Genji: You do level up weapons with captured souls but they are generic and you decide which weapon they go to. On the other hand, you can also level up your characters’ hit points and kamui (slow-motion QTE) gauges.
You get new weapons automatically or find them in treasure chests rather than “capturing” them. Each character has a unique set of five possible weapons which different attacks and power/speed/range tradeoffs. There are four characters in all, and you can switch between them at any time. You must do so, in fact, to beat some puzzles and bosses.
Other differences… you keep health & kamui restoration items in an inventory. There’s not a strong story as in Folklore but some platformer elements instead (Genji characters can jump).
What exactly did you think “sucked” about the game? The combat is the same throughout, it’s ye olde samurai standoff for the most part, except for historically accurate giant crabs and the like. The early game has some boring corridors and one super-annoying sequence where you have to stack crates to get on a roof, but that’s the worst part of the game.
Off topic on Genji:
The controls and camera basically. I vaguely remember archers on rooftops pissing me off to no end. I defeated them, advanced to the next section, and just decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation. If it gets better after that point I might pick it up again in a half year or so, if I manage to make any progress through the ever growing back log of awesomeness.
Oh yeah, that part. Camera is usually a non-issue in melee because you can perma-block or just dodge around until you get a good camera angle. The archers on the rooftops did suck to no end but I don’t think there was another sequence like that. All the bad stuff comes right at the start, really.
Does anyone still care about Folklore, or is its week of fame over already? Sony just announced new downloadable content: two new “tales” for $3.99 each, or $5.99 combined.
This was the first demo I pulled down on my ps3 (late adopter to the console) and wow. I’m impressed… with both the game and the fact that it doesn’t really feel like a watered down version of the game, it feels like a full blown snippet of the game. 5.1 audio in a demo? wow.
More new Folklore content is out today, and they claim this will be the final set of add-ons.
I have Folklore but haven’t started it yet; are these packs something that I should pick up early on and they’ll be integrated or otherwise beneficial to the ‘main’ game, or is it independent or post-regular-play stuff?
I like the combat summons and different combinations but so much of the game is uninteresting in town quests where you search for something to advance the story. Sometimes you know what you need but missed a conversation somewhere so you end up searching hopelessly.
When/if I work up the muster to power through those sections I will probably finish the game, but for now it’s on the back burner too.
After a bit more digging, it sounds like they are separate quests, but they’re also accessible while you’re playing the main game (with some minimum-chapter-reached requirements), and you get folk as rewards that might come in handy in other parts of the main game.
So, we wouldn’t really miss anything if we didn’t play them until the end, but they could be beneficial if we do them as we go along the main story, too.
