horror film. The plot of this game will revolve most of the time in Koudelka Iasant, our main protagonist, she is a medium, ie, a person who is able to communicate with spirits and because of their powers, is able to hear certain voices that tell him to go to a kind of monastery where paranormal phenomena are occurring, upon arrival at the place meets with what will be one of his two companions of "adventures", the first to meet is Edward J. Plunkett, who can be described as an adventurer, who soon after game time we find him badly injured after being attacked by a creature when he was trying to enter the monastery to steal some valuable object and then we will meet the priest James O'Flaherty, whose mission by the Vatican itself is to obtain some very important manuscripts.
And so this trio of protagonists who have very different personalities and very different ways of thinking, will enter the bowels of the monastery to reveal the mysteries that reside in its walls. A game that knows how to unite in a very good way, the elements of the RPG genre and those of Survival Horror.
Perhaps for many people this is a game that, by current standards has aged a bit in the graphic aspect and maybe it can be so, but I admit that compared to many games that I played when I was little, that by nostalgia I remembered them in a very different way and that seeing them today are nothing compared to how I remembered them, as it is well known, nostalgia often makes you want to remember that something was better than it really was, but with Kouldelka is just the opposite, when I played this title for the first time and after playing it again recently to be able to do this review, graphically remembered exactly the same as when I first played it.
Of course, even though Kouldelka doesn't innovate when compared to Final Fantasty IX, for example, it's not a title that, in the year of its release, has lagged far behind other games, as many of its effects and scenarios look really good, this is a game where the gothic style is predominant so the structures we find, scenarios and lights will be related to this style, and because likewise this is a game that is also considered a Survival Horror, this type of decoration fits perfectly.
The design of the characters also stand out a lot, with very good details in the main characters, as they have a good palette of colors and the right one for each scenario of the game, with very dark and opaque tonalities, but due to the good details that have the characters become quite recognizable among themselves, as well as the animations of these are noted with a certain level of fluidity and naturalness. A negative point that can be easily noticed, is that at the moment of the battles the graphic quality lowers a lot, since the backgrounds of the stages disappear and only a black background and the ground where the characters to be battled are found can be seen, only a platform of quite low graphic quality appears.
Even though it has a pretty good soundtrack, in my opinion it was not taken advantage of, as there are very few occasions when I felt that they really took advantage of the situations that exist during the game with the melodies, and as I have always said that for a video game for me is very important to have a good soundtrack, Kouldelka in this aspect disappoints a little.
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Kouldelka, unlike many RPG games that are located in different locations in the same world, in Kouldeka throughout the game we are going to place ourselves in one place, which is the monastery, something that is very similar to the games of the genre Survival Horror, which all its plot, in most cases, focuses on one location, as is the case of the famous Resident Evil.
Kouldeka has a lot of aspects of the classic RPG games, but in this case although also their battles are by turns, this time we will be able to move our characters through the battle scenario through a kind of chess board, something very similar to the Tactical RPGs, therefore due to this game mechanics, we must plan very well our strategy at the time of fighting against our enemies, since some attacks of our main characters are hand-to-hand, therefore we must approach our enemy as much as possible so that the attack makes affection, although as is common in this type of games, we will also have attacks at a distance with firearms and magical attacks.
In the same way as in many RPG's when our character goes up in level, he will get points that we can supply to our character's attributes, being able to increase their: strength, agility, speed, magic among other attributes. A very important detail to the moment of the battles is that the weapons can be broken, therefore in some occasions in full battle our weapon can be broken and this is going to leave us in a bad situation reason why we must be attentive to this event.
Our 3 main characters have different battle characteristics:
Koudelka Iasant: She is an expert in the use of magic, so her greatest affinity are magical attacks, although she is also very skilled in the use of melee weapons.
Edward J. Plunkett: The adventurer has affinity in the use of firearms and is also the most resistant of the three characters.
James O'Flaherty: His affinity is the big weapons, like maces, therefore he is a character that has a slower attack speed than the other two characters.
Koudelka a game that has gone unnoticed by the eyes of many people, a game that despite having many flaws, is a game quite original and wanted to bring some new to the video game industry, no doubt a game that like many people, I consider quite undervalued. Recommended.
