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.

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!

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.

One of few games that manages to overcome any cynicism and let you simply indulge in its entirety. It may not be perfect or anything, but Napple Tale doesn't have to be. Purity is something that our mean-spirited industry can only use more of, so I think a few more of these couldn't hurt. It says something that on a console defined by ambitious genre-defying gems, this relatively basic little 3D platformer manages to stick out in the way it does.

When you play a game like this, the part of your brain that let's you rationalize what you just played goes off. Instead, all you can think about is how wonderful the experience was. Even if you can't make out the details, you'll always remember how it made you feel. Almost like a forgotten dream, floating in the wind...

I'm not done with this yet, but I love the mixture of JRPG storytelling, questing, and action platforming. Even if it's a bit janky and unbalanced. I've always felt eh about platforming games that are straight up just levels without some kind of thing to pace it out - Napple Tale is unique (similar to Nayuta no Kiseki or Gurumin) in that you get to return to a town that changes as you explore the stages. You even have to revisit stages to visit certain NPC homes, which gives the action levels an interesting mix of action platformer and JRPG.

The world is mysterious (as it's kind of a purgatory), the quests have a miyazawa kenji-esque whimsy to them. I like how you get to build furniture, even if that system is a bit repetitive. Curious to see where it goes! Also has some great music by Yoko Kanno. Inspiring art direction too. You can also jump on roofs to find stuff, which reminds me of the later Kingdom Hearts.

Every now and then I play a fairly old game that retroactively makes decades-worth of titles that came later within the same classification a little less impressive - that they're just not being very ambitious by comparison.

Napple Tale does and accomplishes SO MUCH despite being built on top of a relatively clunky foundation of iffy platforming. Radiant and imaginative and emotionally charged and I just adored it. Thank you Yoko Kanno for the new favourite soundtrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzOwy2nu70o

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.

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.

I feel like iyashikei-esque vibes are extremely difficult to pull off in video games. Usually the games most associated with that kind of vibe are more of the life sim variety, stuff like bokunatsu or animal crossing. So imagine my surprise to find that Napple Tale, a 3D platformer on the Dreamcast of all things, manages to capture those vibes flawlessly. To say this game is charming and cozy is a severe understatement. The game just has this dreamlike vibe to it that I really enjoy. The music is phenominal and hits all sorts of emotions. Tracks in the game manage to hit both slow and meloncholic vibes as well as warm and nostalgic vibes at the same time. You'd think such leisurely music wouldn't work well with a 3D platformer, but it fits the tone of the game perfectly. To put things in perspective, rather than psyching themselves up or entering with a YAHOO or something like most platformer characters would upon starting a new level, our protagonist takes calm, deep breaths of reassurance before beginning any level. That's the kind of vibe this game establishes. The visuals are wonderfully colorful as to be expected from a dreamcast title. The whole game focuses on this one town and its inhabitants, and there wasn't a single townsperson that I disliked. I guess the closest comparisons to other games I could make would be like Gurumin or a Love-de-lic title, in that the levels and main town are pretty intrinsically linked with one another, and assisting people with their various problems is the real meat of the game. Overall, I don't think I'll be forgetting this game anytime soon and its charm has managed to find a place in my heart. I'd highly suggest giving this a try, there's even a fan translation out there so there isn't even a language barrier anymore. (Can't comment on the quality of the fan translation as I didn't use it, but I've heard it was a 6-year long passion project and is of great quality.) It's a shame that this game is so obscure because more people should really know about this one. But yea. It's hard to accurately describe my feelings towards this game since its so focused on the games soul and atmosphere, but I hope I was able to convey it decently enough.


(shoutouts to rebeltaxi for elevating this game from something i only had a passing interest in to something I actively wanted to play. his overhyping of smashing drive is now forgiven)

ost stupenda, molti design particolari ed un gameplay normale senza infamie particolari poiché non è altro che un classico platform con qualche elemento rpg. Il gameplay ripetitivo comunque è coadiuvato da simpatiche boss fight a mio parere, anche se non c'è mai davvero una sfida. Da sottolineare poi quanto sia wholesome, va considerato indubbiamente una perla seppur comunque va detto che come platform è ripetitivo e il suo durare una decina di ore può essere un malus per alcuni non proprio abituati.

This has to be in the top 5 most interesting games I've ever played. Not for the gameplay or even the story, but just for the feel of the whole thing. Everything is slapdash and weird; it's like the games' seams are showing on purpose. The dialogue is fun and snarky, the levels are more engaging than I initially thought they'd be, and there are some legitimate emotional moments packed in there.

I was looking forward to 100%ing this, unfortunately I was having trouble getting certain events to occur, so I gave up on that. It's a shame, I definitely wanted to spend more time with this weird world.

In the end though, the standout aspect of this game is the soundtrack, which anyone who knows this game talks about. It really is great; I recommend listening to it if you don't feel like playing this.

I'll miss this game