Although it didn’t get the same amount of attention as big name games like Uncharted or Ratchet and Clank, Folklore stands out in the current crop of available PS3 titles as one of the most original action games on the platform thanks to a clever combat scheme, gorgeous artistic design and an engaging story.
Folklore tells the story of a young woman named Ellen and an occult reporter named Keats, as they explore a mysterious and isolated Irish coastal village by the name of Doolin. Once they arrive, Ellen and Keats discover that they have the ability to travel from Doolin into various realms in the Netherworld, which are inhabited by the souls of the dead, called folks. The plot centers around Ellen attempting to make contact with her dead mother, and the player will be able to play as both Ellen and Keats, as they unravel the mystery of her death 17 years ago.
Cutscenes are beautiful, but infrequent.
Each area of the Netherworld is headed by a boss, which, when defeated, will allow the player-characters to gain an audience with a dead person who offers clues as to Ellen’s mothers whereabouts. The sense of mystery is palpable throughout the experience, and players looking for a good story could do a lot worse than Folklore. Before they can get to the end of the level and face the boss in order to progress the plot, Keats and Ellen will have to defeat numerous folks, and use a specific combination of their abilities to bring down the head honcho. Luckily, there are story book pages detailing which folks are required to defeat a given boss scattered around the levels, greatly simplifying matters.
Lesser folks are all hostile to the player, and come in a wide variety of elemental forms, each with their own properties and unique attacks. Once defeated, the player can absorb the folk’s soul by jerking the Sixaxis controller skyward, which in practice works quite well. Some of the higher level folks have more complex variations on this basic jerking movement, which require a bit more timing, but all in all, the motion controls are extremely well implemented and easy to pull off.
Much like a European take on Pokemon, players collect different folks and use their powers in order to combat the remaining folks inhabiting the Netherworld. In fact, when in the land of the dead, neither Keats nor Ellen are capable of any other method of battling the hostile critters that populate the environment. Once the player absorbs a folk’s soul (called it’s ‘id’), the player can bring up a menu and assign the various folks they have collected to the four face buttons. Folk abilities are elemental in nature and range from projectile attacks, melee attacks, and defensive maneuvers, allowing players to choose a wide variety of strategies in any given situation. When certain conditions are met (for example, collecting a particular number of ids), these folks can be leveled up, allowing for greater damage, longer combos or reduced summoning costs. When absorbing ids, players get experience (with bonuses for nabbing more than one at a time) that gives Folklore some mild RPG elements, but since the player can only gain a larger health or magic meter, the real emphasis is on leveling up preferred folks. One could conceivably level up all of them, but since folk abilities overlap a great deal, it’s not really necessary.
Sadly, Keats and Ellen play almost identically. There are minor character-specific abilities, though. For example, while in the Netherworld, Keats can activate a temporary God-mode that is charged up via a meter, and Ellen can change cloaks late in the game allowing for mild stat adjustment. In the end, the two experiences are a bit too similar, and it would have been nice to see more differentiation in the two play-styles. In addition, by the end of the game players may also begin to tire of revisiting almost all the locations twice. Although the levels are laid out exactly the same for both characters, at the very least, Ellen and Keats don’t share the same folks in every realm, providing some variety from a game play perspective, but not enough to shake the ‘been there done that’ feel that starts to accumulate after delving deep into Folklore’s 10-20 hour campaign. And although both player-characters will fight the same end-bosses, the means in which they will defeat them will vary somewhat, which is better than no variety at all. While players don’t have to beat both Keats’ and Ellen’s campaign, this option won’t tell the entire story and reduce the game’s length significantly.
Game Reviews Index
