This really has been the fortnight from hell - but in a good way! Slaughtering hordes of vicious dinosaurs on a massive space station in Dino Crisis 3 (part of our ongoing project at AceGamez to revisit older titles we've missed in the past), putting troubled spirits to rest on the mysterious moonbase of Echo Night: Beyond, battling legions of demonic Genma of all shapes and sizes in Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, and now fending off the twisted zombies and demons of ancient Japan in Kuon. There's no doubt about it, life as a reviewer can be a real fight for survival!

Something strange is going on at a nearby manor and local exorcist Doman Ashiya sets out to investigate, summoning a group of his followers, including young Sakuya. Doman's daughters, Utsuki and Kureha, follow on a little later, arriving at a scene of true horror. The manor is in disarray, with damaged walls, blood splattered everywhere and corpses scattered around, killed in a variety of gory ways. Taking on the roles of both Utsuki and Sakuya, the two female leads, it's up to you to work your way around the manor and get to the root of this infestation of evil, while fending off the many creatures that lie in wait.

The story behind Kuon might be based on Japanese folklore from the Heian period (8th to 12th Century), but it's not exactly easy to follow - in fact, as various cut scenes unfold, it's hard to understand what the hell is going on for most of the game. I don't want to delve too much into it, and there are some good twists to the tale, but it can be quite confusing - especially when something very unexpected happens to Utsuki that turns the whole thing on its head, once you grasp what's actually taken place!

The gameplay is best described as survival horror lite, because while it has all the elements of a Resident Evil style game, the combat options are quite limited and two-dimensional in their implementation. As you explore around the manor and the various areas beyond it, you will find a variety of spell cards, which you equip into two available slots. The first problem is that these slots are shared with your one combat option, which is repeatedly hitting a button to slash oncoming attackers. This means that if you have two spell types equipped, you can't use your melee weapon and go through your spell cards very quickly (which come in limited supply). So, you end up using just one card at a time, which means frequently having to go through the cumbersome menu screen to equip a different card, use it once or twice, then back again to equip a different one. This is a real pain and really breaks up the flow of the combat, which is far too basic as it is.

The second problem is that there doesn't appear to be a way to lock onto enemies, so some of your spells, like the standard fireballs, fly straight past your attackers. Fortunately, some spells, like the powerful ice and flame attacks, home in, while the various creatures you can summon (spiders, wolves, shambling puppet women and more) act autonomously and do a good job of attacking your foes, until they're out of energy and expire. Other spells, like a field that weakens enemies or traps that suck them into the ground or freeze them on the spot, vanish unless you lure your enemies in quickly, making them a bit of a pain to use too.

The third problem is that the enemies are usually quite fast and your character is slow to react when casting spells or swinging their weapon, so half the time you're grappling with the enemy and pushing them away, or they're getting sly hits in, while you wait for your on-screen character to carry out their attacks. The combination of these factors makes the combat tiresome, but they don't ruin the game completely and you do adapt to this strange system after a while. And because the combat isn't too complex, the usage of the standard Resi movie-style camera angles, where each room is viewed from multiple static and moving set angles, doesn't confuse or annoy here, and actually manages to add to the atmosphere of the game, rather than mess up the gameplay.

Graphically, while nothing stunning, Kuon does have a distinctive style that's almost like traditional Japanese art come to life, which creates a very tangible atmosphere to the game. The dark manor grounds, complete with swirling mist and flickering lanterns, really is quite sinister, while inside the manor the ramshackle furniture and copious amounts of blood on the walls, doors and floors, really makes it look like a massacre has taken place - which it has! There are gruesome trails of blood smeared all the way along corridors and some walls are literally coated in the stuff! In one room, in the underground tunnels beneath the manor, you'll find a room of dismembered corpses hanging from the ceiling, at the small shrine there are bodies impaled upon spikes, and on it goes. The scenery changes quite well and the attention to detail of the decoration is very good, with each area feeling different and distinctive.

The enemies themselves start off as consisting of mainly Gakis, gruesome purple-skinned Gollum-esque creatures that lurch towards you with an inhuman screech and skitter around in the background feeding on the flesh of their dead victims, accompanied by gruesome squelching sound effects. As you progress, you come across spirits, possessed corpses that move in an unnatural manner, sometimes reminiscent of Japanese films like The Grudge and The Ring, and horrifically mutated things that are barely recognisable as once being people. Nasty! There are a few boss encounters too, although because the combat system is so lame they usually degenerate into staying as far away from the boss as possible while throwing all your most powerful spells at it until it dies. Still, this array of enemies makes a good change from your standard demons and zombies, as these things are pretty unpleasant and fit in perfectly with the creepy theme of Kuon. Speaking of which, the twin children that pop up periodically, singing eerily and taunting you with cryptic and threatening remarks, are two of the most chilling characters ever to grace a game. Accompanying the interesting visuals are some good sound effects, particularly the squelching noises, and plenty of spooky music that enhances the tense atmosphere even further. It's a shame, then, that the voice acting is crap and that no-one's lips move at all in the cut scenes - I'd rather have bad lip synch than nothing at all!

The gameplay consists of the standard blend of combat, exploration and puzzle solving, as you gain hold of various artefacts and use them to open up new areas. Instead of keys, doors have been sealed with the signs of the nine planets, and you must find blood-stained cloths of different types to remove the seals and open the doors. You do get health boosts that you can use at any time, but a nice touch is the usage of meditation to calm your nerves and heal your wounds - naturally this can only be done when there are no enemies around, so it's nice to have the health boosts as a back up. You also get disorientated when weakened or frightened, and the screen spins and blurs with a very cool effect; again, healing with either method puts things straight.

Coming onto the subject of level design, I don't do this very often, but I feel the need to get on my gaming soap box. [Stands on his soap box so he's taller than everyone except for most basketball players]. Right, I have a question for all you developers out there. Just what is it that makes an able bodied individual unable to move a pile of crates out of the way? Why can't our super powered hero climb that waist-high wall? Why can't they just squeeze through that gap in the wall? More and more these days, level designs that block off your route with stupid, frail bits of furniture that even a weak old lady could push aside, forcing you to find an alternative route, drive me mad. It just completely ruins the realism of the game. Now, while many games (particularly in this genre) are guilty of this crime of laziness, Kuon virtually makes an art form out of it. In the manor grounds, you can't step over the stone borders of the paths and walk across the grass! Boxes no higher than your ankle block your route into an area that is on the other side of a door that was sealed to contain a lethal demon! Partitions have been placed up that have gaps wide enough for you to easily squeeze through, yet you can't. It's just stupid! Why, developers, why? I have a vision of gaming's future, a vision where you'll be able to push aside all but the heaviest crates, climb all but the highest walls, kick down all but the strongest doors and squeeze through all but the smallest gaps. That future is coming. But it sure as Kuon isn't here yet! [Gets down from soap box]. Right, sorry about that. On with the review!

The puzzles presented here don't exactly tax the brain, as you're given only a few items to work with and it's pretty damn obvious where they go. The map screen is extremely helpful, marking key locations clearly so you don't have to remember where that shrine is that you need to get to once you have the relevant artefacts. The one exception is an incredibly fiendish slide tile puzzle, which will have you stumped for ages - I must have spent twenty minutes working my way through that one and I cheered when I finally got all twelve tiles in their correct locations, which I admit was something of a fluke! When I realised I had to do the whole thing all over again, however, I was gutted.

You see, the game is split into three phases, starting with the Yin phase of Utsuki and the Yang phase of Sakuya. Unfortunately, rather than these being two different parts of the tale, they're contradictory, in the sense that you go through pretty much exactly the same tasks with Sakuya as you do with Utsuki. There are a few differences and some nice touches - like the way Sakuya falls through floorboards and makes a hole that blocked Utsuki's way, or the dead Gaki that Utsuki comes across, which we later discover Sakuya killed, but all these are lost by the fact that you must retread the same maps, open the same doors, find the same artefacts and solve the same puzzles with both characters. It's a cheap way of prolonging the lifespan of the game and frankly disappointing, as a lot of the tension is removed the second time around, because you pretty much know what's coming, and boredom sets in. Once you've completed both phases, the story continues with a third character, drawing things onwards towards the dramatic conclusion of the tale.

As to the atmosphere, Kuon does well in getting plenty of scares - play it in the dark and you will jump a lot, as well as being freaked out by some of the nastier cut scenes and demons. On occasion you can peak through a hole in the wall, and the first time this happens you're peering into a room where one of the few human survivors is listening at the door, unaware that an assailant is slinking in through a gap in the wall behind her - and there's nothing you can do to warn her! You look away from the hole, then when you look back in, the assailant is right there and it really makes you jump! Plenty of times corpses fall down at unexpected times, or the screen goes dark and music chords play in an instant, as ghosts or demons appear - it really keeps you on edge, because you never quite know when it's going to happen. You get penalised if it happens while running though, which is a bummer, as this encourages you to walk around at a slow pace. You're fairly safe while backtracking though, so at least you can run then!

Kuon doesn't do much to further the survival horror genre, but it's a reasonable effort and has quite a distinctive feel that I've not really come across in a game like this before. The ancient Japan setting fits the genre perfectly and the crisp, atmospheric visuals, gruesome enemies and authentic music provide a great backdrop for the simplistic, mildly satisfying gameplay. The story is indecipherable at times, but it unfolds very well, holds plenty of twists in store, and should keep your interest to the end. I say this almost every time when reviewing within this genre, but as per usual, Kuon is a game that will only really appeal to fans of survival horror.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).