Folklore -- Final Opinion.

The credits have rolled on Folklore with a time of a few minutes shy of twenty-eight hours. Folklore is an action RPG so the combat is rather important and you might be wondering how they did. The combat of Folklore is great fun. It's essentially hack and slash into combos with great variety. The story has you absorbing the ids of folks, creatures from various netherworlds, and using them to fight for you. You can easily assign an absorbed id to one of the four face buttons of the DualShock 3. The system to switch them out is fast and easy. And you'll be needing to switch them out as certain folk work better than others against specific folk. You'll be able to absorb a great many folks providing you with a lot of depth in combat. Each folk that you use has karma that can be released therefore making the folk stronger. You're leveling them up. And that's done by meeting a variety of listed conditions for each folk. For example we'll use Gargantua. If you absorb three Gargantua ids you'll decrease magic consumption. And if you defeat twenty folks with Gargantua you'll increase hit points and magic points attack powers. If you use a golden ore which can be found from crystal chests or dropped from other folk you'll further increase the Gargantua's attack power. And that's one of some fifty plus folks that you can absorb and use and level up. And with some folks requiring you to defeat numerous other folks to level you can maybe start to see the depth of the combat and leveling system. The game also features some fun boss battles requiring key use of various folks. As for the story, the setting is great as I said in my initial impression. A Japanese RPG that's outside of Japanese myth  or culture or anime, and that's just refreshing. It doesn't fully escape Japanese sensibilities though. The game plays out like a murder mystery and that aspect has some definite Japanese flavor. Anyone who has played Shadow of Memories will have an idea. The game actually has an interesting take on the power of the concept of death as applied to pagan mythology. The game has you running around a small Atlantic coastal Irish village named Doolin. You alternate playing as two characters drawn to the village for various reasons. Ellen is looking for her mother and secrets of her past. Keats is a writer from an occult magazine looking for a lead on a story. They both stumble onto a seventeen year old murder mystery. The majority of the story is told from sort of moving comic panels based off the in game engine. The game is broken up into seven chapters and each one follows the same basic formula. Run around talking to everyone and figure out how to gain access the next action segment. Fight through collecting and leveling the folks, and then fight a boss and on to the next chapter. The story is slow moving but interesting. And the result is decent. The game is absolutely gorgeous in its art style. Wonderfully vibrant worlds filled with color await you. The animations in the characters and folks in battle are equally lush. The voice acting is well done throughout and the music is truly great. Folklore is a relatively long action RPG with a great battle system and a fresh take on pagan belief tied up in a decent murder mystery. I'm giving Folklore a rock solid 8.