Koudelka - How To Play Guide

Koudelka can be a difficult game that doesn't give you much direction in terms of how to play or properly build your characters. Luckily, that's why you have outside information like this page to explain things better! During this game you'll get 3 party members, Koudelka (your main character), Edward and James. Each of them are best designed to fill a certain role and you should make them fulfill that role. You can of course do whatever you want with them... It will just take a few more levels to build up their natural weaknesses.

Edward is your front line fighter and physical damage dealer, Koudelka is your offensive caster and James is your support (or jack of all trades). In Final Fantasy terms, Edward is a Warrior, Koudelka is a Black Mage and James is a Red Mage. The stats you raise on them should go with their strengths.

Koudelka: Offensive magic user. INT, VIT and AGI are the three stats I raised most on her. I got PIE into the 30s and MND into the 40s and that seemed to work for me with no issue for the whole game. By the end of the game my INT was in the 80s and AGI/VIT were in the 50s.

Edward: Physical damage dealer, he's your front line fighter. VIT/STR are your two primary stats. By the end of the game my STR was in the 90s with VIT in the 50s and DEX/AGI in the mid 40s. I raised DEX every so often even though I never had any trouble hitting my opponents... Mostly tried to keep it in line with AGI.

James: Healing, buffing, caster damage and physical damage. James is a bit of an enigma because you can make him into almost anything you want. He has well rounded stats for being a frontline fighter or can be made into a caster like Koudelka. I made him into an offensive caster like Koudelka, by the end of the game he had 80 INT, 50 VIT and AGI along with 30 PIE and MND.

The two stats that everyone in your party is going to need are VIT and AGI. Vitality will reduce incoming physical damage and also increase your health whereas Agility will make you attack sooner in the round and even give you multiple turns per round if it's high enough. You'll notice when your VIT is too low because you'll end up being one shot; this is most noticeable on Koudelka since there are some enemies in the game which target her specifically. I use them as my baseline guide for VIT, Koudelka needs to be able to survive at least two of their attacks - otherwise I consider her VIT to be too low.

Agility is one that you can decide how much you want. I ended up raising this more towards the end of the game than I did the secondary stats like DEX/MND or PIE because I felt like I was getting more out of Agility than the others. Really, what I recommend you do is focus almost exclusively on the main two stats for each person and then put points into the secondary stats like DEX/MND when you notice issues. If your physical damage dealer is missing attacks they shouldn't be.. It means you need DEX. If your caster is missing... it means you need MND.

 

Weapons & Equipment

Weapons and Equipment in Koudelka are kind of an abnormality in RPGs because there are no shops and most of the weapons & equipment you get is found as drops from enemies. Almost all of the armor and weapons in this game are randomly generated and they will have different elements attached to them. You can save, pick one up and then reload and pick it up again and it'll likely be a different element than before. Ranged weapons like guns will not be randomly generated and they seem to always be set in stone.

For the first 2 Discs, it's whatever you find is the best equipment to use. It's not until later on during Disc 2 that you can start being choosey with accessory or armor slots. Weapons on the other hand, you always need to be more selective. Sometimes you will find an Earth Axe and think it's great but the enemies in your area have the earth element too. There's also some weapons that kinda just suck in general like Mystic or Light. Each have their niche use but Mystic drains mana (really bad) and Light heals (somewhat bad). I normally just threw away any weapons of either 2 types that I got.

The other important thing to mention about weapons is they will break when you use them enough. Some seem to break faster than others but they will all break after so many hits. This forces us to swap weapons throughout the game which is honestly a good thing. What type of weapon you use is mostly up to you... I ended up putting stat sticks on Koudelka and James to raise their magic stats. James got a mace and Koudelka got a Cat's Eye weapon that I found.

Edward I used a couple of weapons on but for most of the game he used a Shotgun. For the final boss I had the loadout in the picture above with the Lifedrinker sword.

For the most part accessories will raise your caster stats and they normally do so by quite a lot. Some of the accessories are rolled like armor/weapons but many others are static items that you will find. Unlike the other two, they're more of a mixed bag.

 

Tips & Tricks

- Spread out your AP points, for example on Koudelka raise her offensive magic stats while also raising VIT and AGI to keep her from being too slow or too weak.

- Run away from battles you can't win. Unlike other RPGs of this era, you'll be put against enemies you stand no chance against sometimes.

- When you enter a room and you see an S before the name of the room it means you can create a Temporary Save. Press Circle to open the save menu and do this.

- There are only 10 'permanent save points' in the game. Each of these locations will also fully restore your HP/MP making them perfect grinding spots. Otherwise all the saving is done through Temporary Saves.

- Make sure to explore every room carefully. The game isn't very large in terms of areas to explore and there are hidden items all over - many that I didn't find or didn't mention.

- All of your HP and MP is refilled when you level, so make sure you spend your MP before you level up! In this game you level up your weapons and magic separately so it's important to get EXP with magic when you can.