Koudelka, A Horror RPG Masterpiece
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- Опубликовано: 13 окт 2024
- Shadow Hearts is one of my favourite series from when I was but a small child and I was going to make a video about the franchise initially but then Koudelka popped up in my searches. Koudelka, Shadow Hearts' predecessor. It's a horror JRPG with a story that surprised me and I do love surprises in my videogames. So, let me tell you the tale of the prodigy Koudelka and her two strange companions who don't save the world but do have a heck of a time in Nemeton Monastery.
Unfortunately I could not add in a section for the Koudelka manga where Koudelka plays football in the Mummy World Cup with Roger Bacon's head but I can still very much recommend it.
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Music used
Various tracks from Kevin MacLeod: incompetech.com
Various tracks from the Koudelka, Diablo, Final Fantasy and Silent Hill franchise.
![The JRPG You Never Knew, But Should [Shadow Hearts]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vFxi51cObLk/mqdefault.jpg)
![The JRPG You Never Knew, But Should [Shadow Hearts]](/img/tr.png)
23:26 Shakespeare reference XD
I'm so glad someone caught that! :p
Koudelka, Legacy of Kain, and Final Fantasy 12 are proof that if you want memorable voice acting in your video game you should absolutely hire theatre actors.
no wonder this game has such a theatrical feel, fits perfectly too.
FF12 had some of the best voice acting in a game (in addition to one of the best scripts. The Shakespearean nerd in me was thrilled), and this is a hill I will happily die on.
12 has the worst voice acting wtf 💀 its horrendous and if you are seriously going to sit on that hill I implore you to really think on it.
@@stevenrodan5160 it's the casting that makes it iffy, as Projared said : Vaan is the biggest culprit
@@hoshi314 projared the sailor moon guy? 😂
The actor playing James put so much feeling into that exorcism. How on earth did these people not get more voice acting work?
Thank you, RagnarRox, for pointing to this amazing channel!
same, really enjoyed this video, awsome !
Same!
Same here! And RagnaRox is very good choice, for voice acting in this video. He can take a tale, and breath life to it.
In the "bad" ending you save 2 people's souls. In the "good" ending all you do is kill another monster. I can't actually think of another game where completionists actually get the worse ending. I really love this story and never seem to get tired of it.
I played Kudelka back on PlayStation 1, before shadow harts 2000s , I loved it.
Imagine not wanting to kill god with the power of friendship. **shakes head**
I played this for the first time last year, being a huge Shadow Hearts fan and owning this game for years and finally playing it, I had a similar reaction to the voice acting and thought it sounded so natural. Feels like they recorded the voice acting during mo-cap, which also might be one of the few games during that era that actually used mo-cap. One of my favorite scenes was when Koudelka and Edward are drinking by the fire near the end, talking about their pasts... her VA performance did such a good job.
I definitely had the same feeling especially as you can half hear them turn and move their clothes while they talk which I think adds another layer of believability!
@@ProperBird I got the impression that they were stage/theater actors they hired, put mo-cap suits on (wasn't sure mo-cap was really used back then but even their gestures were too real for it not to be), and recorded them acting as if they were on stage. Even the prop sounds like bottles, a book, etc were too on point to just be foley sounds added in post. The game was really ahead of its time in terms of acting/performance capture and sound design.
Koudelka and the Shadow Hearts series are some of the most criminally under rated RPG's out there. Great to see them get some love! I still fire up Shadow Hearts every year or so
This channel is waaay too underappreciated. Great video btw!
I love seeing videos like this, there's so many interesting games that I honestly won't have time to play, but I still enjoy being able to experience the story in some way.
*Jinzee:* Uploads.
*Me:* It's story narration time.
I love Shadow Hearts and have wanted to play Koudelka for so long, so this was an unexpected surprise to see pop up in my notifications. Would love to see a Shadow Hearts video as well!
yes to shadow hearts which i assume is kingdom hearts without the disney. Have you played the weird russian plague game? im blanking on what it is called right now
@@dmeep I haven't played Pathologic. Shadow Hearts is the next installment to Koudelka, but it unfortunately had the bad luck of being released in the same year as Final Fantasy X and GTA3
Koudelka was at my local thrift for 6 bucks. I grabbed it immediately because Ive never heard of it. Will be coming back to this video once Ive played it.
Duuuuude do you have any idea how much that games worth now days tho. You might as well have robbed them 😂
Interestingly, Edward Plunkett is actually a notable historical figure (no surprise, I suppose, in a game series that gives us Mata Hari and Princess Anastasia Romanov as playable PCs): he's the writer, Lord Dunsany, whose fantasy works, incidentally, were among the inspiration for H.P. Lovecraftt's Dream-Cycle stories. _Koudelka_ of course takes from Lovecraft in turn, as the Dark Young and Gug bosses are lifted right out of the tabletop RPG _Call of Cthulhu,_ bringing it all full circle.
Another good example of your marvelous skill to compress a story/game to its core but don't losing the listener/viewer with chaining boring facts and on top sprinkled with your egg-cellent wits.
Loved Ragnars VO. He did an amazing job there.
And now I can't wait to know more about Shadow Hearts! I need this video in my life!
Also nice to see you try to stay curse free in your videos jinzGrin
Thank you , that was fantastic. If you were to feel so inclined as to continue with Shadow Hearts, I would be happy to watch and appreciate.
I love accidental finds. I really enjoyed this video. I've been gaming since the dawn of time and it was refreshing how you pointed out that atmosphere trumps the shiny gleam of the newer generations of gaming. This to me was a pinnacle of sorts in experimentation in game development. I miss those days.
Subbed!!
James is such a well acted character and the best/saddest thing about him is that everyone knows a person just like him.
Koudelka is one of my favorite PS1 games of all time and it helps that my favorite genres are survival horror and JRPG so this is a perfect mix for a gamer like me. Glad to see more attention being brought to it even if it does end up raising the price of the game for second hand on sites like eBay or Amazon. It’s not a perfect game and you’ll need patience for this game and a lot of it if you’re not into turn based games but I really adore and cherish it. It was a very ambitious game and I think it’s 4 discs and beautiful looking CGI that used motion capture cutscenes that showed off some of the best voice acting found on the console and some of the best writing you’ll find in a game let alone a survival horror cult classic in 2000 showed off just how dedicated the writer/director/composer/producer had for this game.
I don't think Koudelka's actress had another VA role after this? That's so wild to me. I wouldn't be surprised if these actors were all from the stage. I feel like that was how they approached their roles
Yes, she did. She's been in a loop group for over 20 years, and provided loops for Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, amongst other projects. She started out as a soap opera actress.
I am blown away at how great the voice acting and character animation is for this! I never heard of this game, it seems like a true gem.
A game of my childhood, never finished the game back then because i was stuck on the doppleganger boss fight.
I decided to play it again after all this time and finished it today (or yesterday, depending on your time zone).
Loved it, story and gameplay are simple but effective and the characters are wonderful.
You talked about how the voice acting is good, so i want to say that the french VA is just as good which is surprising because most
of PS1 games had awful VA (it probably don't matter for non-french people but i wanted to talk about it because it really baffled me).
I agree about the "good" ending, in the "lose to Elaine" ending all the characters have a conclusion to their arc. James in saving Elaine's soul
and K&E by... you know, even if they are separating they feel happy. Also you see a little aftermath of the fight with their "affair" in the tent while
in the "good" ending it's just "well, we won... what do we do now ?"
Loved your video, i'll probably watch the Shadow Hearts ones soon.
PS: Sorry for the broken english
As one of my favourite games, I love to see videos about this hidden gem and yours takes the crown as the best on here.
I laughed so hard throughout this review, most people complain about the fighting being hard and you highlighted the error in that statement with: “I increased Koudelka’s magic system to the point she one-shotted a boss!” 🤣🤣 that pretty much happened to me too and I always thought it was a really fun system which you could do a lot with.
And that montage of James…😂 😭 HEATHENS!
I thought the way the characters were written in this game was and still is wonderful. I loved seeing the three characters go through the castle together, and that drunken heart to heart between them was a solid part.
Brilliant video!
Being a huge fan of Koudelka and especially the Shadow Hearts trilogy, and after watching this fantastic video about Koudelka I’m seriously excited to watch your Shadow Hearts video.
Absolutely amazing video! 👍
You're my favourite voice on youtube. I wish you would do voice acting.
I would if I could but it's quite difficult to get into unfortunately. ^^;
Another RUclips channel you may like that also has a very unique voice and one of the best content on Greek mythology, classic books ECT... Is "Overly Sarcastic Productions" just look under "Reds videos" in the playlist section. The channel is absolutely HILARIOUS and extremely well written, i promise u wont be sorry 👍😊
İ was thinking about this... She would be great at it!
What accent is it? It's very Irish but i feel like there is something else.
As someone from northern ireland I will feel like a proper arsehole if I got that wrong...
@@jimmyrustles9807 she sounds like a german, danish or netherland native speaker who learned proper oxford english from an irishman :D
I was looking for a retrospective of this saga for ages,and now i found you have the four games covered, so great :D
I really like your deep dives of Koudelka and Shadow Hearts. You've earned another subscriber. 😁
Shadow Hearts is my absolute favorite game ever, and Koudelka was a very interesting experience. I wish someone would remake these games.
I loved this game - nowadays there’s nothing like this anymore
I agree. Modern games are empty, soulless.
Amazing. well done on the video. This was a game I tried to play when I was probably too young to understand and have always wanted to find something that captures the horror and character that this game does. I never knew of shadow hearts so I have something to look into. I feel like you have given me closure on an odd little PS1 game that out of the many I played; I've always remembered this one. Thank you for the content.
the start of my favourite series, love everything about it, glad you made a video about it!
It’s awesome how you go from making insanely detailed Witcher Lore videos to doing insanely detailed videos about various games love your channel keep being awesome
I just found out about your channel and I love the take you give to sometimes forgotten JRPGs.
I had never heard of this game, but since it was interesting enough to you for a video, I suddenly wanted to know about it. Thanks for another well-thought out, very insightful analysis, delivered in your unique and incomparable manner. You made an interesting game fascinating! Your points about the complexity of the characters and their motivations relative to many other JRPGs was probably the most interesting aspect. And of course the hilarious and well acted skits complemented the serious analysis wonderfully as usual. Thanks again for another great video!
This is a brilliant exposition of this fantastic game. Thanks so much for bringing it to the attention of more people.
Its history is even more fascinating in that the Japanese dev team did a lot of academic research and even went to Wales. The VA was all done in English despite it being a Japanese game. Hiroki Kikuta created the game and wrote all the music, (apart from one choral track). There was a debate about the battle system which he lost, (he wanted a more active system) and this was the part of the game that received most criticism. He left the company he created and wasn't involved in the Shadow Hearts games.
One game that comes close to Koudelka as a horror RPG is Sweet Home on the NES!
Back in the day I wrote a guide for Koudelka, and transcribed the script because, although the VA is stellar, it's sometimes hard to know exactly what it being said given the cross talk and obscure references - e.g. I'd never heard of the Formors and didn't get this reference for a while. Anyway, the guide and script can still be found online at GameFAQs.
I probably read your walkthrough as a kid ❤
Oh cool! (Yeah it was a good few years ago. ^_^) @@georgep.simmonds8636
Wow. I have sadly never heard of this game. I'm sure my sister and I would have played this back in the days when we would team up on horror games exactly like this.
Definitely want to hear about Shadow Hearts.
Hey, it's never too late to start! :p
@@ProperBird That is very true :D
I was brought here by RagrarRox, wasn't dissapointed!
I missed out on koudelka for so many years but im glade i played it when i was older. Def a hidden gem
you know content is good when you don't care about jrpgs or rpgs or horror games, or old games, and still you watch the full video
Shadow hearts was my most fav RPG i rented it like 9 times i was the only person who rented it from that game store. Yuri was the most badass Hero anti hero, i cried with the cannon ending though :(
It's ok, there are more games after that and they.. weirdly get back to that. :p
@@ProperBird Yeah i just learned of SH2 like 4 years ago i loved that game to pieces too, i cried to that game too!
You are an awesome narrator. I'd love to see a Shadow Hearts video.
Fun fact (Well, maybe not fun, but fact nontheless :D)
Koudelka is Czech surname derived from a word koudel (oakum in English)
Zlata is a Slavic name and it means gold or golden
Interesting fact, at the very least! ^^
I loved the video! I only wished you had covered the fireplace scene as its one of my favorites.
One of my all-time favourite games, PERIOD. I actually like it more than Shadow Hearts! The writing is so bazookin' good (especially the characters) and leagues ahead of many games from that period. Btw, great video, your choice of background music is most appropriate and I love it ;)
I've just finished playing this again (I still have my original copy from 20 years ago) and this is still one of my all time favourite games.
The only problem I have with Shadow Hearts is that every time Yuri yelled "Bacon!" I couldn't help feeling it was part of a lunch order :)
The ending to Covenant still makes me cry every time though. I love this series.
Please do shadow hearts! I loved that game, so spooky for an RPG... also this was great, I never played this and it was cool to see the origins of this series
Thank you for talking about this gaem, and also tanks for a good video.
Guess I'm lucky enough too have played it when it came out,
You mentioned only finding 1 piece of Armour in your playthrough. Just in case you didn't know, it only drops from certain enemies. The best stuff drops from the enemies that look like empty animated suits of armour.
That was excellent. I really enjoyed your telling of this story.
Glad this series is finally getting attention it deserves!
I do like this!
I'd love to see a video of you talking about shadow hearts
If I remember correctly from the Lord discussed in this game and in its sequel Shadow hearts the Eimigrie document was incomplete. Other rituals were required to properly integrate mind body and soul into a cohesive being. One should remember that the document and the other related scrolls were all from a previous civilization that was long gone...that of the Fomor. It's a bit like someone discovering a diagram on how to build a nuclear reactor but the part on how to properly regulate it and deal with the waste was left out. Rodger bacon was intelligent enough to figure out how to use the partial information to bind his own soul to his body and what was essentially immortality.... But he never quite figured out a way around the aging process. (Or I suspect he did but wasn't enough of a monster to say, sacrifice Xnumber of people per year to preserve his own youth)
It's also worth mentioning that the Japanese have a real hard on for unhappy endings. Another survival horror series that came out at approximately the same time was the fatal frame series. It's quite excellent and every version of the game has a loved one that in the bad ending you have to let them die and in the good ending you somehow managed to save them. The series goes on for four games or so and in the fourth game there's a plot line that literally involves the survivors of the previous three games and you guessed it assumes that every single game had the unhappy ending.
Brilliantly depicted, loved the video, new subbie here, playing koudelka again these days
Would love to see shadow hearts 1 & 2 next time
❤️
Also i love the final fantasy music fusion in the background
voice acting sounds really good. I appreciate it when a child is hired to voice kids btw.
I know you probably won't read this, but than you for discussing why the "bad" ending is good. I've had similar feelings, and no video I've seen has discussed them.
Excellent video! Can’t wait for your take on Shadow Hearts and it’s sequels. The series as a whole is so cult, and messy in many ways, but these four games are amongst my favourites. I’m so glad other people feel the same.
Holy crap I love your outfit.
Thanks! :p
You made me download this game tonight thanks and you have a new subscriber
Hey! shout out from brazil! loved your video, played koudelka 2 years ago, i really liked it, a combination of elements that i enjoy a lot (survivor horror and jrpg). As a child i already was a resident evil fan, and i remember seeing koudelka in a game magazine, it really got my attention. Back in those days, i thought it was some sort of resident evil clone etc, only found out that i was wrong recently playing it lol. I'm looking forward to play shadow hearts too, they seems very interesting!
Dude, this voice acting is dope!
Very interesting video.
And I agree, it would be great if this style of games came back.
Also, that coat is awesome.
Thank you, I'm quite pleased with it. ^^
Just found your channel. Fantastic 😎👍👌👌
armors are rare cause they dont break and there are only 2 monster-types that can drop them: Shadow (cloth armor) and Possessed Armor (armor).
and the main reason players like to put points on Luck, is because it increases drop rates and chances of rare drops. VERY HELPFUL for stat maxing later of final areas of the game. of course the trade off is your stats will be less effective in battle
I need to play Shadow Hearts again, i still wanna check this out too
I'm so glad the algorithm recommend me this video, I remember seeing this game being mentioned before but I couldn't remember its name! Really nice story
If I remember well this is one of the games where if you overstack a specific stats on your characters they can also dodge their own healing? Correct me if I'm wrong
You're correct, if your piety is too high and the caster's mind is too low you can miss healing. ^^
Best channel in RUclips.
Ayyy it's the wonderful voice of Mr Rag no rox 😅
RagnaRox?! That you, homie?! 🤣👌🏽
When I was 10 years old, I had no idea what to expect from Koudelka (I can’t recall who bought me the game, but yeah yeah too young for dark immersive stories 😅)….but even at that age, I could look past the combat system and engross myself into the tale that took place in Whales 1898. Man….it’s awesome returning back to the underrated gem many years later. I kinda feel that modern games these days compromise the storytelling factor for wondrous graphics.
yes, the conversations of this game make me feel...real
Felt the same way about the endings, the holy man is still alive and is depressed but has nothing left to live for, actually felt really bad for him.
Oh, that outro was glorious...
James O’Flaherty’s voice is almost exactly the same as one in Rome Total War, the sort of battle narrator that’s say like “Oh no your general has fallen” kinda thing.
So surprised it wasn’t! I was midway through researching when you said, they never found other real voice work again, thought I was so onto something haha, alas!
Great vid by the way Jinzee!
He's undercover as a Roman general after the fiasco of his death. :p
Didn’t pass on after the last boss battle but spiralled back in time, new Canon confirmed haha 😂
i couldnt care less about the game but your intro was brilliant and your wardrobe is S tier as usual xD liked and watched til the end :D
This video is awesome, I love rpg's and Horror games and this game is really up my ally
Never even heard of this game - and I really liked Shadow Hearts - now I gotta find a way to play it
that ff9 music though
I recently just finished koudelka and I’m sad I didn’t ever play it till now. It was cool seeing what started the shadow hearts series which I grew up on. Also I’m so glad I’m not the only one who did not like the good ending 😣. I mean come ooooon, those resources for the good ending could of went to other stuff!
I am sad though that the more survival aspects of Koudelka did get scrapped when shadow hearts came around, but I can understand why, the mechanics in Koudelka are solid on paper but they do have a lot of issues that would of needed addressing. The armor thing for one
But I always felt like some of the basics of jrpg’s did clash a bit, unlike in shadow hearts where item management/usage is important. In koudelka because you tend to level up at such a fast pace, it feels like items are heavily downplayed because your hp and mp always get refilled. What doesn’t help is mp not getting soaked up much due to needing to level up your spells.
If I somehow ever modded Koudelka, removing/downplaying hp&mo refills on level up would be the first step to push for trying to improve the gameloop.
Like if the survival aspect could of been fleshed out more and better weaved into the jrpg stuff, it could of made Koudelka’s gameloop perfect.
I don't think I would call you not being able to sacrifice your Patrons a losing streak.
Shadowhearts is an amazing series and I would love to see videos on the rest of it.
I just got thru it on my PS Classic mod. I had never heard of it before and as 'Secret Of Mana' is my all time fav game - I checked it out due to the Hiroki Kikuta connection. It's very dark (like literally, sometimes you go walking about in the foreground / background and can't see anything) and I'm never a fan of turn based combat (hence SoM is my fav game) but I stuck it out til the end as the plot and voice acting were good enough to keep me interested. Funnily, for a Kikuta game, like PB mentions, there's not much music in it.
Another great video! Thanks!
I heard the Undertale OST playing in the background and was like "What the hell" thinking I'd left a page open somewhere because I'd literally been looking up Undertale, Omori, etc. and other games heavily inspired by Earthbound/Mother. Haha.
Cool reminds me of the story of anime fma brotherhood . Where 2 brothers Alfred and Edward perform alchemy to bring their mother back from the dead to life but somehow it goes wrong.
Now I wanna boot up my PlayStation and check if I found any armor :D I could not beat Elaine at the end, but seems that was a more wholesome ending anyway
Yeah, this was a good review. Keep up, Bird.
I am ALWAYS here for an Emperors New Groove reference!
That poison? 😏
I do hope that Penny Blood, the spiritual successor to Shadow Hearts and Koudelka, is equally as good. Also I backed that Kickstarter so I better hope it is LOL
Yeah I wanna see your Shadow Hearts video!
I'm a simple man. I hear FFIX music, I like the video.
Good choice of music.
I knew you'd appreciate that. :p
0:07
YOU HAVE MY FULL
UNDIVIDED
ATTENTION
Please do not look at me while I try to escape this cursed land.
The luck stat is actually for the rewards that you can get after a battle the higher the luck stat is for one character the better items you can get but to get the better rewards the one with the highest luck stat has to kill the enemy.... i hope that made sense xD anyways greetings from germany i loved this video and it makes me happy to see people talking abou this game
Whelp, didn't help that the guy with high luck never killed anything then. :p
Omg so many subs since I last watched a Proper Bird video ;_____;
You know Ragnar and like Yorveth? You are a woman of culture!
I know that people bring up the fact that the Shadow Hearts games are in same universe as Koudelka, but those games aren’t really a sequel series to Koudelka. They are more of an alternate universe type sequel series to the game.
God redeems Elaine and James and shows that Koudelka's and Edward's character arcs have meaning.... And then Yuri Hyuga punches Him in the face and He flies off because planet Earth is just not worth that much trouble.
I remember this game, it was great for its time.
This is fantastic! Thank you for this
i founded 2 armors...double...amazing