It’s hard to remember that there was a time for From Software before Demon’s Souls and all that followed. The studio’s output over the last decade has dwarfed everything in the decade before it, and it’s not hard to see why. Each of its recent games have been genre defining behemoths many wouldn’t hesitate to call masterpieces. Whole genres live in the shadow of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, reshaped in their image.
It does blind us to the gems the studio crafted before their cultural juggernaut came along though. While many are clamouring for From Software to revive its mech combat series Armoured Core, I’m pining for the team to bring back a criminally overlooked and largely forgotten horror game for the Playstation 2: Kuon.
Which is fitting since Kuon is a game all about resurrection. The terrible curse that has befallen Fujiwara Manor, during the Heian era of Japan (about a thousand years ago), centres around an attempt to revive the dead through nine cycles where, in each one, the undead must merge with increasingly larger hosts to stay alive. Like the approach to immortality taken in From Software’s more recent games, this process is horrific. An affront to nature itself that decays the world around it. A disease that stems from the rich and powerful and works its way down. The servants, we learn, were among the last to be effected.
Players explore the manor in multiple roles, with two campaigns and a third unlocked after their completion. Their overlapping stories interweave in a manner not unlike Resident Evil 2’s lauded campaigns. You start as Utsuki, a young woman trying to find her father on behalf of her sickly sister. Her father is an onmyōji, which the English translation simplifies as an exorcist. They are somewhat akin to an exorcist in this game but the reduction does obscure their real-world history as astrologers, diviners, calendars, and more, all practices present throughout Kuon in addition to occult spells. Their practice stemmed from the Yin and Yang Five Phases philosophy, and allowed them to serve as advisors throughout Japanese history. As jobs go, it was pretty cushy for the time. The philosophy aims to define all phenomena as according to five elements/seasons, which encompass the year’s cycle, corresponding to Yin and Yang. In the game this philosophy governs the natural order and the dark ritual at the heart of the story offers additional phases, disrupting the balance in attempt to extend life itself. The two campaigns are defined in the game as the Yin and Yang phases, with each narratively embodying dual natures and phases of the philosophy. Birth/death, growth/decay, masculine/feminine. All things in balance. A third, unlockable campaign, the titular Kuon phase, which roughly means eternity, reveals all and concludes the ritual and story.