Folklore is developed by Tokyo’s Game Republic under legendary game creator Yoshiki Okamoto, executive producer for Onimusha, Devil May Cry and Resident Evil. Folklore is a unique, dark fantasy adventure inspired by western fairy tales. It’s a third-person real-time action-adventure game with RPG elements, made exclusively for the PlayStation 3.
Read all about the game world and its inhabitants, both good and bad, below.
System: PS3
Genre: Action-Adventure
Release dates: October 9th 2007 (USA), October 12th 2007 (EURO)
Players: 1
Developer: Incognito Entertainment
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Origin: Japan
What’s the story about? Set in the mysterious town of Doolin, two strangers, Keats and Ellen, meet…
Despite being a realist, Keats unhappily finds himself a journalist for a third rate occult magazine. One day Keats receives a phone call from a woman asking for his help. Through the static Keats hears the word “Doolin”. Sensing something wrong, Keats rushes to the village, but the woman he believes to have called him, is found murdered. He stays on to find out more about this murder. Strange events follow that night, and he travels to the “Netherworld”.
Having lost her mother as a young child, Ellen is prone to dreaming and tends to look away from reality. Strangely, she spends her holidays actively searching England’s countryside for folk stories. She is not so good with people but seems to have a rapport with children and the elderly. One day Ellen receives a letter from the mother she lost as a child, the message proposing a meeting in Doolin. She finds herself in the village at the same time as Keats. Here they wander between “reality” and the 7 Netherworlds, in search of the end to their stories.
They are drawn together to uncover a mysterious legend in a remote village that exists on the border between dreams and reality, where the dead can meet the living. They soon learn that the town serves as a gateway to fantastic realms, full of creatures, spirits and monsters. In order to solve the mystery of the town, and their past, the pair must journey through these worlds to uncover its secrets. You choose one of the two characters to start the adventure.
Watch the Folklore launch trailer.
So what are Folklore’s main features?
* Journey to seven incredibly vibrant realms, all uniquely designed and tailored to fit their distinct personalities. From the ruins of the Undersea City to the never-ending maze of the Endless Corridor, each destination is different from the next.
* Inspired by western fairy tales, players interact with or clash against a cast of over 100 originally designed creatures, characters and monsters. While in development Folklore was called Monster Kingdom: Unknown Realms, hence you’ll do a lot of monster collecting.
* Using the Sixaxis wireless controller, the player must battle monsters (the bad inhabitants of the Netherworld known as the Folk) and literally “shake” them into submission and then “yank” their powers from them. The absorbed powers (also called souls or ids) will be strategically mapped to your controller face buttons, so the physical, magic, block and other attacks, can be used to capture or defeat the monsters that lie ahead.
* Begin the game as either Keats or Ellen and learn their story and gameplay style. Keats uses traditional direct attacks while Ellen uses strategic methods to trap her enemies. Decisions made in one story line will directly impact the story path of the other.
Watch the Netherworld creatures of Folklore.
As you can see from the above screenshots and trailers, the environments and creatures you encounter are often stunning, very well realized to give you a beautiful world to travel. As you go through it you might find a few things less enjoyable, such as: Taking a wrong road only to find out as you turn back that all the enemies in the previous area have respawned and will have to be beaten in the same way, often the challenge is gone once you figured out what ids you need thanks to trial and error (the book’s clues often don’t help much). The menus, while having a very stylized presentation like the rest of the game, do load a bit slow. The different realms are all limited by an invisible barrier stopping you just as you run over to see “hey, what’s over there?” Still, the adventure is long enough to satisfy your curiosity.
As a conclusion I must say it’s definitely an adventure with legs, clocking in at about 20 hours on a regular play through and up to 30 hours if you want to collect and level up every id and get Ellen every functional cloak/coat.
The in-game visuals and matching soundtrack will make you feel the game’s mood perfectly. The story is alternately narrated by beautiful in-game cutscenes, full-motion video, and storyboard comics. If you’re still not sure if you’ll get into this dark fairy tale, then I’d suggest downloading the Folklore demo from the PlayStation Store and if you do get the game (which I recommend if you love storytelling) then there’s even additional game content available online. Now let’s rate this game on its fun-basis.
FUN FACTOR – 7.7
Be patient with the game’s linear path and you’ll be rewarded with a great mystery plot. You’ll be able to guess most of the plot twists, but that won’t stop you from enjoying the adventure, which gets better as you move along. There’s lots of fun to be had talking to the varied inhabitants and fighting with/against the game’s fantastic creatures. Blissful as it sounds, overall it really was a wonderful experience.
Graphics – 9.0
The superb art direction oozes style, and has lush visuals different for each realm. If only all fantasy games were this beautiful.
Audio – 8.0
From a field of colorful flowers blowing in the wind to the kid’s laughter as you walk on a stairway, the sound effects will bring you moments that put a smile on your face. The voice acting is just very well done and tells a fantastic story. The soundtrack fits the (dark) fairy tale theme incredibly well.
Ingenuity – 8.0
The combat makes great use of the Sixaxis’ motion controls. Thanks to the game explaining you the new controls right away, they start and stay fun.
Replay Value – 7.0
The linear storyline doesn’t leave much to explore after you’ve seen both character’s stories. But it’s nice to have the option of changing them between realms and getting a different narrative while replaying the realm with the other character. It adds to the story depth, but makes a replay more of the same.