Title: Ku-on a.k.a. Nine Grudges
Company: Agetec
Genre: Survival/Horror
Platform: PS2
Release Date: 12/07/2004

Synopsis: An exorcist and his disciples travel to an old manor in order to exorcize the spirits that dwell there. When they don’t come back for a week, the exorcist’s daughters come to search for him. As a result, one of the daughters, Kureha, disappears, and it is up to the other, Utsuki, to find her in a demon-infested mansion. Meanwhile, the group of disciples notice that their master has gone missing, and that they’re beginning to be picked off one by one. After the disappearance of her brother, Sakuya is the only one left. It is only when these two girl’s fates collide that the final fate of Ku-on will be revealed.

The Highlights
Graphics: Pretty, with excellent lighting effects and cloth movement.
Sound effects: Ambient; There must have been 10 door-opening sounds.
Story and Storytelling: Non-linear, with four endings.
Monster Design: Almost none here; Nice boss design though.
Ending: Suggestive; You don’t get the full story unless you beat it four times.
Gameplay: Painful all around; Makes Resident Evil’s rotate-forward control scheme seem desirable.

In the competitive market of horror video games, few can truly be called original. Almost none try to distance themselves from the well-known formula: guy goes to mysterious city/mansion, guy meets girl, zombies come out of the woodwork five seconds later. Ku-on, despite its rather cliché premise, manages to break the mold in a number of ways, giving a flawed, but memorable gaming experience.
The first thing that grabs your attention in Ku-on is the simply flawless graphics. Everything moves with great fluidity and realism (except when it’s not supposed to…). The texturing rings true time and time again. This is backed up by simply superb use of sound effects. There must have been twenty different footstep sounds as I played this game, and even different doors have different sounds for when they open.

The pleasing aesthetics are enhanced by a deep and twisting storyline that keeps you guessing until the end. The storytelling style is very interesting, as the game is told in three chapters. First is the chapter of Ying where you control Utsuki, then the chapter of Yang where you control Sakuya, and finally the chapter of Ku-on, whose character I won’t ruin for you. Each chapter ingeniously gives you the answers to all of the questions asked in the other chapter and the questions to the answers given. The storyline is further enhanced by the ability to set the game to a Japanese language track. I highly suggest that you do this because the English track, while not bad, is horrible when compared to the raw emotion contained in the Japanese version. The ending was suitably climactic, but sadly relied on being purely suggested and gave no hard proof to anything, so you’re not entirely sure what happened in the end.

The ending isn’t the only thing that depends too much on the player’s imagination, however, as besides in the (infrequent) FMVs there are no mouth movements throughout the game. For a game that is otherwise so graphically superior to nearly everything that came out in 2004, this was a major disappointment. Battles seem to have the exact opposite problem, as blood seems to spray everywhere when you hit an enemy with a spell.

That is to say, IF you hit the enemy. The combat system is the worst part of the entire game, as all of the characters you play as are extremely slow (must be those kimonos, weighing them down) and not only do spells take forever to cast, you have to carefully aim your characters to use them. Thanks but no thanks, Agetec, I prefer mindless hacking and slashing to this. What makes this even worse as there are only about five types of enemies in the game, and all of them seem to look alike. This uncreative design was yet another black mark on this game’s quickly graying repertoire. This is almost saved by impressively creepy boss design, but its not quite enough to tip the scales.
In the end, Ku-on was a genuine effort to create an original game. While it succeeded where many games have failed, it also failed where many games have succeeded. The result is a frustratingly almost-good game that you wish you could rave about…but it simply isn’t good enough.

The Rating: 4

Review by: ReadorDie