Not sure if I can finish this tbh.

If I describe my feelings, this game feels like a artsy and experimental game that tries it's hardest to keep you engaged with it's strange and interesting combat system and mysterious world. Like most of the japanese small budget AA ps2 game to be exact.

It looks beautiful and atmosphere is simply amazing to the point I can say it's just mesmerizing, there is nothing quite like it. Just look at the screenshots, all of them have the quality of a arthouse painting!

Unfortunately it's also quite restrictive with being too linear other than hyrule style hub world and only interaction with the world you have is talking and doing combat.

But that's not the big problem. The big problem is how it structured and it's combat.

This game's combat is about assigning summons to face buttons then using them against to enemies. When I saw this I expected something similar to zelda like puzzles with how every summon have it's own attack and element. Unfortunately that's not the case, you can just spam buttons to get past most of the encounters(at least this is the case for the first half I had played) other than some specific enemy(bosses and mini bosses) types so it's not puzzle combat. If we look at from the action side, summon attacks moveset is hecking limited and also clunky and slow so it's also not a good action combat either. So what is it actually then? It's a button masher, that's what it is.

This wouldn't be a big problem at first glance right? After all as long as mission and world variety entertains you it should be enough right? Normally Yes, But that's where the second problem comes in. This game requires you to play 2 characters that feel similar to each other, to go to the same levels again with slight differences to beat it. Literally. Same. Levels. Again.

I know this game is a budget title but for what damn reason you would choose to mess your pacing with forced replay in your already small budget game I really don't get it.

Unfortunately this repetition managed to beat me tho as of now. Even tho my one side wants me to continue exploring to see how crazy, extraordinary and abstract the world gonna get with progressing (because like I said it's art is almost god level), my other side just gets nausea with the thought of forced replay of every level with a second character. I wish they didn't do that.

Following review will mainly discuss the gameplay
The ps3 SixAxis motion features can potentially be turn off for many but as someone who doesn't mind innovative gameplay styles that potentially elevates the experience, folklore... didn't really land for me when it comes to that but thankfully the game at the very least remain constant when it became to their usage, so at best the motion control elements are service-able

Aside from that the action RPG Gameplay plays out also fine, The gameplay strikes good balance where it isn't too strategic nor too reckless for someone to enjoy while also having a chance to freely experiment with their captured Folks, certain enemies and bosses having a complete resistance towards certain elements can be annoying, specially when it turns your large arsenal of captured Folks into guessing game for which enemy can be damaged and it pauses the action more often than I would have liked, granted the game does provide some hints that gives away specific Folks/bosses weak elements with the region specific books that serve as a vital collectibles via missing pages with some being more deviously hidden than others and the developers were smart enough to allow other Folks with similar element and category to deal damage towards those specific enemies and bosses in many cases just to avoid making the combat too much of an micro-management, so major prop for having the foresight,

Exploration is also lacking considering the mini-map doesn't quite match the normal map at the pause menu, so there's chance you will get lost from the main road or accidently backtrack, While side quests offer some neat background info regarding many of the village's residents, others not so much and are only concerned about padding the game's runtime with awful escort or arena missions just for the exchange of items as rewards,
Finally the chapter/episodic nature wasn't my cup of tea since outside general interactions, gameplay style and some exclusive Folks for either character, largely the experience is 90% identical when it comes to the level design and boss encounters which can be exhausting although for my playthrough, Keats chapters went by faster thanks to my memorization of the level design and bosses, I would strongly suggest switching back in forth when it comes to chapter selections to avoid timeline and story confusion

I definitely sounded bit harsh and I haven't touched on the story or characters, It's because I would prefer if you approach this game as blind as possible for the good mystery not to be pieced by my description, I still think it's enjoyable game with an interesting messages and themes regarding death, guilt and the purpose of life behind it, Ellen and Keats are endearing polar opposites pier, soundtrack and atmosphere are superb!

One idea that has not really been explored in video games are fairies and why this is beyond me. When I saw Folklore debuted at E3 ’05 I was stunned by the beautiful visuals and a charming idea of capturing fairies “ID” and using them to attack. After the game’s release, two years later is received luke warm reviews with most people complaining of the difficulty and repetition, and I have to agree.

Game play wise Folklore takes a step in the right direction, but then trips with flawed execution. You can capture dozens of fairies and store them for later use. Each realm has different types of fairies and they are used not only to fight certain enemies but bosses as well. Some fairies are weak against some and immune to others. You can assign fairies to each face button and execute them as attacks. This is the step in the right direction, but the trip up is the flawed mechanics. Every time you attack with a fairy the character stops and then the animation is played out. This can be very frustrating when fighting fast-moving fairies or bosses. Another flawed element is you don’t know what fairy is good to each other because there is no data letting you know. You have fairies classified under elements, but you don’ t know which can fight which unless you equip and unequip each fairy and this is daunting.


If that sounds bad enough navigating through the levels is extremely hard despite the extreme linearity of the game. Most levels are like mazes that give you no direction on which to go and re-spawning enemies every time you reenter an area is a disaster. Really? Re-spawning enemies? C’mon. You have to fight each area to acquire the IDs to break certain gems or fight bosses. After you have visited an area once you can just run by them all. Another thing that I hate is there is no way to use items. You can collect karma items, but I have no idea what they are used for. Health can only be generated by saving spots or when enemies drop them and this is rare. If you die you have to start all over again from the last save point.

The other useless and annoying element to the game is the MP bar. It regenerates, but there are no special magic attacks so using your only attacks that drain a bar is absurd. After a few hits you have to wait for it to regenerate and this can be very annoying when fighting enemies that have timed down times.


If you want to talk about something that really annoys me? There are 8 chapters in the game and each character has 6, but when you get to chapter 7 you have to play 1-6 with the other character. Playing through an already frustrating game twice to see the ending? Almost not worth it. The game does have a great mystery murder type story that will keep you guessing all the way through, but there are even problems with that. Lots of text readings and hardly any cut scenes. The scenes are pre-rendered CGI which is what next-generation technology is supposed to illuminate. You also get weird comic style panels that you can fast forward and then RPG type avatar conversation screens.


There are positive notes that make the game worth at least renting, and the biggest one is the great use of the Sixaxis motion sensing. This is probably the most use I’ve seen from any PS3 game so far. When you defeat a folklore you will see a red soul come out of it and that is the sign to hit R1 and pull the controller up. Some bigger folklore and bosses have you whacking the soul side to side, pulling up at timed moments, and shaking the controller vigorously.

The game’s best feat is probably its looks with gorgeous landscapes and beautifully designed folklore, but that’s really not enough to keep you playing. Once you get to chapter 7 and realize you have to go through the game again with the other character it makes you decide whether to tread on or give up. If the game wasn’t so frustrating with all of its weird quirky gameplay elements it would be an amazing adventure.

Folklore is an interesting game from the start. From it's setting in England, to the focus on fairies, and the combat system it uses, Folklore is a unique experience, and one that I think most people aren't aware of. It's not so much that this game doesn't have flaws or it plays well, but rather the world building and set up of the world and mystery make it worth the trip. The heavy use of the six axis controls can be very annoying when capturing spirits and a lot of the promise the game has in the beginning falls short mid way through, but it's still none the less charming.
It's a little sad to play this game now as you can tell the game was very ambitious and wanted to help Sony sales early on, but because of this, it's fallen even harder into obscurity due to no trophies, little marketing, and even smaller amount of fans. If you ever happen on this game, give it a try! It's worth a look!

história de mistério pincelada pelo oculto, bem parecido com paranormasight nesse sentido, onde não existe uma linha entre o lógico/real e o espiritual (como vemos em muitas histórias de detetive mais "normais"). o que vem de outro lado permeia os acontecimentos sem nunca ser questionado e é abraçado, claro que a conclusão obvia de uma investigação de assassinato é conversar diretamente com o espírito da vitima, nem que seja para trazer resolução a ela e pessoas próximas.


todas as sensações da experiência humana encontrando um lugarzinho pra ficar em outro plano, seja nosso medo da morte tomando forma ou até uma perspectiva positiva sobre ela. a barulheira que a gente não deve deixar por aí só de pensar nessas coisas deve ser grande demais pro nosso mundo aguentar.

text by tim rogers

★★☆☆

“DESTINED FOR THE BARGAIN BIN IN SIX MONTHS' TIME”

I really, really wanted to love this game. I wanted to champion it as my own, a game I could love and not have to compete with anyone for that love — a game like cavia’s Ghost in the Shell or Drag-on Dragoon 2. It has all the hallmarks I look for — forget playability or graphics or what have you, I want names, and this game had them: Yoshiki “Street Fighter II” Okamoto, Kozy “Shin Megami Tensei” Okada, and even Hirohiko “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” Araki.

Well, that last name is kind of a long story — Araki actually had nothing to do with the creation of the game. Why is his name on the box, then? I have no idea. It’s there, though. It’s even better than being on the box — it’s on a sticker stuck to the shrink-wrap. I have a friend who works in the Japanese videogame box art trade. My friend says a sticker on the box is never a last-minute idea — there are hour-long presentations about meetings about these sorts of things. Quoth Araki, on the sticker (fairy-like, limp-wristed, foppish grammatical lisp added by yours truly), “Might this game have been inspired by my manga’s ‘Stand’ attacks? Oh my, I do believe it might have been!” Araki’s signature is a beauty to behold, scripted like a master calligrapher who’s experimented with either drugs or rock and roll. The sticker shines dully, half gold, half purple, like two colors plucked off a vintage JoJo manga volume cover on which a man poses like a wall-painting in an Egyptian tomb, dodging intercontinental ballistic missiles. I see it, and recall my youth, dangling beneath weapons of mass destruction with a machinegun in my beefy arms — or maybe that was Contra. Et cetera.

Why was Araki’s name shoehorned onto this game? A hundred reasons, and all of them are bubble-like flashes on one hot pan. The key ingredient is that the developers had no names left. Who the hell knows Yoshiki Okamoto, in this age of Brain Training and games appealing to the casual market? There are those (like me) who revere the man as something of a demigod who enters boardrooms and bathrooms alike with the sound of a bitching, asbestos-shattering overdriven power chord. We recall his faux-hawked visage every time we scream “SHORYUKEN” as we ejaculate beneath our girlfriends. Likewise, every time I see a hopped-up family restaurant waitress with razor cuts running down her arms, I think of Kozy Okada’s games, and how they most certainly didn’t make her that way. Two men — one capable of bringing the action, the other capable of bringing the atmosphere. There’s no way a collaboration could go wrong. And it didn’t, kind of. It just didn’t go right.

Originally, this game was planned as Monster Kingdom: Unknown Realms. This was to semantically link it to Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner, a beyond-sweet PSP monster-catching game with brooding teenagers as the main character (think Pokemon for pop-punk-rockers); though seeing as Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner was kind of a flop, they figured they could rename the pseudo-sequel whatever they wanted and not stuff off too many cosplayers. Besides, what better way to differentiate Monster Kingdom: Unknown Realms from Monster Hunter, Monster Rancher, and Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom?

What had started as something of a friendly bet between Okada and Okamoto, two rivals with different dreams, two men whose names both begin with the name kanji, two men who had both fled the companies they had helped put on the map, has now graduated into a matter of life and death. This was supposed to be Okamoto’s game; well, now it’s both of theirs. Okamoto had his chance to regain his former splendor with Genji on the PlayStation 2; likewise, Okada had had Monster Kingdom on the PSP. These two runaway game designers must have figured that, by now, they’d be back on top, and ready to release hot, original creations. Monster Kingdom: Unknown Realms was to be the first such creation for Okamoto.

I looked forward to it with turgid excitement. After all, Monster Kingdom on PSP had had an excellent soundtrack, filled with contributions from the almighty Yasunori Mitsuda, the saintly Hitoshi Sakimoto, the lordlike Kenji Eno, and the occasionally amusing Yoko Shimomura, among other people with Japanese names. The resulting soundtrack was amazing; the two or three tracks submitted by each composer highlighted all the best aspects of their respective composing styles. To hear Mr. Okada explain it, he’d selected multiple composers because that would be the best way to ensure maximum quality. He picked them all to do tracks that he personally felt they would excel at. Yasunori Mitsuda got the opening movie, for example. I liked the way Okada described it. It made me interested in his little Monster Kingdom project. It seemed like a series of gamers’ games. The PSP outing was, already, something like Pokemon to be played by kids who might have already started smoking.

Monster Kingdom: Unknown Realms ended up retitled Folkssoul, which is probably the worst name a videogame has ever had (the English title will be Folklore, which is better, if super-bland), though all the fancy word combinations in the world can’t hide the fact that it’s just another action game.

There were hopes that it’d be something of the Romancing SaGa of action games. These hopes were mostly mine. I fantasized semi-sexually about the game for something like six months. I’d played it at Tokyo Game Show, where, at Sony’s booth, the demo stations were equipped with the same television that I have at home, and I thought, hey, this game isn’t bad . . . maybe! Well! It’s definitely not terrible! It had some smooth crunch to it. A quick glance at a brochure and I knew enough to make me want this game, hard: you play as Keats, a long-coat-wearing, bespectacled, long-haired, stubble-faced columnist for a “third-rate occult magazine” (yes!) called “Unknown Realms“. (Or as a mostly bland girl named Elena, a proverbial Pokemon trainer out to catch her own dead mother.) One day, as research for a story, you go to the town of Lemrick, Ireland, where it’s rumored that average people can be reunited with the souls of their dead loved ones. Following a few spooky events, you’re allowed entrance into the Netherworld, home of over a hundred collectible monsters.

As you fight and defeat monsters, you can choose to suck their soul out of their bodies. When you do this, you can then use the monster to fight other monsters. “Just like Pokemon!” you might say. And you’d be half-wrong. Because Folkssoul is an action game. Press the L2 button to open a quick menu that displays all your monsters. You can sort them by category (defensive, magical, blunt, slashing, smashing, et cetera) or by which region of the world you found them in. Highlight a monster and press one of the four face buttons to set that monster to that button. Now, press the L2 button again to resume the game. If you’ve set a little slashing goblin to the square button, pressing the square button will result in your main character slashing with his arm, while a lifelike (hologram-like?) shadow of the slashing goblin appears a few inches in front of his body. Different monsters have different attack speeds and ranges, and some monsters have attacks that lead directly into other monsters’ attacks, which means that, yes, you can build your own multi-tiered combos. FIght enough with a monster to level it the hell up, resulting in increased strength, more combo hits, et cetera.

So yeah, this game sounds like plenty of fun for the RPG crowd and the spastic, frame-counting Devil May Cry meatheads alike, yeah? Well, kind of “yes”, kind of “no”. Folkssoul‘s ultimate problem is that it doesn’t contain enough of either of its genres for any of its influences to feel worthwhile. As an RPG, the customization is thin and weird — the only way to level up your monsters is to continue sucking the soul of that monster type. This makes sense, I guess, as long as you don’t think of this game as wanting to be exactly like Pokemon and not succeeding. I suppose the game designers didn’t want the player thinking, “Oh, I already have this monster; I can just avoid them, then, and continue through the stage.” Besides, when you already have a Geodude, it’s awesome to use your Squirtle to take down Geodudes in one hit, right?

Except, as an action game, this kind of doesn’t work. Action game players don’t want to be able to equip one weapon that can kill a certain type of enemy in one hit. They don’t want to reconfigure all four of their attacks every time the fight music starts up. They don’t want to even have the option to decimate a certain type of enemy with a certain type of attack, because this will only make them, as super players with super skills, need to use the correct attacks, or else feel inefficient. Forcing the player to be correct or incorrect about what button he uses to kill the bad guys is to shed an eerie, existentially damning light on videogames as a medium: in videogames, you’re either killing an enemy with as few hits as possible, or as many hits as possible. In other words, you’re either getting the enemy out of your sight, or you’re keeping the enemy in your sight for long enough to be considered stylish. Isn’t it pointless, either way? Think about it in this way, and games that focus on enemies who take a “modest” number of hits to kill seem like they might be covering something up.

Oh, well.

And then there’s the blue-balling. If you’ve played Devil May Cry 3, you may remember the experience of entering the tower stage for the first time. After some bitching-awesome battles, you’re forced to wander around aimlessly looking for some key that’ll open a door. Man, what a blue-baller! I got pretty mad at that part, let me tell you. Well, Folkssoul, halfway frightened at a different half of its audience at any given time, has shoehorned a sometimes-infuriating blue-balling structure into each stage, to draw them out to the maximum length. I wouldn’t have a problem with this — I like fighting! I like pressing buttons! I don’t mind backtracking through a stage if it means I get to do more fighting and/or pressing buttons! — so long as the game has a good, quick explanation for why I’m doing what I’m doing.

The game’s explanation, then, is kind of &^#$#ed. In each stage, you’re given a picture book. You have to find the five pages of the picture book. They’re scattered across the stage, usually contained inside — of course — hovering magic stones. As you find the pages, you can read the picture book from your item menu. Each page shows a different monster from the area, as well as a semi-abstract representation of one of the attacks that the boss is going to use. Once all five pages are assembled, you’ll have a step-by-step representation of which monsters you’ll have to use to beat the boss.

If that sounds kind of cool to you, that’s probably only because I’m not done explaining it: you need the picture book, or you can’t fight the boss. Without the picture book, you are not allowed near the boss. And not even by some citizen of the fantasy world, who deems it too difficult — no, there’s no one standing there with arms akimbo, shaking his head, telling you its impossible. There’s usually some barrier. In the first stage, it’s glowing thorns, for example. You can run your character against the thorns, watch him sprinting in place a bit. No dialogue window pops up and says “Get the picture book pages”, probably because the level designers feared that would expose how stupid it is that possessing a book would make magic thorns cease to exist.

If it doesn’t sound terrible yet, that’s probably only because I’m not done explaining it: in order to get all of the pages for the picture book, you need to run back and forth through the stage, searching for the floating magic stones that you can’t destroy with your basic attacks. When you can’t destroy a magic stone with all your current attacks, that means you need a new attack, which means you have to defeat and capture a different kind of monster in order to destroy that stone. Sometimes you’ll poke yourself into an unexplored corner of the map, and see a monster you don’t have yet, only you won’t be able to get to him, because of — yep — a floating row of magic stones of a color you can’t destroy yet. So, being hypothetical, let’s say that you find a yellow magic stone you can’t destroy, and then you see a row of red indestructible magic stones, behind which you can see a monster you don’t own yet. Eventually, you find a monster you haven’t soul-sucked yet; you suck his soul, and try using it against the yellow magic stone. That doesn’t work, so you use it against the red stones blocking the other new monster — it works! You soul-suck the new monster, and use his power to successfully break the yellow stone, and score a picture book page that shows the monster you used to destroy the yellow stone, dodging, say, a flame attack.

It’s kind of ridiculous. Then again, what videogame isn’t? That’s not the question — for all its scattered, hackneyed moments, Devil May Cry 3 manages to remain tightly focused on action. That you’re able to pause the game and change your weapon in Devil May Cry 3 is a fact, not a strategy. At the end of the day, Devil May Cry 3‘s designers chose to make a hardcore action game with multi-layered boss fights and a twitch-tastic parry system. They did this because they had confidence in the essence of their game’s action. Folkssoul‘s producers were obviously just overcompensating, and repeatedly, for what they perceived as a deficit in either of the contributing genres. The story is pretty stuffty in Folkssoul, though they force you to play through these sometimes hour-long actionless segments because they’re convinced that someone out there has to be enjoying it. There you are, wandering around the town, talking to residents, finding photographs in people’s houses, chatting with the bartender, combing the sand on the beach. And for what? So that you can open the portal to the next stage, with more picture book pages, more collectible monsters, more floating magic stones.

Maybe it could have worked as a straight action game. It already has one of those early-1990s Japanese arcade-game plots, and an aesthetic stolen from all the best pop-culture — part Tim Burton (the battle music is very Danny Elfman-inspired), part vintage “Doctor Who” (why else is there an old blue phone box in town square?), part JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (an invisible dandy-man wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask serves as your guide through the Nether-realms) — it could have worked, if only the designers were able to come up with better excuses for why the characters are fighting so much. Or maybe if they’d added some Zelda-like ingenuity or flow to the stages. Or some bosses that you beat by learning their patterns and then improvising grandly, instead of bosses that you beat by tinkering around with your monster menu.

Perhaps the most telling trait of Folkssoul is that, if summarized, on paper, in the fewest of words, it doesn’t seem like a bad game at all. Even the motion sensor controls — yank the controller to pull the souls out of monsters; yank hard for stronger monsters; yank harder, with the correct rhythm, for even stronger monsters — sound like they deserve to exist. Yet there’s a weird, gloppy sheen all over this game’s design document. It screams of the Nintendo Gamecube era, where Nintendo was forcing developers to utilize Gameboy Advance connectivity in some way, any way, and we ended up with mostly-useless remote controlled bombs in Splinter Cell or some stuff.

There are plenty of other things I could pick on — like how every time your character gets hit by an enemy, it cancels your camera lock-on with that enemy (very frustrating), or how moronic it is that every time you press the R1 button to begin sucking an enemy’s soul, a big, ugly dialogue pops up on the bottom of the screen: “PRESS THE R3 BUTTON NOW FOR A TUTORIAL!!” I mean, seriously, I think the casual gamers walked away when they saw “FROM YOSHIKI OKAMOTO AND KOZY OKADA” in huge font on the back of the box.

Instead, I’ll try to be nice about the game: I like the voices. They’re pretty bad, yeah, though they transcend typical videogame bad voices by being 1.) Entirely in English, 2.) Entirely in Irish-accented English. And we’re not just talking any Irish accent — it’s like, alien Irish. I’ve been waiting this whole review to put “Aliens from the planet Ireland” into a sentence where it would fit, and I just couldn’t quite get it.

Another plus is the way the screen freezes for the tiniest instant every time your score a hit. The effect is most awesome when you use a multiple-hit attack, like the one big rolling armadillo attack. The screen pauses so you can savor the sparks of impact, and it gets to feeling kind of groovy. I guess that’s the best developers can do, when the controller doesn’t vibrate.

And lastly, the colors: this game’s colors worked overtime to earn 1.79 of the two stars this game was finally awarded. Since the Super Famicom era we’ve been hearing about how many colors a game system can display. (The Super Famicom reported could display any of 32,768 colors, though never all at the same time.) It’s only now that the promises of our childhoods are coming true. This game shines, blooms, radiates, et cetera. This entire game is made up of that one scene in Dragon Quest VIII with the purple carpets, that scene you could show anyone and have them say “Wow, that looks great.” And it has a hell of an amazing box art, as well. If only such things sufficed for a solid game, for well-executed atmosphere.

I liked Game Republic’s first game, Genji, for PS2. I would have liked it more were it not for the abundance of health-recovery items, and the option to use those items at any time in the game. The presence of these items threw off the balance of boss battles, ruining what could have been a snappy, arcade-like experience. Furthermore, the existence of a twitch-fueled one-hit-kill system, while rewarding for pro-level players, was essentially useless for the casuals the game was catering to with all those healing items. Game Republic had chosen the story of Japanese folk hero Yostuffsune because they thought it would get them big recognition, fast, though they also seemingly went out of their way to bastardize the story as postmodernly as possible — the princess, for example, is kidnapped because of her ability to fuse priceless magical gems. I saw Genji as a confused effort, and generously thought that, in the future, Game Republic could go places, if only they kept all of their testicles in the right place, and made games for a specific audience. If they would just think, “What would Devil May Cry do?” they could make a game that earns the respect of the players. Their PSP RPG Brave Story is a focused, deliberate masterpiece. Their third game, Folkssoul (they did not “make” Every Party for Xbox 360, or Genji 2 for PlayStation 3 so much as they rented out their name), is their second effort on a home console, and in it, the stains of their first game seem to have seeped deeper. It’s trying to please everyone at the same time, and you know what they say about pleasing everyone at the same time: you can’t do it. It’s not possible.

Game Republic: get your act together. This game right here will be sitting in the bargain bins in three to six months’ time, and in ten years, I expect to see it on used shelves for five dollars, and I expect to shudder and remember those days early in the PS3’s life, when we would have bought anything. Whether or not I come to regard those days as having ended or not — I suppose that’s all in your hands. For now, though, consider yourselves on academic probation.

super unique action rpg for ps3 basically you capture monsters and then you can map those monsters to face buttons and that determines your characters attacks and the world design and the story are super enteresting but it does have some downsides that stop me from loving this game like motion controls some people say these are the best motion controls on a ps3 game and I could even agree but to steal a game facts comment "that's like saying what's your favorite type of hernia" also having to pretty much play 2 thirds of the games twice to get the full story is just a gimmick I never been a fan of no matter who does it... I am looking at you Yoko Taro

Came into this expecting a mid game with immaculate vibes and that's exactly what I got.

The visuals here are peak PS3 in both an artistic and technical sense. The environmental design is on point with each area in both the real and faery world being an absolute treat to look at. The whole folktale aesthetic they have going is super interesting and they do it great justice. It's one of those games that makes me say "man, PS3 graphics really are all that we need". The game is certainly a feast for the eyes and really hard carry the game.

Unfortunately those vibes are coupled with some real snoozepilled game design choices. Firstly, the game has the DMC4 problem where you gotta go through pretty much all the areas and fight all the bosses twice to kind of pad the game out, and unlike DMC where the stylish combat can kinda mitigate that blatant padding, this games combat isn't nearly as interesting. The combat boils down to essentially collecting the various enemies in the game to use as different attacks for each face button. Each attack has its own elemental attribute and effectiveness so it's all about making a good loadout to suit your playstyle. It's a neat concept that could give a lot of customization and user flexibility with the combat, but I found in my playthrough that it's extremely hard to chain together different attacks on different buttons in a satisfying manner. I played basically as if each button was its own distinct attack for its own distinct scenario rather than having them all be tools for one big combo playstyle. Each attack can also be levelled up by grinding, but like man this game is already padded out as is I wasn't in any mood to do that kind of thing. Lastly, absorbing characters is done by doing goofy sixaxis gyro nonsense, and while I am a huge advocate for that kinda nonsense, it does make encounters with multiple enemies a disaster because you are almost guaranteed to get hit by another enemy while you are shaking the controller like a mfer trying to fill a gauge as fast as you can. The combat just wasn't doin it for me, which combined with the whole two playthrough shenanigans meant the game felt like a drag to play. Maybe there are cool combos you can do with chaining guys effectively though and its just a skill/knowledge issue on my part though.

The plot is interesting though, it's a pretty simple and kinda predictable lil mystery case, though the last 2 chapters definitely lost me a little bit in terms of what was going on and what actually meant what. The characters were certainly fun to see interact with one another, shoutouts to the absolute chad legend that is Keats. Every cutscene that mfer is doing some kinda jojo pose, he has all the charisma in the world inside of him.

overall, yeah. I'm glad that I finally got around to playing this after seeing it pop up on my radar a few years back. If you are like me and enjoy vibes in games this is absolutely worth taking a look at, but the gameplay and length doesn't really do this much favors in my book. Even though it wasn't the most mindblowing I do wish sony would give this a bit more love. I don't even think this game was referenced in playstation all stars battle royale and that game was in the same generation as this. It also seems like a hefty amount of passion and budget went into this as well so it's a waste for sony to drop it like a rock so quickly. The game's not even available on the hellspace that is the PS3 PSN store and it's also not on the PS now streaming platform, and this game definitely deserves better than that. It may be mid, but it's charmingly mid, and that is absolutely my kind of video game.

No me ha gustado, me ha parecido muy meh, y que te lo suelten básicamente todo al final no ayuda; hasta que no llegas al capítulo 5-6, el juego no tiene sustancia y lo que entretiene, si acaso, son los combates, aunque llegada precisamente la recta final del juego, los combates se hacen pesados, con enemigos más fuertes así de repente, costando mucho enfrentarte a varios a la vez, y encima te hacen enfrentarte a ellos de nuevo si te matan porque el juego te saca desde el punto de guardado y ya. La idea como tal planteada no me ha parecido mala, pero le ha faltado desarrollo y mucha sustancia al argumento. Y luego, aparte, llegados al capítulo final, pareciera que se olvidaron de corregir los textos, porque están fatal: sin tildes y sin los signos de interrogación y exclamación bien colocados.
Del doblaje no voy a hablar porque, en general, no me gustan demasiado los doblajes de los juegos y anime. En conclusión: se me ha hecho muy pesado y desesperante. Siento alivio al haber terminado este juego.

Almost gave it a 3.

It has a weird story, with horrific pacing and ends up not living up to the initial impressions.

The gameplay was incredibly fun at first, but became a horrid chore once they started to add shitty SixAxis bullshit that you had to do.

A beautiful, if flawed, fairytale adventure.

Folklore starts off with two characters, both visiting a mysterious town known as Doolin for different reasons. Doolin is supposed to be a town linked with the realm of the dead and before long after Ellen and Keats arrive people start dying and the tragic events of 17 years ago start once again bubbling to the surface.

Folklore is simply a game I wanted to love. I tried so hard because of it's interesting premise and beautiful designs, yet in the end Folklore while still a good title holds itself back with some strange gameplay design choices that simply baffle me.

Lets however start with the positives. Folklore looks fantastic. While there are some nice particle and lighting effects as well as good textures what really sets Folklore apart from other titles is the brilliant and often varied enemy designs as well as the different spirit realms that Ellen and Keats visit as the story progresses. They vary from war torn fantasy worlds full of machine gun carrying goblins to ancient underwater palaces full of fish that fire missiles from racks in their jaws. Folklore is a game that certainly isn't lacking in imagination.

The audio to Folklore is also of fairly high caliber, at least in the music department. Each realm has it's own music going which were all perfectly fitting and stood out well from each other. I wish though there was more voice acting through, as the parts where there there is any are pretty decent. There just isn't much excuse not to have fully voiced RPG / adventure games anymore.

Visual and audio aesthetics aside however and the core to any game is of course the gameplay which is where Folklore however has issues that stop it from being quite the masterpiece it could have been. As Ellen & Keats travel from world to world they bump into various Folk who aren't all to happy about them being there. These creatures are your characters weapons, at least their souls are. When damaged enough, their soul pops out of their body long enough to latch onto it and using the sixaxis pull them from the Folks body. Adding to Keats and Ellen's armament. Each Folk is different and only certain attacks on many will bring out their soul and in turn each soul you have does a different attack so the more Folk you have, the easier it is to gain others.

Each Folk soul can be upgraded to use less magic power, to increase number of consecutive uses or increase attack strength. Though the requirements for each Folk is different as well as the outcome, some want nuts or dust gained from beating Folk, others perhaps just have a personal vendetta and will get stronger when used to beat another specific Folk. All this can be checked in the menu screen as well as your characters level, map and book pages that give hints on how to beat certain Folk including bosses for the realm that you are in.

The combat system itself is pretty fun and there is as already mentioned a great diversity of Folk to choose from including defensive, long ranged and elemental. The problem with the game however is simple really. It must be played through essentially twice. That's right, to complete the game the first 5 realms must be played through with both Ellen & Keats individually. Oh sure there are minute changes like a few different Folk but other then that they are near identical and I found it soul crushing to finish due to this. Each characters Folk pools are linked just to them which means to catch and level up folk for each character becomes a chore due to having to do it twice. I hated it to the point it took me over a year to complete it.

The story for Folklore also isn't very engaging. It goes off on a convoluted mystery path that simply couldn't hold my attention and by the end I had really stopped caring and just wanted it to finish. The ending itself leaves a lot open to interpretation so if you like your story lines like that Folklore is perfect for you.

Folklore is actually a reasonably short game coming in at maybe 20 hours though if you try and capture each Folk, and level them up it has quite a bit of added wind to it. There are also some DLC packs available that give some added missions to the pub giving access to some items and even an added Folk or two though they are all played in realms you have already seen so don't really add very much to the experience. (Folklore was released before trophies came in and never received a patch either)

Overall Folklore is a solid game that unfortunately holds itself back in making the story progression on both characters so repetitive. If each character had their own unique realms to go through it could have been something really special for the imagination shown, yet in the end gets brought down. Despite this though I would recommend it to any RPG / adventure fan just for being quite a bit different from a lot of titles out there.

+ Some amazing creature and level designs.
+ Great visuals.
+ Excellent music.

- Having to play through each realm with each character is terribly repetitive.
- Storyline is a bit dull.
- Surprising lack of voice acting.