An overlooked gem that many people passed up.
You play as two characters, Ellen and Keats. Ellen comes to the village of Doolin because she received a letter from her dead mother urging her to come to the village, so she hopes to meet her mother. Keats, a writer for an occult magazine, comes to Doolin after he received a mysterious phone call telling him to come to Doolin. Overtime, their objectives change. Ellen wants to find out about her past which she cant remember while Keats just wants to write a good story for his magazine. Shortly after they arrive, they discover that a netherworld exists that contain multiple realms were the dead can go to and they travel to those realms to talk with the dead. Overtime, a series of murders happen in Doolin and Ellen and Keats work to figure out what the reason is for these murders while pursuing their own personal goals.
The gameplay will take you back and forth between the Netherworld and the real world. The Netherworld is were you will be doing most of your fighting while you explore and solve puzzles in the real world. The story works almost similar to that of a mystery novel. Strange murders and other cases break out in Doolin and you must figure out what is going on. The story has awesome plot twists and turns making it a very exciting story. When you go into the Netherworld, your basically there to talk with ones who have passed on and try to get answers to what is going on in the real world. The Netherworld is were you will be doing most of your combat at. The Netherworld is filled with creatures called folks. You fight them and after you beat them up enough, you suck out their Ids, otherwise their souls. Once you take their Ids, you gain that folks abilities and you can use them in future fights. Sucking out their Ids uses the PS3 controllers Six-Axis motion control feature as you will be required to pull back on the controller to suck out their Ids. You use their abilities in combat by assigning that specific folk to either the triangle, circle, square and x buttons. You can equip up to four folks to use in combat. Switching in and out different folks is surprisingly simple. You bring up the menu by pressing L2, choose from the list of absorbed folks and simply press the button you want them assigned to. This easy process is definitely a positive. Unfortunately, the combat tends to be a bit repetitive. It looks cool at first, but when you realize that you will be doing this again and again, it can get tiring. Fortunately, the boss fights break things up a little. The bosses are called Folklores and each is an epic battle requiring use of the right folks and a mixture of attacking and dodging. You need the right strategy to take these beasts down. Fortunately, each realm has a picture book giving you hints at how to take them on.
The story is told mostly on comic book style cutscenes that have no subtitles. Some might find the lack of voices in these scenes to be disappointing but it didnt bother me at all. There are a few cinematic cutscenes that do have voices and the voice work is superb. To bad that these scenes do not appear often. The music is also superb, especially when you are in Doolin. In Doolin, some soft and mysterious piano songs play and it really fits the gloomy mood in Doolin. The music playing in the Netherworld is good to but not as memorable as in Doolin. The graphics are not flashy, but then again, this is pretty typical of an early PS3 title. There are some good looking environments but overall, the graphics are not awesome but they are not bad either. The game length is fairly short for an adventure RPG, it can be beaten in 10-15 hours but it can be extended if you take the optional sidequests.
Also in the story, you will be switching back and forth between Ellen and Keats. You can complete up to so much with Ellen but when you get up to a certain point, you need to play as Keats. To catch up to were Ellens story is at, you gotta play through some of the early levels with Keats. Or the other way around as Ellen if you started the game as Keats. You will encounter some of the same cutscenes and enemies that you encountered as that other character so getting through that can be a drag. But once you get through that, you are treated to an amazing story. A story that is great at building the plot and tension and it will suck you in.
The Good: Amazing story, amazing voice work when voiced cutscenes appear, great music, easy and accesible menus. Lots of DLC available.
The Bad: Some goofy looking enemies, repetitive combat, playing some of the same story as the second character can be a drag.
Overall: A solid adventure RPG title that should have deserved better reception. One of the best titles of the PS3 in 2007. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to play a good story game.