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.
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.