The Official Folklore Thread (Reviews!)

[Electro UK]

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/824/824614p1.html Yes, that's a 9/10 you see there from IGN. Didn't I tell you this game owned?

 

[Havok83]

The demo was soo fun. I didnt expect the game to get a 9 from IGN though. Thats great to hear

 

[Ice-man]

Yea folklore seems like a very original game, which is why i like it, i dont know if id wanna buy it or rent it though cuz its not like a top game for me.

but it does look fun and immersive. which is what i look for in games, well that and graphics.

 

[Zenien]

Wow I wasn't expecting it to get a 9.

 

[Ice-man]

neither was i, i thought 7-8 at most, but when i game gets a 9 you know its good.

 

[WhatsHisFace]

Not if it's from IGN. They gave Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball a 9.6.

IGN loves to give high scores.

 

[sandwraith]

But it gave Heavenly Sword and Zelda a 7 to 8? Seems pretty back and forth to me. I usually read Gamespot anyways. Will wait for a review from them.

How many hours does tis game clock anyways?

 

[cookiva]

But it gave Heavenly Sword and Zelda a 7 to 8? Seems pretty back and forth to me. I usually read Gamespot anyways. Will wait for a review from them.

How many hours does tis game clock anyways?

Which Zelda did they give a 7-8 to???? Are you serious???

The lowest score they gave any Zelda game was Four Swords, which got an 8.7. Every other Zelda game they have reviewed has been over a 9, most much over a 9.

 

[Ice-man]

it was probably TP i heard it wasnt that good.

i played it at my friends and it really wasnt all that good.

 

[cookiva]

Well, IGN gave it a 9.7, and was universally loved as GOTY and one of the greatest games of all time, so....yeah

 

[Timstuff]

Not if it's from IGN. They gave Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball a 9.6.

IGN loves to give high scores.

Especially when they let 16 year old interns review games about breasts.

Keep in mind though that the different branches of IGN are seperate, unlike sources like IGN and Gamespot where it's all one crew. Each branch at IGN has different tastes, so their credibility sometimes depends on the genre. I trust Gamespot and EGM as my primary sources for reviews. Mostly Gamespot though.

 

[Timstuff]

it was probably TP i heard it wasnt that good.

i played it at my friends and it really wasnt all that good.

I thought Twilight Princess was pretty good but it was way too easy and about 2x longer than it should have been. Nintendo made a giant game world with nothing fun to do in it except dungeons (hint Nintendo: in the future take a page from Oblivion). Also, the music sounded crappy due to the midi, and there was no voice overs which is also unacceptable by modern standards. It's the 21st century for cripes' sake!

 

[cookiva]

there was no voice overs which is also unacceptable by modern standards. It's the 21st century for cripes' sake!

What do you mean by that? I prefer a "non-voiced" Zelda game. It honestly adds to the mystique of the series. It works, and surprisingly well at that.

 

[sandwraith]

Agreed, silent heroes are Nintendo classics.

 

[hippy fascist]

My mum was once the Rose of Cork. My dad taught Donal Lenihan how to play rugby. That's apropos of nothing other than to establish my credentials for reviewing a game set in Ireland (or Oirland as it's more commonly known in the videogame voice-acting community, with Folklore no exception).

But since we're talking about my mum, when she was a little girl, she used to play in the fairy rings around her grandmother's house - and Irish fairy rings aren't patches of mushrooms like they are in this country, but ancient burial mounds that are also the homes of faeries and the entrance to their magical realms.

And it's this world - the world of Celtic folklore and make-believe - that forms the starting point for Folklore. Except, since it's been developed under the guidance of Yoshiki Okamoto (of Onimusha, Devil May Cry and Resident Evil fame), it's got a vividly Japanese twist. One thing that is authentically Irish, though, is that it starts, as so many good Irish adventures do, down the pub. Taking on the role of either Keats, a writer for an occult magazine, or Ellen, a girl in search of her mother, you'll find yourself in the village of Lemrick, where the living meet the dead.

Early parts of the game see conventional spirits, such as this Bugaboo, but later worlds give rise to more outlandish creatures.

Which is a rather grandiose way of saying that you'll find yourself engaged in a pretty conventional adventure game: go round the village, talk to people, discover clues and so on and so forth. It's pretty boring, even when you discover that by night the pub is peopled with an amiable assortment of banshees and spirits and monsters listening to Danny Boy on the radio. But eventually your investigations lead you to the Fairy World, which is where the action really starts.

That action consists of proceeding along a fairly linear path, punctuated occasionally by safe areas where you can talk to the fairies if you so choose, or save the game, or go through a portal that returns you to places you've previously explored. Outside those safe areas, you'll spend your time fighting with fairies and spirits. The catch is that you use your Sixaxis to catch the souls of those spirits, and then you'll use those souls to fight other spirits.

You can pick up hints that tell you how to beat some of the tougher folk.
The combat system allows you to map each newly acquired soul to one of the four face buttons, which you then press to use those souls to attack other folk. When they're reeling from your attacks you reel them in by holding R1 and shaking the Sixaxis. Then you're free to map your newly acquired soul to one of the face buttons and so on.

Clearly, then, there's also a gotta-catch-'em all sort of thing going on here, as well as the bland adventuring and pretty standard dungeon crawling. But like those two parts of the game, the Pokémon-lite mechanic doesn't quite work.hat's because all of the attacks enabled by captured folk souls are pretty similar. One or two allow you to block, or provide ranged/aerial attacks, but the vast majority are simply variations on the standard attack. If it weren't for the fact that some folk are only vulnerable to certain other folk, you'd never really need to swap them over - and the fact that some folk are only vulnerable to certain other folk feels a bit like a contrived way of providing an incentive to catch 'em all.

Certainly you wouldn't want to swap them over otherwise, because when you do, it gets confusing trying to remember which folk you've got mapped to which face button. But the real drawback with the controls is the whole Sixaxis thing. Indeed, with Sony publishing the game itself, it's difficult not to see Folklore as little more than a contrived attempt to build a game mechanic around the controller, which is a shame because the Sixaxis dynamic is frequently annoying, occasionally imprecise, and utterly tedious when you get to some of the tougher folk, because they require even more shaking than usual.

And so Folklore turns out to be one part boring adventure game, one part underdeveloped collect-em up, and one part standard dungeon crawl. The only aspect of the game that rises above the mundane is its technical polish and the vibrant creativity with which its imaginary worlds have been created - the vivid luminescence of the Fairy World, or the scratchy, Ian Miller-esque authenticity of the War World for example. Apart from that, it's totally average (and in case you're thinking of importing: if you don't read kanji you'll need a translator or to wait for the US/UK version, because the occasional - impressive - cut-scenes are the only bits in English).

5/10

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=80402

 

[Havok83]

That review is complaining about the SIXAXIS? Um whatever. One of the best things about the demo WAS the motion controls. Folklore is one of the few games where it actually feels natural and fluid and was a whole lot fun to use them.

 

[hippy fascist]

so you missed the part where they said it was too linear, boring and underdeveloped...?

 

[Avalanche]

If I remember correctly the game got decent reviews in Japan. It just didn't capture the imagination of the general public. Currently the decent reviews are the majority.

But yeah, RPG bias from me.

 

[Electro UK]

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=80402

That's actually a very old review, and to my memory, OPSM UK also gave Folklore 7, so 2 respected sites/magasines with good/okay scores beats 1 barely used site with a low score.

 

[Electro UK]

http://www.n4g.com/ps3/News-72141.aspx

Well... it was nice to think it was actually going to be good for a while.

 

[Spidey17]

WHAT!?! Don't give up Electro. They basically said it was an original, good, yet unpolished game. Original is really hard to find these days, especially on the PS3 so far. I'll have to see the GI review to help me make a decision.

 

[Havok83]

theres a good review for it up at GamesRadar. It got a 8/10

http://www.gamesradar.com/us/ps3/ga...2088&sectionId=1000&pageId=200709251739538015

 

[hippy fascist]

Of all of Sony's first party games, we embraced Folklore the most, not because of its popular mascots or innovative controls, but because it brought us back to the original PlayStation, a time when some bizarre adventure became a hit. Plus, with the buzz surrounding it, we expected Sony to deliver one hell of a game. Well crack open an egg and dump it onto our faces, because Folklore's awful.

We love the concept of playing two different characters and exploring a haunted town, traveling to other worlds and encountering a host of imaginative creatures. The opening full motion cut scene, as with all the rest, is quite stellar, showcasing crisp visuals that look wonderful splashed across an HDTV. But then we started to play and immediately realized how linear and boring the game is. You just wander around talking to people, and when you encounter bad guys, simply mash buttons to defeat them. The game's big draw comes from capturing monsters' ids (souls) by locking on and then physically jerking the SIXAXIS controller with the option to map up to four on the controller's face buttons (press Triangle to use one, Circle to use another and so on). But that got old fast when we realized most of the attacks operate the same way.

Folklore's presentation drives us nutty, thanks to ridiculous dialogue. The game's creatures utter the most irritating phrases, in particular, the scarecrow that goes "Uwee Hee Hee" every few lines. At least Sony didn't spend any money hiring voice actors.

The comic book cut scenes annoy us even more. Instead of creating more full motion video, Sony elected a more "stylish" approach in which scenes play out through semi-animated storyboards that don't fit well. You can't give us a gorgeous intro with voice acting and all these special effects and then expect us to read something.

These numerous issues notwithstanding, the game thrives on its graphics, a collection of vibrant and dark colors, imaginative creatures and superb particle effects. Just with that, we know certain people will embrace Folklore since it feels like a stereotypical Japanese action RPG with corny characters and traditional game design. So if you're one of these gamers, enjoy.

We, on the other hand, can't stand Folklore and want to body slam Sony for ruining what could have been one of the PlayStation 3's best games. Instead, it pumped out a derivative snooze fest that might look more appealing if someone slashes the price from $59.99 to $19.99. Until that happens, leave this one alone.

Our Final Score
Bad

4/10

http://www.gamedaily.com/games/folklore/playstation-3/game-reviews/review/6194/1785/

 

[Electro UK]

Majority of reviews are 7/10, so that's not so bad.

And Twylight Princess sucked.

 

[블라스]

Majority of reviews are 7/10, so that's not so bad.

And Twylight Princess sucked.