A beautiful, if flawed, fairytale adventure.

Folklore starts off with two characters, both visiting a mysterious town known as Doolin for different reasons. Doolin is supposed to be a town linked with the realm of the dead and before long after Ellen and Keats arrive people start dying and the tragic events of 17 years ago start once again bubbling to the surface.

Folklore is simply a game I wanted to love. I tried so hard because of it's interesting premise and beautiful designs, yet in the end Folklore while still a good title holds itself back with some strange gameplay design choices that simply baffle me.

Lets however start with the positives. Folklore looks fantastic. While there are some nice particle and lighting effects as well as good textures what really sets Folklore apart from other titles is the brilliant and often varied enemy designs as well as the different spirit realms that Ellen and Keats visit as the story progresses. They vary from war torn fantasy worlds full of machine gun carrying goblins to ancient underwater palaces full of fish that fire missiles from racks in their jaws. Folklore is a game that certainly isn't lacking in imagination.

The audio to Folklore is also of fairly high caliber, at least in the music department. Each realm has it's own music going which were all perfectly fitting and stood out well from each other. I wish though there was more voice acting through, as the parts where there there is any are pretty decent. There just isn't much excuse not to have fully voiced RPG / adventure games anymore.

Visual and audio aesthetics aside however and the core to any game is of course the gameplay which is where Folklore however has issues that stop it from being quite the masterpiece it could have been. As Ellen & Keats travel from world to world they bump into various Folk who aren't all to happy about them being there. These creatures are your characters weapons, at least their souls are. When damaged enough, their soul pops out of their body long enough to latch onto it and using the sixaxis pull them from the Folks body. Adding to Keats and Ellen's armament. Each Folk is different and only certain attacks on many will bring out their soul and in turn each soul you have does a different attack so the more Folk you have, the easier it is to gain others.

Each Folk soul can be upgraded to use less magic power, to increase number of consecutive uses or increase attack strength. Though the requirements for each Folk is different as well as the outcome, some want nuts or dust gained from beating Folk, others perhaps just have a personal vendetta and will get stronger when used to beat another specific Folk. All this can be checked in the menu screen as well as your characters level, map and book pages that give hints on how to beat certain Folk including bosses for the realm that you are in.

The combat system itself is pretty fun and there is as already mentioned a great diversity of Folk to choose from including defensive, long ranged and elemental. The problem with the game however is simple really. It must be played through essentially twice. That's right, to complete the game the first 5 realms must be played through with both Ellen & Keats individually. Oh sure there are minute changes like a few different Folk but other then that they are near identical and I found it soul crushing to finish due to this. Each characters Folk pools are linked just to them which means to catch and level up folk for each character becomes a chore due to having to do it twice. I hated it to the point it took me over a year to complete it.

The story for Folklore also isn't very engaging. It goes off on a convoluted mystery path that simply couldn't hold my attention and by the end I had really stopped caring and just wanted it to finish. The ending itself leaves a lot open to interpretation so if you like your story lines like that Folklore is perfect for you.

Folklore is actually a reasonably short game coming in at maybe 20 hours though if you try and capture each Folk, and level them up it has quite a bit of added wind to it. There are also some DLC packs available that give some added missions to the pub giving access to some items and even an added Folk or two though they are all played in realms you have already seen so don't really add very much to the experience. (Folklore was released before trophies came in and never received a patch either)

Overall Folklore is a solid game that unfortunately holds itself back in making the story progression on both characters so repetitive. If each character had their own unique realms to go through it could have been something really special for the imagination shown, yet in the end gets brought down. Despite this though I would recommend it to any RPG / adventure fan just for being quite a bit different from a lot of titles out there.

+ Some amazing creature and level designs.
+ Great visuals.
+ Excellent music.

- Having to play through each realm with each character is terribly repetitive.
- Storyline is a bit dull.
- Surprising lack of voice acting.

Seeing the middling reviews on this game kind of surprised me because for what it is, this is one solid as hell crash-esque 3d platformer with a cool magnet gimmick. The Y2K vibes add an extreme flavor to this game in a good way, with all the colors and charm oozing out of it, it's something that i eat up like fuckin steak. Granted it is kinda slow, and weirdly precise and kinda difficult for a game of this caliber, and the jumping feels a bit weird, but other than that man this is a hidden gem. If you see this game at a yard sale or something for cheap pick it up, is fun :)

My experience with almost every KOF game is basically
>start the game
>"wow this is pretty fun"
>get to the final boss
>"fuck this shit"
>turn off the console

As I play this game, I think about a lot. About how in 1984, this was considered impressive. About what the purpose of it all is. Score? It's a home console game, to have any real competition you'd need friends. It certainly isn't the agonizing 32 levels of mostly the same thing, the only differences showing up near the very end and even then it's just 1 new BG and more homing shots fired at once. It's the same throughout all the levels. What is the point of it all? That is what this game has left me to think. I think the game realizes this too, as it feels like the seemingly random beeps from what is supposed to be BGM that gets drowned out by your shot feels to me like morse code of the game itself crying out for help, for someone to save it from itself.

Everything about this game seems to suggest a sim racer akin to Gran Turismo. Menus, music it all seems to fit the bill until you actually get into a race. That's because the handling doesn't resemble Gran Turismo, but more so Burnout. An impossibly cursed, unholy version of Burnout. I can't even begin to comprehend what kind of accident led to the physics becoming this messed up, it's just unbelievable. Almost everything else about the game including tracks and progression is just boring. The game's only saving grace is the car selection.

david lynch wishes he could make movies this unsettling, Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse was a pioneer of surreal horror in video games, it basically did everything Silent Hill 2 did but a year later and much more existentially dreadful.

the ghost and the player take turns tormenting mickey as his soul is trapped in an alternate dimension held within his mirror, the mirror, now shattered, must be pieced back together in order to restore the path back to his reality and body. maybe some sort of metaphor, maybe a kids game accidentally made way too unsettling. maybe both! i suspect we will never know.

i appreciated when the game gave me a choice between 2 modes of play: "kids" and "normal"

Donkey Kong is a happy, friendly little ape and he'll take you on a fun adventure with cute sprites and bright, colorful worlds, but as you near the end of your quest, Donkey Kong is no longer your friend. Instead he traps you in labyrinthine nightmares from which there is no escape and then laughs at you as you keep falling down ravines over and over again. What's that? You're twisting in the air and your controls have inverted? Go to hell, here's a spike pit for you to fall in. You're in Donkey Kong's world now, loser.