Koudelka is a console role-playing game for the PlayStation. It is the first game in the series that would become Shadow Hearts.

Hiroki Kikuta, most known for composing the music to Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu III (also known as Secret of Mana II) while working at Squaresoft, created Sacnoth in 1997 with funding from the video game company SNK. Unhappy with what he considered as the disjointed, juvenile, and stagnant nature of most RPGs, Kikuta had intended to take the genre in a whole new direction. Koudelka was to be his magnum opus, the game that would show the world just how far RPGs could go.

The initial plot of the game centered around 3 investigators coming to Nemeton Monastery in Wales in the year 1899: Koudelka Iasant, a young girl with supernatural powers arrives at the Monastery after receiving troubling visions. She quickly runs into Edward Plunkett, an adventurer, and Father James O'Flaherty, a priest, who are also investigating the Monastery for various reasons. It is likely that Edward Plunkett in the game is modeled after the historical Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany. The monastery was used as a prison in the 1700s, and more recently as the site of dark rituals.

Now you play as the group of three people- Koudelka, Edward and James, as you are drawn further and further into the darkness of Nemeton monasterys old stories and secrets. Now find what lies beyond the hidden doors and all of Nemetons dark history.

Source Wikipedia