Folklore

"A Faery tale of a time"

Folklore is a new Action-RPG game series developed first-party by Sony. The game tells of the mysterious journey of the two main characters, Ellen and Keats, and how their investigations into the mystical town of Doolin intertwine. As the story unfolds, you find out that Ellen's involvement with the past happenings in the town go way beyond not only what we were led to believe, but also beyond the realms of reality into the Faery realms of the Netherworld.

Graphics
The first party devs for the PS3 are starting to figure out ways around the difficulties of programming for the platform, and Folklore is a good example of their success. The graphics are very artistic, with beautiful lighting effects and detail. Because much of the game revolves around a mystical realm, the colors are extremely vibrant and fairy tale like, particularly in the game's first chapter. Animation is incredibly smooth, and there's very little in the way of framerate hiccups to be found.


Sound/Music
Each game that I review, I try and think of which of the game's main strengths is what I feel is the aspect that pushes a game to the top of my list of favorites. With Folklore, it has to be the music. The soundtrack is wonderfully written, and literally makes you feel as if you're dropped into a Tim Burton movie. The themes of the game have great variety, ranging from a very peaceful and mysterious piano theme for the game's main central town in the real world, to crazy and frenetic orchestral numbers for some of the chaotic creature battles you encounter in the Netherworlds.

The game is only voice acted in the many movie-style cutscenes, and the voice actors do a pretty good job . None of the characters in the game, however, are written over the top and most of them are actually very subdued, which doesn't make many of the performances terribly memorable. Although Folklore's voice actors don't do as good of a job portraying emotions as say those in Heavenly Sword, they do a good enough job that they aren't detracting from the experience at all.

One would think in a Blu-Ray powered game on the PS3 that there would be more voice acting than there was. All of the normal character to character interactions during the chapters are text-based rather than voiced, but because of the sheer brilliance of the music and its' mood setting, it's easily forgivable to have to read the conversations while the music plays in the background.


Story
The game's story is one of mystery. Ellen and Keats are both brought to this strange town of Doolin for different reasons, and each of them start to uncover things in parallel about the town and its' dark past that keep the player engrossed, wanting to find out what comes next. You have the option of playing through the first five chapters of the game as either Ellen or Keats... and BOTH characters have to have their stories told before Chapter 6 can begin for either character.

For this reviewer, I alternated between Ellen and Keats, finishing each of their chapters before moving on to the next one. In doing this, I got an interesting look at the same story events but from two different character's perspectives.

One odd story-telling element is how they handle certain lesser cutscenes. Instead of it being a movie like the pivotal ones, it plays much like a 3D comic book frame. It's an interesting design choice, likely to save development costs, but it actually again works quite well due to the great music behind them.


Gameplay
The gameplay of Folklore is like many Action-RPG games. You directly control your character's combat with enemy creatures, rather than selecting action commands from a menu and watching them execute them like many other RPGs. Each button on your SIXAXIS controller (X, square, circle, triangle) can have one "folk" attack assigned to it. As you combat the different creatures of the Netherworld, you can weaken them to a point and absorb their "Id", or soul, so that you can now summon their likeness and use their attacks yourself. There are over 100 different Folk attacks in the game, and some of them are optional to obtain through quests and such.

The actual absorbing of the Ids is a great implementation of the SIXAXIS tilt functionality. Most folks require you to latch on to their Id and give a flick of the controller towards you, like you were setting a fishing hook, to yank the Id away from them. Other stronger Folks hang on to their Ids a little more insistently and you're called to either time your flicks closer, turn the controller side to side to bludgeon the Folk's Id on the ground back and forth, shake the controller to knock the Id loose, or even carefully hold the Id steady as it tries to tip to one side or the other. Overall it's a clever and fun use of the tilt controls.

Different Folks have specific elements they exhibit, be it Thunder, Wind, Charm, Bond, Destroy, etc. and certain creatures are susceptible to certain elements and immune to others. Often times, boss creatures (known as Folklores) require a specific set of Folk elements to be used on them to defeat them. Though Ellen and Keats both absorb roughly the same Folk Ids, there are Folks that are specific to each character's chapters, and even some of the common Folks have different attack forms when used with each character. Ellen's attacks tend to be more versatile and defensive with regards to the number of charm/stun/immobilize abilities she gains, whereas Keats' attacks are typically stronger and more straight-forward.

The RPG elements are minimal in Folklore, but you do gain experience for defeating creatures. There are skill-based ways to absorb multiple Folks Ids at one time to multiply the XP you get. As you gain XP you gain ranks, which pretty much amounts to more health and/or energy which powers the summoning of your Folk powers.

Your Folk powers themselves can be upgraded as well, by releasing their Karma. Releasing Karma is done by accomplishing certain conditions for a folk, such as absorbing X number of that Folk's Id, using that Folk to defeat specific other Folks, spending quest items, etc. Trying to unlock all of the different Karmas can add a lot of extra playtime to the main story.

Quests can be taken to provide a pleasant distraction from the main story, as most of the quests have little to nothing to do with the main story. Often you can get rare Folk Ids and quest items from completing these tasks.

The boss fights are fun, and though you fight the same boss with each character, the fight does get changed up a bit as you're forced to accomplish the same task with different key Folk Ids.


Replayability
As with most RPG-type games, playing through the main story more than once may be a little lacking, as all sense of mystery in the story is gone. However, most of the game's length comes from taking the time to do all the side things along the way, as most RPGs also tend to be.

If you did nothing but focus on the main storyline and didn't bother with any quests or Folk Id upgrading, etc, you could likely complete the main story in 10-12 hours. However, taking the time to explore everything Folklore has to offer can push that playtime well up to 20 hours and beyond.

Folklore also has the ability to have users design new dungeons and share them among each other, adding a little bit of extended playability to the base game. There's also indication in the game that additional Quests can be obtained and downloaded, possibly to grant the user fresh new Folk Ids to use. As of the writing of this review, no additional quests were available for download.


Overall
As with a couple other PS3 games this year, Folklore got a little bit of a cold shoulder from a lot of professional reviewers out there. Personally, I think Folklore is one of those underrated gems that adds some great value to your game library, and to pass it up just because some other reviewers gave it a lower score (because in all fairness, it won't be EVERYONE's cup of tea) would be a shame. There is currently a demo available on the PSN, which doesn't do the full game's story any justice as it plops you directly into two of the different Netherworlds, but it does give you a good idea of how the combat and Folk Id use works. I'd highly recommend giving the demo a try... you never know, you may find that a good Faery tale is exactly what you were looking for. :)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/26/07

Game Release: Folklore (US, 10/09/07)