While enjoying the once-per-year Summer Festival, the heroine Poach Arsia is accidentally brought to Napple World due to a mistake made by Straynap, a novice Spirit Guide who leads souls into the afterlife. Napple World, known as the land of daydreams, lies between the Real World and the Deep Dream, where souls go to rest. The concept of time in Napple World is unlike the real world: the seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter exist separately from each other as distinct locations. When Poach arrives in Napple World, six fairy-like beings called Petals leave her body and escape into the seasons, and she must retrieve them in order to go home again. To make up for his mistake, Straynap becomes Poach's guide and instructs her throughout the game, explaining the often contradictory nature of Napple World to her.
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Ultimately a pretty alright 3d-ish platformer with a lot of unique ideas that set it apart. The main draw is definitely the story telling, giving context and motivation behind the platforming, which ties it into the sort of pseudo-town builder part of the game set in napple town. All the characters and dialogue are great and extremely charming, and as mentioned before the way they tie into the action-platforming is really cool. The paffet system is also really neat, although I didn't engage with it that much. Using items collected throughout the levels to make either creatures that can assist you or furniture for the townspeople is a great idea, although I basically only used the platform creature and the furniture quests require regularly checking in on townspeople and replaying levels, which I never really did.
Regardless it's a very inspirational title that, while certainly janky and a bit unpolished in places, combines different genres to produce an extremely unique experience. Huge recommend.
Almost forgot to mention the ability to jump on houses which is in fact part of my criteria for Good Game Design.
Regardless it's a very inspirational title that, while certainly janky and a bit unpolished in places, combines different genres to produce an extremely unique experience. Huge recommend.
Almost forgot to mention the ability to jump on houses which is in fact part of my criteria for Good Game Design.
There's another world where this is my perfect game - a village that grows and changes with the game's progression, player reward for paying attention to the townspeople, completely optional sidequests that make you care more about the world and characters, all with a beautifully late 5th gen art style and one of the best game soundtracks of all time??? Bliss.
But unfortunately, Napple Tale struggles pretty hard at bringing all this to life. Nearly all the sidequests in the game are pretty buried and tough to even get going, often requiring returning to completed levels, and finding small changes within them. In the village, characters often don't give you much to go off of, and even at the end of the game, after playing the whole way through exploring heavily and talking to everyone, I had only completed about 5 out of 40 or so furniture request sidequests and had missed likely a lot of other sidequests altogether.
So much of the content this game has to offer is accessed through re-doing the relatively few levels it has to offer, and while they're half decent, they're also very simple and often pretty clunky. I wanted so much to see more of what this game has to offer, but having it locked behind what feels like doing chores is pretty disheartening.
The paffet system is also pretty useless, but to be fair, you don't need to make any at all to even finish the main game, and I love those cute little guys so I give it a bit of a pass. Having a little buddy following you around who's only purpose is to 'cheer you on' is so funny that I can't really be upset with it.
Overall it's still a good experience! It's just tough to see something with so much of a vision that comes so close to nailing everything I want out of a video game really kind of fumble the landing.
But unfortunately, Napple Tale struggles pretty hard at bringing all this to life. Nearly all the sidequests in the game are pretty buried and tough to even get going, often requiring returning to completed levels, and finding small changes within them. In the village, characters often don't give you much to go off of, and even at the end of the game, after playing the whole way through exploring heavily and talking to everyone, I had only completed about 5 out of 40 or so furniture request sidequests and had missed likely a lot of other sidequests altogether.
So much of the content this game has to offer is accessed through re-doing the relatively few levels it has to offer, and while they're half decent, they're also very simple and often pretty clunky. I wanted so much to see more of what this game has to offer, but having it locked behind what feels like doing chores is pretty disheartening.
The paffet system is also pretty useless, but to be fair, you don't need to make any at all to even finish the main game, and I love those cute little guys so I give it a bit of a pass. Having a little buddy following you around who's only purpose is to 'cheer you on' is so funny that I can't really be upset with it.
Overall it's still a good experience! It's just tough to see something with so much of a vision that comes so close to nailing everything I want out of a video game really kind of fumble the landing.
This was such a genuinely pleasant surprise of a game, the fairy-tale aesthetics makes it so adorable and cozy, and the easy difficulty adds to that comfiness greatly!
The character designs are so distinctive, each character (besides the recolors obviously) has an incredibly distinctive silhouette and are all so wonderfully colourful! They're simplistic in their personalities but I still felt myself caring deeply for them, they're a joy to interact with!
The level environments too are all so distinct and wonderfully created! I ended up playing each level at least thrice from how much I enjoyed them!
The only issue I really had with it is how wordy it can be, it's basically a platformer with the word-count of an RPG, but the dialogue is wonderful to be sure! It just interrupts gameplay really often. It's almost as bad as the gameplay interrupting cutscenes of Max Payne 3 but, obviously due to the different pacing of these two games it's nowhere near a big deal here.
This is such an incredibly easy recommend, I adored my time with it!
The character designs are so distinctive, each character (besides the recolors obviously) has an incredibly distinctive silhouette and are all so wonderfully colourful! They're simplistic in their personalities but I still felt myself caring deeply for them, they're a joy to interact with!
The level environments too are all so distinct and wonderfully created! I ended up playing each level at least thrice from how much I enjoyed them!
The only issue I really had with it is how wordy it can be, it's basically a platformer with the word-count of an RPG, but the dialogue is wonderful to be sure! It just interrupts gameplay really often. It's almost as bad as the gameplay interrupting cutscenes of Max Payne 3 but, obviously due to the different pacing of these two games it's nowhere near a big deal here.
This is such an incredibly easy recommend, I adored my time with it!
I genuinely hate giving this game a low score, because there's this interesting hook, conceptually speaking, of this lively town where these incredibly diverse cast of townsfolk that have their own personal issues that you resolve does appeal to a certain part of my personal sensibilities. The world draped in this fairly-tale dressing that informs much of the characters and the turmoil they go through that Porch resolves by exploring the world outside. These season-themed levels that Porch goes through are not necessarily traversed to reach the finish line but to explore these worlds and find the root cause of the problem of the characters that inhabit them and how it mirrors the townsfolk in Napple World.
However, there are just a number of little things that just bother me that really hinder my enjoyment of this game, whether it's the Paffet-remixing subsystem, or the unremarkable 2.5D platforming that I genuinely don't see improving beyond the first few levels I had played, or how long it just takes to do much of anything at the beginning.
This is clearly just a Not My Thing issue, thought the rather banal fixed-camera 2.5D platforming is certainly a problem. I can see myself warming up and even giving a higher score to Napple Tale if I decide to pick it up again and progress further. Really understanding the motifs of this game and further understand this fantasy world down-the-rabbit hole that Porch finds herself in. But as I was helping out a school whose piano had broken down, and I was self-aware of my own apathy as I was resolving the problem, I knew it was time to hang up the hat for now.
Also, it can not be understated how amazing Yoko Kanno's contribution to this game is.
However, there are just a number of little things that just bother me that really hinder my enjoyment of this game, whether it's the Paffet-remixing subsystem, or the unremarkable 2.5D platforming that I genuinely don't see improving beyond the first few levels I had played, or how long it just takes to do much of anything at the beginning.
This is clearly just a Not My Thing issue, thought the rather banal fixed-camera 2.5D platforming is certainly a problem. I can see myself warming up and even giving a higher score to Napple Tale if I decide to pick it up again and progress further. Really understanding the motifs of this game and further understand this fantasy world down-the-rabbit hole that Porch finds herself in. But as I was helping out a school whose piano had broken down, and I was self-aware of my own apathy as I was resolving the problem, I knew it was time to hang up the hat for now.
Also, it can not be understated how amazing Yoko Kanno's contribution to this game is.
An absolutely beautiful game that masterfully taps into an atmosphere of dreamlike childhood nostalgia and one of the best console platformers of the turn of the 2000’s. Napple Tale feels ahead of its time with its hub based, sidequest focused design as you have Porch help everyone around Napple Town and pop back into each season themed platformer levels to look for items and new areas. The platforming is solid enough, though a bit jank at times, and the little animal buddy system is some nice flavor though really I only used the ones that increased your mobility to unlock stuff around the levels. The boss fights are fine too, nothing super memorable, aside from the one where you don’t technically fight an actual boss because that segment is one of the highlights of the game. Don’t know how faithful the fan translation was but what I do know is that it did a great job giving the characters a whole bunch of charm and having some fun goofy names for the characters. Also that Yoko Kanno soundtrack, holy shit. Wild Wind and Folly Fall are among the best video game songs period. It’s a travesty this never left Japan because I guarantee you it would be considered one of the cult classics of the Dreamcast alongside the like of Jet Set, Skies of Arcadia, and Shenmue if it had. A shining star of a classic 3D platformer that desperately deserves more love than it gets.
YOKO KANNO.