**Played via the Un-Working Designs Patch (Which if you consider playing this game, I definitely recommend that version). Slick has left a bit of an impression on me.

Popful Mail is a quaint little game. It's an Action RPG/Platformer released in 1994, by Nihon Falcom and Sega and reworked for the west by Working Designs. I had heard about this game while randomly doing research on Sonic the Hedgehog, and found out that the game was planned to be localized in the West as "Sister Sonic". Having played the game now I'm so glad that plan never went through. The charm and personality of it's characters and world should never be replaced.

That being said, the actual game, itself, kinda sucks to play. The physics they use in the game make everyone kind of feel like butter on the ground and jumping is very odd. You keep your momentum in the air, but when you want to go in a different direction, you keep that same momentum and just go darting from one side of the screen to another. It's very weird and, for lack of better words, clunky feeling. Makes the actual platforming you have to do in-game very difficult at times. It does not help that there's an ice world in the game that accentuates this issue tenfold.

Besides that the gameplay is rather standard. You get from Point A to B on the screen cutting through everything in your path for cash. You'll occasionally visit shops where you can grab food that can restore your health, trinkets that give you some extra buffs, and weapons and armor that'll make killing foes easier. It's extremely simple but I can appreciate that simpleness. What I don't however appreciate are the absolute lack of invincibility frames after you get hit by something. It lasts for roughly half a second, and then you'll just get hit again. This also made some sections and bosses in the game very frustrating, and this is the patched version. The original version absolutely jacks up the difficulty by making the damage multipliers do 3x the damage and makes you, the player, much weaker. They probably did this because, without it, you can finish the game in around 6 hours or less and it would feel like a waste of money on the consumer.

I didn't like the gameplay too much, but everything else is chef's kiss for the Sega CD. The game is vibrant and beautiful, and the soundtrack is full of earworms. The FMV cutscenes are also a treat and the comedic and cheesy tone they took with the dialogue, really makes the game feel like a saturday morning cartoon. I used to watch a lot of anime like this as a kid, so it hit home for me. Also the characters! The titular character, Mail, is a funny, tomboyish elf that'll take on any job as long as she's compensated well. I'm absolutely obsessed with her character design. She was my favorite character to play in the game because of her interactions with the other characters. Although she was weirdly ableist in one scene, but I assume that's just a weird translation quirk.

There's also characters Tatto, a somewhat soft spoken, and friendly magician, and Gaw, a little dragon-like gremlin who has a bit of an attitude. Thank God he's not the comic relief. That goes to another elf named Slick, who constantly finds himself in the party's way. I should also mention that almost all the interactions are fully voice acted and surprisingly very well voice acted as well. It surprised me to hear such lively performances from a medium where we usually don't get things like that for it's time. The actors and actresses breath so much life into the characters.

Overall, even though I did not much enjoy the "game" itself, I enjoyed every other aspect surrounding the game. If the controls and little quirks of the game were tweaked just a bit more, this game would be a certified cult classic. However as it is, the Un-Working Designs patch is the best we've got. I'd love to see Falcom come back to this series sometime, but that does not seem likely for the foreseeable future. With that being said, I'm claiming Mail as my OC. None of you can do anything about it.