<------ CLICK FOR TRAILERUNKNOWN REALMS
Folklore is an overlooked action/adventure/rpg game for the the PS3, developed by the now defunct Game Republic. I haven't played all of their games but out of the ones I've tried this is by far the best. I don't know why I waited this long to play it, everything about this game seemed to be right up my alley.
Great art design, third person combat, great music, intriguing setting and premise, cool looking characters.
It probably had something to do with my lack of care for the PS3 at that point, I bought one in mid 2007 but I wasn't impressed with the system and just didn't feel too compelled to go out and buy games for it.
PS3 is now my go to console and someone I know kept talking about how cool this game was so I decided to check it out.
I was immediately impressed by the CG intro, super sharp and just had that nice PS2 era feel to it. I love that stuff!
The game starts off with Ellen, one of the main characters, on a boat heading to the town of Doolin. She received a mysterious letter from her dead mother telling her to meet her there.
At the same time, a reporter named Keats who works for an occult magazine called Unknown Realms receives a strange phone call from a woman telling him that the Faeries are trying to kill her and to come to the town of Doolin.
Smelling a good story in the making, he decides to take the bait and heads out for Doolin.
Shortly after getting there, both characters are introduced to each other and witness a woman being killed under strange circumstances.
From there the story goes into supernatural territory and involves themes of death, the afterlife, human consciousness and repressed memories.
WELCOME TO DOOLIN
Pretty unique story hook! From that point the plot goes back and forth between Ellen and Keats's point of view, you can select which character you want to play as at the beginning of each chapter.
You have to complete each chapter with both characters to unlock the final chapters and get the full story. I'd recommend playing up to chapter 3 with Ellen and then switching to Keats and doing up to chapter 3. Then get to 5 with Ellen and 5 with Keats right after. I alternated between both after every chapter and found it to be a bit too repetitive, I think playing a couple chapters and then switching over would improve the experience.
Each chapter starts with a kind of adventure game section in the village where you need to talk to npcs and get clues and items that will allow you to open a path to the NetherWorld.
Without spoiling anything, the NetherWorld is like another reality where the dead and their memories reside. It can take on many forms and each chapter takes place in a different Realm of the NetherWorld.
These all look DRAMATICALLY different to one another, and all have a significance as to why they look the way they do.
This is one of the coolest things about the game, the art design is fantastic and you never know what the game will throw at you next.
Before getting to the NetherWorld sections though, I'll talk a little bit about the gameplay in the village segments. Each character has a home base in the village and this is where you can choose to save your game or to go to sleep.
Sleeping will change the time to day or night, during the day is where you mostly gather clues and talk to the villagers and during the night is where you can head out to the NetherWorld or go to the pub and do sidequests.
The pub at night is populated by these weird creatures called Halflives which you can talk to for more story info or for sidequests. I really loved the feel of the pub at night, the Halflives were all pretty unique looking and I always made sure to go out of my way to talk to them in every chapter.
So that's pretty much it for the adventure part of it, after finding out what you need to do to enter the NetherWorld for that chapter, a portal will open and this is where the action elements come into play.
FOLK'S SOULS
Gameplay in the NetherWorld portions is combat driven, each area basically being a themed dungeon culminating with a boss battle.
The enemies you fight are called Folks and they also serve as your means of attack, if you successfully hit a Folk with something that it's weak to, a blue soul will appear on top of it after every hit.
Do enough damage to a Folk and its soul will turn red, signaling that it's ready to be absorbed.
In 2007, Sony was still trying to justify the last minute inclusion of the Sixaxis motion sensor and they pushed it pretty hard with this game. It could have turned out to be a mess but it actually is pretty fun to use here.
When a Folk's soul is ready to be absorbed, pressing R1 launches out a ghostbuster beam that latches on to it and you then need to snap the controller back to reel it in.
If multiple souls are exposed, you can hold R1 and yank them all in at the same time, giving you a EXP multiplier that scales with the number of souls gathered at once. It just feels really good to yank out a group of souls, fun stuff! Speaking of EXP, your main characters do have RANK which levels up through soul absorption. Your RANK determines your HP and MC, as far as I know that's all it does but I didn't do much research into it.
For bigger enemies and bosses, the souls can't just be pulled out after turning red. They need to be beaten into submission and again the game uses the Sixaxis to good effect here.
When you latch on with R1, a blue bar will appear near the bottom of the screen, this is kind of like a fatigue meter for the Folk.
You then need to wrestle with it by performing a variety of Sixaxis minigames, the game does a good job of introducing new ones as it progresses and I never got too tired of doing them. One of them involves alot of shaking and it's the only one that kinda got on my nerves near the end of the game.
Keep in mind that you can still get attacked while wrestling with one of the bigger souls so clearing out the smaller ones first is part of the strategy.
Once you've gathered a soul you can then use that Folk in combat by mapping it to one of the 4 face buttons on the controller.
Each Folk has a set attack and elemental attribute, like straightforward short range melee combo with fire element. That kind of stuff, there's a good variety throughout the game and switching between them is really handled well.
Pressing L2 will instantly bring up a well organized list of the Folks that are currently in your possession, allowing you to very quickly map them to the face buttons on the fly.
Switching between a large list of Folks mid battle could have been a disaster if there was any loading involved or if the menus were poorly laid out but thankfully it's not the case here.
This makes combat fairly interesting as different folks are vulnerable to different things, you don't have to constantly switch out but you can't just rely on the same Folks for the entire game either. Bosses and mini bosses is where switching out becomes essential, you really can't get through them without attacking them with the correct type of Folk. Figuring out which Folks to use against enemies is sometimes revealed by picture book pages that you find in each Realm. These have cool little drawings that show which Folks to use against bosses or other powerful Folks. I thought that was a nice touch!
Both characters end up traversing the same NetherWorld environments during each chapter, so chapter 1 with Ellen and chapter 1 with Keats will both take place in the Faery Realm for example.
This is the biggest issue with the game in my opinion as the layout of the areas are IDENTICAL and the boss fights are the same.
Thankfully both characters have a fair amount of different Folks to fight and to collect and even the ones that they do share end up having different attacks and properties depending on which character summons them.
Both characters play very similarly except for having access to different types of Folks and a couple of other key differences. Summoning Folks takes up MC points and this bar refills differently for each character.
Keats also has access to an ability called Transcension which is basically a devil trigger, his appearance changes and he can spam attacks without delay or having to use MC. His attacks also change and he generally looks pretty badass, throwing shadow punches left and right.
TRANSCENSION
The pace here is definitely on the slow side and the game is not for the ADD crowd or people that need constant excitement.
This is probably what would put most people off, combined with having to play the same areas with both characters. I didn't mind it too much because the story grabbed me and the combat felt good even if it isn't super deep.
Every time you hit an enemy you get that nice "hit stop" which gives the combat a very crunchy feel. Combine that with SUPERB animations and a good amount of attack variety and it's enough to keep you entertained.
I love the way Keats animates in combat, he has a really unique stance where he looks almost possessed, the way he summons Folks is just perfect looking. Both characters also have a cool dash/dodge move with a blur trail that looks straight out of Symphony of the Night.
And for a game that came out in 2007 it really doesn't look shabby at all, good image quality and texture resolution, great particle effects and mostly great character models, atleast for main characters and enemies.
Framerate can definitely be questionable but the game is already fairly slow paced so it never bothered me too much. This is a game that's aged surprisingly well.
The music is also amazing, most of the dungeon music is more on the atmospheric side but the tracks that play during the village sections and during cutscenes are just phenomenal. Seriously good stuff there, the sense of atmosphere in the village sections is just incredible.
Character design is extremely strong, most of the Folk designs are REALLY well done and I really like Keats's design. The story even if it can be a bit convoluted at times, ended up being pretty good, it's one of those games that sticks with you for a while after you're done with it.
I thought the ending was really satisfying and even if some of the revelations are heavily foreshadowed, they still managed to surprise me by not being exactly what I thought they were going to be.
One thing I didn't really care for was the way they did alot of the cutscenes in the game, the major ones are fully voiced and animated using either the ingame engine or really nice CG but the majority of them are done in this freeze frame comic book kind of style and they look a bit rough.
I understand why this was done, no doubt a budget and time issue, but they just weren't pulled off all that well. Those scenes are also not voiced at all, which doesn't bother me much but the voice acting is quite good overall so I would have liked to hear more of it.
ODDS AND ENDS
The game is pretty well structured with no missable sidequests or Folks, upgrading your Folks is grindy and optional but still pretty fun. You unlock their Karma by basically fulfilling a set of predefined conditions for each Folk.
For example, absorbing 10 souls of a certain Folk will upgrade its damage output or lower its MP consumption. Optional stuff also includes a Trial Dungeon mode where you can make your own dungeons or go through other player's custom dungeons.
I haven't really messed around with it too much but I do know that you can get unique Folks from that mode. As far as length of the game goes, It only took me 14 hours to get to the ending so it's fairly short.
I put in another 6 hours to grind out some folks and do some sidequests, some of which fleshed out some side characters and gave me more insight on the story. I still have some stuff left to do, I'd say a good 30 hours to do everything sounds about right. There's also some DLC stuff but it's insanely overpriced so I haven't bought any of it. I've heard it's pretty good and would love to check it out but it would cost me 18$ for the DLC when I paid 10$ for the game. Drop the price of that stuff, Jesus Christ!
All that aside, I ended up feeling really good about this game after having finished it, I don't think it's flawless and it does have some significant pacing issues but I still would recommend it without any hesitation to anyone who likes Japanese action/adventure games.
It's the kind of game that we don't get much of anymore and this one felt pretty special. I'd put it up there with Valkyria Chronicles, one of the earlier PS3 titles that need to get more recognition. Definitely check it out, clearly alot of love and care was put into this one and I think more people should give it a shot!
Shame about what happened to Game Republic, they didn't have the most consistent output but after playing this game I really feel bad that they're gone.
TLDR, play it if you like cool Japanese games!
