Folklore (PS3)

Folklore (PS3)

Navneet Prakash, Nov 10, 2007 1152 hrs IST

Enter the world of Ellen and Keats as they take on the folk of a bizzare Irish village.

Great graphics, Good combat system, Brilliant and vibrant character/level design, Intriguing plot, Great use of the SixAxis.

Slight system freeze while changing folks, Story telling could have been more elaborate.

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Gameplay

The game is a mix of RPG and adventure, which makes it a variably paced. There are times when you're slashing through monsters and collecting items, while a few minutes later you are analyzing an important clue, then again you'll find yourself upgrading your character. A few minutes into the game and you'll be told about the Netherworld and how to enter it, both Keats and Ellen will get a helpful soul, who'll tell them about the Netherworld and how it affects the real world.

When inside the Netherworld, you have to defend yourself. You use folks or spirits, who do the fighting for you. Some have melee attack, some have range, and some even lay mines for you. The variety of folks is amazing and surprisingly not repetitive. The enemies are also the folk of the Netherworld, so when you defeat them, you can capture their souls and add them to your inventory. There are a huge number of folks and you can keep adding them to your inventory.

When you're not smashing folks in the Netherworld, you'll find yourself investigating in Doolin. The village has been designed well with a very dull and mysterious undertone. When you speak to an NPC, the conversation is presented in a comic book styled bubble dialogue box. It looks great, but takes forever to complete a sequence.

As I said before, you have to play as both the characters, so you'll see yourself shifting from one world to another. Coming back to the Netherworld, whenever you defeat an enemy folk, his spirit will appear in a red aura, at that time you can capture it using the R1 button. Once you latch onto it, just flick the SixAxis upwards and you'll pull it out -- it looks uber-cool. You gain experience as you kill more and more folks and add them to your inventory. You can select up to 4 folks and place them in any of the 4 buttons, these existing folks can be changed in battle as well. When you try to change folk while in battle, there's a slight freeze, which is almost negligible.