#1: Kuon

Kuon

FromSoftware
Initial release: April 1, 2004 (Japan)
Platform: Sony PlayStation 2

Screenshots c/o Mobygames

If you’re looking for the earliest possible historical period to enter the world of old-school survival horror with, Kuon is probably it, set around the mid-900s (based on the presence of historical figures as major character) in the middle of the Heian period, today considered a sort of mythical era in Japanese history akin to England’s age of Camelot. The story goes something like this: Ashiya Dōman, an ambitious onmyōji — a sort of Heian-era magician and seer, who were often civil servants in the Imperial government — and a real historical figure, goes to visit the local lord about a suspected haunting, but when he’s gone longer than expected, his daughters Utsuki and her sickly sister Kureha go to the manor to look for him. Right away it’s clear that something is wrong — the front gate is covered in silk webs and there’s a corpse in the yard. Kureha runs off, leaving Utsuki to fend for herself. As she explores the mansion, which is crawling with walking corpses and ghostly happenings, she meets Sakuya, the last surviving apprentice of Dōman, as well some of the surviving members of the massacre, a mysterious pair of twins, and Dōman himself, who is acting strangely…

As survival horror games go, it’s pretty spooky. The manor is crawling with ghouls and ghosts and other beasties, some of which are pretty horrifying in their own right (the centipede lady, for instance.) You’re not totally defenseless; Utsuki carries a knife, Sakuya wields a fan, and the surprise third character, a gender-flipped Abe-no-Seimei (another, even more famous onmyōji historically seen as Dōman’s arch-enemy) wields a naginata to fuck up some ghouls with. In addition, you have access to a number of spells, your “ammunition” for which comes in the form of magic cards. You can throw fireballs, summon beasts (Sakuya’s first appearance involves her siccing a wolf covered in ofuda on a ghoul — amusingly enough he’s not summonable while playing as her) or wrap your enemies in silk. Casting a spell burns up the card, but there’s plenty laying around for you to find.

Like most any survival horror game of the era, Kuon (whose title translates into "Nine Evils" or "Eternity") is a game that drips with atmosphere, from the unsettling taiko-accented music to the pitch black world beyond the light of your candle or lantern. Documents laying around reveal a disturbing story of rituals, a mulberry tree with a sinister legend around it, and the slow degeneration into cannibal ghouls of those under the curse that has struck the manor. While the game is nowhere near as good looking as, say, Silent Hill 3, it’s still pretty alright, though the lack of facial movements as characters speak hints to FromSoftware’s budget woes at this point in the company’s history, not having made themselves superstars yet.

Kuon is a decent game in its own right; I wouldn’t consider it too hard, or too jank. It’s spooky and fun. But it’s also unashamedly old-school, absolutely the product of the golden age of survival horror at a time when the genre was in transition, with the likes of Resident Evil 4 signalling a move away from the clunky controls and slow pace set by Alone in the Dark. It didn’t do well in the press when it was new, and even now, the more throwaway literature on it in the modern gaming press seems to base its assessment entirely on the negative reviews of old. GameRant, in a listicle about the rarest PlayStation 2 games, calls Kuon “a reminder perhaps of a time when From Software could do wrong.” (For the record, I’m still unsure that GameRant is even still written by humans — too many of its articles lately have the distinct whiff of AI.) But I think that’s all horseshit, written by people who couldn’t wrap their heads around resource management or tank controls and got eaten by the first zombie in Resident Evil and gave up. Kuon is a good game, but not enough people seemed to agree, resulting in a rather short print run and a fairly quick descent into the collector’s item zone. For a long time it occupied the top spot at pricecharting.com’s most expensive PlayStation 2 games (that position has since gone to the Press Kit version of God of War) and still goes for $519.99 just for a loose disc — a new copy of it goes for the eye-watering price of $1,264.32 as of this writing.

Thanks to the extreme rarity of this early FromSoftware title, as well as the fact that PlayStation 2 consoles are in an active state of decay, you’re best off just emulating the game. It’s what I did, and I don’t regret it. At the end of the day, situations like Kuon’s demonstrate the need for emulation to preserve video game history; it’s not right that a title that is by no means bad but nevertheless not mindblowing should cost so much just to own. Video games should be for everyone, and emulation is the way to making that happen. Maybe some day FromSoftware will remaster their back catalogue for a new audience, but I doubt it — they’re too busy coming up with reasons not to include a pause button in their soulslikes.

-june❤