Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Folklore (also known as FolksSoul in Japan, but that is just one name out of four it went through before release) was first shown at E3 2006. We saw a beautiful girl who arched her back with a flash and then her entire wardrobe changed in an instant. We got the vibe that it was an RPG-like title, but really no solid details to chew on, or even a confirmation of a release for the United States. Fast forward to today and we find that Folklore is about to hit shelves. Before we get into the mechanics of how the game has developed over the last year, let’s get some backstory in Folklore.

Folklore tells the story of Ellen, a young girl who lost her mother when she was very young, but receives a letter from the haunted village of Doolin, Ireland, bearing her mother’s signature. Sailing to the island town, she sets out to unravel the mystery of the letter. Folklore also tells the story of Keates, a reporter for occult magazine “Unknown Realms” who gets a panicked call from a young girl and also sets out to Doolin to investigate the source. They share the same common goal, but what in their past has brought them together? To find out they will have to capture the souls of monsters known as “Folk” that inhabit the Netherworld along the way.

The team at Game Republic have really busted their tail to bring the village of Doolin and the land of the Netherworld to life. Like any good RPG, the game starts off with some incredible cutscenes to set up the rest of the game. While the characters do occasionally look somewhat plastic, the level of detail is phenomenal. When the gameplay actually begins you’ll not likely be disappointed. Volumetric clouds move over the landscape, casting rippling waves of light and low moving shadows over the world as you explore the village of Doolin. As the game progresses you’ll eventually unlock pathways into the world of the dead, and those are equally as beautiful, albeit more strange. Let me explain...

The village of Doolin and the Netherworld create a striking dichotomy of despondency, but quite the opposite of what you might expect. The real world is dark and dusty, cold and static. The Netherworld is actually bright and vibrant, full of color and life. Small animals and bugs flit about the weeds and flowers, dust filling the air. Irony is no stranger to the world as you can only enter this bright world at night. It is in this clash of contradiction that Folklore actually takes place, and is likely the element that’ll pull most people in.

If the disparate world doesn’t pull you in, it might just be the Folk that do the trick. The monsters in Folklore are called Folk and they are certainly odd. To battle them you’ll have to don the Cloak of Sidhe (pronounced “Seed”) which is far less of a cloak and more of an entire clothing ensemble. The Cloak of Sidhe allows Ellen to become the “Messenger” (a sort of medium that can commune with the dead) and allows Keates to become the “Guardian” (one who guards the Messenger). The transformation is pretty awesome and the result is that you are able to engage in combat with the fantastic powers gleaned from the souls of the Folk. Each creature has a unique attack, and defeating a certain number of them grants you this attack type. Each combat move is punctuated by beautiful bursts of blue, green, red, another various flashes of light and wisps of color. It really does make for some colorful combat, even if you are tearing the very souls from the creatures you are attacking. Each creature is more fantastic than the last, and all of them are residents of crazy battle zones. The world landscape varies from bubbling lava areas to forest vistas and ancient stone cities. If only they didn’t spend so much time loading, but we’ll talk about that later.

The story of Folklore is told in a comic-panel style with speech bubbles. You can fast forward through the scenes or hit the back button and watch them again if you missed something. With a story that can be a little convoluted or odd, this can be helpful for figuring out where you should be headed next. In the text bubbles, important areas are highlighted in purple, and important people are highlighted in green. Since the game is fairly linear, these serve only to help you find your next objective while you explore.

The final word on graphics really is something I just can’t explain – framerate issues. During combat there are certainly times where the framerate suffers a bit. It never dips into unplayable levels, but it does dip enough to be noticeable.

Folklore fits in the space between an action title and an adventure title, and as such the right blend of combat music and gentle exploration music is a must. To that end, Game Republic brings a beautiful and robust orchestral soundtrack to the game, which filled my room with its excellent use of surround sound. While the vast majority of the story is told via text and the comic book style panes, you’d expect the developer to skimp on the voice work but that isn’t the case here. The actors and actresses do a pretty good job delivering their lines, even if they are a bit campy and over the top, but part of that is due to the writing I’d suspect.

When you move into the Netherworld there is a good bit more sound effects for the Folk and combat as you might expect. While the sound effects aren’t necessarily memorable, nothing sticks out as particularly bad either.

Recent pushes into the flight simulator world using SIXAXIS have been hit or miss, but it seems that many developers are having greater success using the tilt functionality in adventure titles. Folklore is no exception to this as it blends a little bit of motion control into an already solid control scheme. You’ll use the O, X, Triangle, and Square to unleash any 4 of the 100 Folks that you have collected, mixed and matched in any way you please, but is the capturing of these creatures that uses the control scheme best.

When you begin the game you have absolutely no powers or skills – not even a basic club to bash things with. Donning the Cloak of Sidhe and entering the Netherworld enables you to begin to capture the various creatures. For instance, when you capture a “Pouke”, you can map them to a face key, allowing you to unleash their spirit to attack when you press the mapped button. If you pick up a “Killmoulis” you can activate his soul to act as a sort of shield to protect you. To capture these creatures, you’ll use your Folk powers to ‘stun’ your enemies. When they are stunned you’ll be able to see their Id. Snapping the controller down while locking onto their Id will allow you to extract it. It is a very subtle use of SIXAXIS that works very well. Latter bosses will require a bit more finesse to take down, but essentially this is the extent of the use for motion controls. The creatures act as your weapons and armor in the game, which is somewhat unique in a gamescape of sameness.

The camera controls in Folklore are mixed – during your adventuring portions the camera is AI controlled, doing a pretty good job of keeping the camera where you can see everything that is going on. During combat the camera is freed from the AI and you can swivel it with your right thumbstick. If you find that you want to immediately re-center the camera at any point you can do so by simply tapping R3.

Honestly, my only real complaint in the control section has very little to do with control but more to do with option and utility. Once you get a few ‘good’ Folk souls in your pallet, you’ll likely map four of them and forget about the rest. The reason is that there is no way to quickly scroll through the Souls you have – you have to enter the option screen and re-map them each time. The ability to set up a rolling queue of souls might have made having 100 monsters to chose from more viable, but having to enter the option screen to select beyond the four you have mapped means constantly leaving the beautiful world the developer has created to instead interact with cold menus.

When the game begins, you’ll be controlling Ellen. Shortly after this small prologue you’ll be given the opportunity to choose which character to control, often experiencing the same scenario, but from a different point of view. Unraveling the murder mystery requires both characters to move through the linear storyline, so feel free to alternate frequently. The first trip to the Netherworld is free, but the rest of your trips will require mementos of the dead, so you’ll be searching Doolin simply looking for these objects. The village isn’t very large, so you won’t spend an inordinate amount of time here, leaving the bulk of your gameplay taking place in the Netherworld.

As I mentioned earlier, you’ll be collecting Folk to use as your weapons. You have two bars on the top of your screen – the green represents your hit points, and the blue represents your character’s Mind Capacity. Mind Capacity is used when you unleash your Folk powers, but it gradually recovers over time. You can upgrade the Folk powers by collecting certain items, or defeating a certain number of enemies, so your powers will evolve over time. Some of the requirements are fairly simple and already revealed to you, such as absorbing five Pouke Ids or picking up 10 Pulse Tree Nuts. Others are hidden until you stumble into them, requiring a bit of coaxing to uncover.

The overarching murder mystery plot is really not a big motivation for the game, at least for me. It is the bizarre enemies and interesting combat mechanic is really where this game shines. The early Folk are fairly easy to fight and are usually small and more ‘cutesy’. Later in the game you’ll square off against giant boss creatures that will require you to use (and combine) various Folk attacks to counter against their weaknesses. The bosses are certainly a highlight of the game and each is more bizarre than the last. It is for this reason that you’ll likely spend time doing a bit of grinding to build up the powers you won’t normally use. I don’t particularly enjoy grinding for levels or power-ups, so this was a sore spot for me.

There is a cost associated with the beauty of the levels and the Technicolor craziness of the Netherworld – load times. The levels are somewhat small and require a 3 to 4 second load time to move from area to area, pulling you from the rich world and plunging you into a black loading screen. This disconnect could be avoided with the well-proven streaming technology that has been used in recent titles. This is often punctuated by barrier battles where you are required to defeat a certain number of creatures to proceed, putting a big exclamation point on just how compartmentalized the world really is.

It is hard to judge the replay value of a linear game, but there is no doubt that there is plenty to collect in Folklore. With 100 monsters in the game, and a possibility of more via download packs, you’ll be able to spend a great deal of time simply collecting and powering them up if that is your kind of thing. My first run through the game took me 17 hours, and I can see spending even longer than that collecting more Folk, so there is plenty here to justify the price tag, even if it is a linear affair.

There is an included dungeon maker in the game that allows players to create their own settings that can be shared online. Unfortunately this is somewhat half-baked as there are some fairly artificial limits on the number of objects you can place in the world. I suspect this was likely done to keep the download sizes relatively small, but as a result you’ll likely see this feature receive initial novelty use at best.

As I hinted at before, Folklore is something different. Blending a great atmosphere and unique combat system into a world of duality makes for a game that has a bit more depth than you might initially expect. There are certainly a few flaws that prevent Folklore from reaching its full potential, but don’t let that discourage you from picking up this title. The combat is engaging and unique, and the storyline is compelling enough to keep you coming back for the duration.

Gaming Trend Score

83

1. Graphics: 85
2. Audio: 85
3. Controls: 83
4. Gameplay: 80
5. Value/Replay: 85
6. OVERALL:83