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.