Chanting may increase appetites
Kuon takes place during the Heian period in Japan. The story begins in Lord Fujiwara’s mansion when strange occurrence starts happening. Zombies, mutated monsters, and various other spooky monster infest the mansion. The Lord hires an ex-exorcist by the name of Doman to get rid of the blood-thirsty monsters in his mansion.
Kuon has two phases, the Yin phase and the Yang phase. Selecting the Yin phase will put you in control of Utsuki, the young girl who arrives with her sick sister, Kureha, to try to find their lost father Doman who hasn‘t returned from the mansion. As they arrive at the mansion, Kureha disappears and Utsuki is left alone looking for her father and sister. Selecting the Yang phase will put you in control of Sakuya, the young exorcist who has studied ancient magic and was trained by Doman. Sakuya arrives at the mansion with three other disciples and split up to purify the ill people and take out zombies. Sakuya eventually ventures alone to find out what’s happening inside the mansion.
Enemies will be abundant and its best to take them out permanently. The monsters you’ll encounter comes in different forms and sizes. There are the Gaki, who look like zombies and love the scent of blood and flesh, and silkworm monsters called Adamushis. There are also ghost that rarely appears but they can also be taken out in one simple attack. The monsters all look really horrifying and they possess great stamina. There are also the occasional boss battles that are intense and haunting to look at.
If you were to cross over evil energy or knock over objects in your path, you will attract ghost and trigger a tempest, where the screen will focus on an area gathered by dark energy. where your character experiences Tempest, they‘ll sometime experience “vertigo”, a moment of distortion where the screen gets really blurry and magic cannot be used.. Your character will also experience “vertigo” if they run non-stop and get fatigued., or when their health is low.
Your characters will attack with either a physical weapon or magic spells. You’ll be using one weapon for the entire game, and upgrading it very late in the game. Sakuya uses a fan, while Utsuki uses a blade. You can collect magic cards throughout the mansion and from dead enemies. These magic cards can throw projectiles at opponents or summon an monster to aid you in battle. Magic cards must be hot-keyed from your inventory to be used. As cool as the combat sounds, its not constructed well. The problem is, your character doesn’t respond immediately to your attacks. Your character will have to go through a lot of delay animations before they initiate their attack. For instance, using a magic projectile attack requires our character to dig into their pockets, take out their magic cards, use them, then return to their normal state. Considering that one shot really isn’t enough to take out a monster or a boss, it becomes troublesome to see your character frequently go into their delay animation just to attack the opponent. On the bright side, the summon cards are really useful as you can summon a monster to distract and engage in battle.
There’s a meditation feature that allows characters to regain lost health. When it occurs, the screen will turn black and your character will start chanting. Meditating can also reduce heart beat rate, which is really useful to prevent your character from entering Vertigo. But, using it with a summoned monster will cause your monster to disappear, so use it wisely.
The graphics are exceptionally beautiful, very dark and gloomy. The environments stands out, with a lot of paper doors and blood stains everywhere. You’ll see hanging corpse on a rope, blood stained walls, and distorted monsters. There are also a few cut-scenes that are well voiced and adds a lot of tension to the game. Another cool feature added to Kuon is the option to listen the game in complete Japanese or English. Both of which does an outstanding job to keep you glued to your tube. The main theme of Kuon are two sisters chanting a ghoulish song , which is really creepy and cool at first, but gets old after awhile. Other than that, there really is no music in the game.
Kuon has some pretty unique, original ideas in a horror game. To open doors, you’ll need sacred cloths that match accordingly (the map does a great job of telling you exactly which door requires which cloth), you use vessels to save your profile (you can actually see it sail off, looks really cool), and the meditation is an outstanding feature. The dull combat and overall short length of Kuon may turn people off. After completing one phase, I was forced to complete the other (which was basically the same game with a different character and start location) to unlock the final phase and ending. The game is also very short and there’s not much to replay value. However, considering that this is a horror game at a budget price, Kuon is a real creepy and bloody terrific horror game that misses some spots but ultimately serves well to the genre.