Koudelka vs Shadow Hearts

[kane_magus]

Well, one good thing to come out of not getting Street Fighter IV over the weekend (and it still hasn't arrived yet, but I'm not going into that right now), is that I was able to play through the rest of Koudelka.

Even taking into account that it's an old PS1 game, it's still pretty cool. The battles may be a bit on the slow and easy-side, but that's about it. I'd recommend it, if you can find it.

However, now that I've finished it, I've moved on to its successor, Shadow Hearts. As I said in a previous post, I'd already played through this one time, but it's been a few years.

After playing Koudelka, Shadow Hearts so far just seems rather... juvenile, by comparison, more so than I remember it being when I played through the first time. Koudelka had a more mature, serious feel to it than does Shadow Hearts, at least so far. I mean, sure, Shadow Hearts does start with "Roger Bacon" (and after playing Koudelka, that name has much more significance now) massacring a bunch of Japanese soldiers, and chopping off Yuri's arm (he gets better) in the opening scene, but still. I'm only up to the sewers of Fengtian, which isn't very far at all, but I don't remember it getting all that much better in the way of the overall feel of the game, based on what I remember from the last time I played it. So far, and from what I remember, the entire overall scenario in the game is way more "out there" than the one in Koudelka. It didn't bother me before, but now, having first played Koudelka, it's rather noticeable.

The voice acting in Koudelka is worlds better than Shadow Hearts, and there seems to be a lot more of it as well. Every cut scene in Koudelka was fully voiced, and there was a minimum of text elsewhere, aside from menus. That scene near the end when Edward and Koudelka decide to get drunk while James is making nitroglycerin in another room is one of the more moving scenes I've seen in a video game. Shadow Hearts, by contrast, is mostly text, and what little voice acting there has been so far (only in the opening scene up to the point I am now) is atrocious.

Also, the number of missable things in Shadow Hearts just irks me. You have to have a guide or three if you want to have a hope of getting through without missing a lot of stuff. As far as I know, there was only one missable in Koudelka that, if you didn't have it and tried to approach the final boss, would lead to the badhorrible ending. Well... aside from the ridiculous "save the game at these specific times with this specific number of items in your inventory then reload to get uber-game breaking gear" that is. I didn't even bother with those. But Shadow Hearts, from what I recall (and from what I gathered by browsing through a bunch of FAQs prior to starting the game), has a ton of missable stuff.

I don't know... I guess my point is that I think Koudelka overall is better than Shadow Hearts, at least so far, despite the fact that it's an older game for an earlier gen system. Though I do still want to play through Shadow Hearts in order to get to Covenant and From The New World, it's kind of starting to feel a bit chore-ish almost, and this is really early in the game. Though most of that, I imagine, is because I'm being anal about getting the acupuncture upgrades for the weapons as soon as possible, and am refusing to move on to a new area until I have done so. For some reason, I don't remember that being as annoying before as it is this time. I guess I should just not bother with that and keep going, at least until I get the end game weapons. I really hope the 3rd and 4th games, which I haven't played at all yet, improve upon Shadow Hearts, in the various flawed areas I mentioned above.

Comments

[alessar.livejournal.com]

I, personally, could not stand Koudelka because the controls were so awful. I felt like I was driving a bad marionette. And the combat system was irksome. I never bothered finishing it. I liked the art, liked the story, and I can understand that the ex-Square staffers who designed and wrote the game expected higher quality programmers that they didn't get at the new company.

I did like Shadow Hearts. It still had that Lovecraftian undervibe. The only things I missed, well one I missed because I had to reload and then forgot to grab an item, so I missed Yuri's final ultimate form; I also missed out on a limited opportunity side dungeon. However, as Lovecraft-pulp as Shadow Hearts was, SH2: Covenant was much lighter and goofier and jokey. To its detriment, I must add.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Wow, SH2 is lighter than SH1? Given that so far this is pretty much my main problem with SH1 vs Koudelka... ugh.

What with Yuri being all "Hehehe I wonder if she'll let me..." every time he comes across an unconscious/sleeping female (though this is less Ha Ha funny and more really creepy if you actually stop to consider it, and doesn't endear Yuri to me as the main player character at all) and then on top of that Margarete only pretending to be unconscious and then being all "Sure go ahead!" and a lot of the rest of the dialog just being rather corny and trying to be funny but mostly failing... again, ugh. It seems like they were going for "bad ass and devil may care" for Yuri, but it tends more toward "childish and stupid", at least as far as I perceive it. Strangely, I really don't remember having this much of a problem with the game the first time through, but then I also wasn't just coming off of Koudelka at that point either.

But if SH2 is even goofier than that... hmm, I wonder if I'll bother to actually try to make it through this series after all. I mean, I'm all for goofy and jokey and such (EarthBound is one of my favorite games of all time, after all), but for some reason it just doesn't seem to fit with this series too well and seems forced.

As for the controls of Koudelka, outside of combat I don't see any difference between it and that of SH, aside from the Resident Evil-ish "press X to climb stairs" thing, which could be annoying at times. Yeah, the combat was pretty slow paced in Koudelka, but I'm finding that I'm starting to miss it, now that I'm having to deal with that irritating Judgment Ring thing all the time in SH. Which, again, I don't remember disliking as much the first time through as I do this time, oddly. Hopefully at least that is improved and not as aggravating in the later games? The same sort of mechanic in Lost Odyssey didn't bother me at all, though, so I guess the Sacnoth guys (who worked on both LO and the SH series) got the kinks in the system from Shadow Hearts worked out by then, which gives me at least some hope for the later SH games as well, in that regard. And maybe it's also the fact that I'm trying to play SH again after having played LO that is part of the reason that the SH battle system seems so vexing to me now.

[rabbitucker.livejournal.com]

Well, I've not played "Koudelka" or the first "Shadow Hearts," but I've played "From the New World" and half of "Covenant." On your reccommendation, I will go hunt down "Koudelka" and then proceed to play the franchise forwards, rather than in reverse.

The judgement ring (and ring-related maladies that can be cast upon you) was actually something I really liked about the "Shadow Hearts" franchise. As far as the rest of the battle system goes, it became more complicated as time goes on (*two* types of blocking and *four* types of regular attacks?!), but much more refined. The placement of enemies, both in a plain and their altitude, area effect of special attacks, and the management of several variables at once (HP, MP, sanity, and "stock") made for a multitude of strategic calculations that I found both challenging and stimulating.

There is a recurrent theme throught the franchise (save for the first installment) of the characters acting comically in situations that aren't always expected. Sometimes it culmonates in a bizzare skill management system (not the least of which are Joachim's biorhythms and Hilda's calorie count). Most people's skills can only be built on parallel quests, often involving items that are traded for new abilities or power-ups for existing ones. More often than not, they are extremely offbeat:

• Giepetto's magic is focussed through his doll, who gets new abilities with new outfits. To get them, you trade beefcake collector cards to an effeminite tailor. (Most are foofy and cute, but some are disturing, like a dominatrix outfit.)
• Mao, the 5ive-foot kung-fu movie star gangster cat (yeah... as if that in and of itself wasn't bad enough) collects cat currency to pay feline actors for fight scenes in her movie.
• The oddly-accented American ninja Frank gets bizzare ninja attacks by completing ridiculous tasks on behalf of his ninja clan.
• Also, all Frank's weaponry can be obtained for free. He finds an interesting item in various spots and attaches a sword hilt to it. Joachim does something similar.
• Karin gains sword skills by collecting pieces of an opera by Richard Wagner.
• Ricardo the Mariachi can play variations on a memento-inspired theme, causing various effects or unleashing an arsenal hidden in his guitar.
• Natan lures powerful monsters and traps them in a magic jar. He trades them to his village's shaman to power up his gun-fu. (Personally, I rather like Natan's gun-fu.)

It gets sillier as it goes on, but I found "From the New World" quite fun. "Covenant," so far, is a bit of a let-down by comparison.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Koudelka doesn't have any whimsical stuff like that in it. It takes itself fairly (very, compared to SH1 and, from what I hear from you guys, even more in the later games) seriously, which is why I liked it. YMMV, of course.

To give you an idea of what you'd be getting into if you decide to get it, I'll describe it a little bit more in depth than I have until previously.

As I said before (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/238318.html), it's somewhat similar to Parasite Eve, in that it's one-half survival horror and one-half RPG. The setting and atmosphere and mood and plot is totally Resident Evil/Silent Hill style survival horror. The battles are turn-based RPG, with a bit of strategy elements thrown in. I won't say much about the story, so as not to spoil, so mainly I'll just describe the combat and mechanics of the gameplay, since that seems to be the main stickler for most people.

The combat is like this. When you enter (random) battles, you find yourself on a field of tiles. On each character's turn, you can perform an action (attack, cast magic, use items, etc.) and move, in either order. The enemies are on the other side of the map, and to attack them with melee, you have to move up next to them. Magic and ranged weapons can be used from anywhere, but attack magic is more effective if you are closer to the target. Oh, and you can't shoot something with a gun if there is teammate directly between you and the target enemy. You cannot go past the front most enemy in order to attack enemies that are farther back (unless you use magic or ranged). Likewise, enemies can't get past your front most character to get to ones further back, so you'd want to keep the magic-users behind the front lines.

Weapon and magic skills gain XP every time you use them (even outside of battle, if you use the heal spell), and can level up at any time, even in the middle of battle. They can gain up to level 3. For weapon classes, each level means you gain an extra attack per turn with that weapon type (up to three). Magic gets stronger, but requires more MP per cast. In addition to this, you also gain normal XP after each battles, and when you level up you gain 4 points to allocate to attributes of your choice (STR, INT, DEX, etc.) Full descriptions of the attributes can be found in game when you level up so I won't go into that here.

(Continued in next comment, for length.)

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

(Continued from previous comment.)

Now here's the bad part about combat. First of all, it's really SLOW. I didn't mind it too much, but I've seen complaints about it. Also, Edward tends to break weapons fairly frequently, which is annoying. And also, if the front line character dies, then the enemy can move past him (or her), at which point you can't revive him, until and unless you manage to knock the enemy backward (which is possible).

I played the game with Koudelka as a full mage (increasing INT, PIE, MND, along with LUC, VIT, and AGL per level up, totally ignoring STR and DEX), and Edward as a full fighter (increasing STR, VIT, DEX, along with LUC, PIE, and AGL per level up, totally ignoring INT and MND), and James as a half/half (keeping all stats about even). However, I ended up using James almost solely as a buff/healer, so I wish I'd built him the same as I did Koudelka, though it didn't really hurt him that much.

There are no shops in the game, so any weapons/armor/ammo/items that you get are things that you find lying around or that you get from enemy drops. One other annoying thing about the game, though, is that you can only hold 50 items (of any type) maximum. If you find more than one of the same item they do stack and only count as 1 toward the max, so that's good, but it's still annoying that the max is so low. Stacking doesn't happen for weapons/armor/accessories though, only items.

There are two types of save points in the game. Temporary saves are fairly regularly encountered. If you enter a room and a (S) appears with the name of the room, then you can temp save there. You can only have one slot associated with a temp save at any time, and using these does not refill your HP/MP. Then there are full on save points. These are usually initially guarded by a mini-boss fight ("Something isn't right here..."), but once you unlock them, you can use them whenever you want. You can fill up the memory card with multiples of these types of saves, and using them does refill HP/MP. They're good to use as a hub if you want to grind or farm monsters for items.