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.