Goal	Status
🏆 Finished game	✅
💯 Completionist	N/A
📋 High Score	N/A
📺 Video	Link

Review

Despite the many, many flaws present in the North American version of this action platformer, Popful Mail is a hard game to hate. The English version was localized by Working Designs, a studio known mostly for terrible writing, and it's true, the script is full of awful anachronistic pop culture references and "jokes" that started out bad and aged even worse. What some don't know is that they also butchered the mechanics of the game to make it more annoying and difficult. I don't know how much blame to assign them, but I've played other Nihon Falcom games and none of them feel this bad: your character moves so quickly that you have to painstakingly walk forward a few steps at a time to react to enemies appearing on the screen. There isn't enough invincibility time when you get hit, the knockback is annoying, and enemies do too much damage. They take too many hits to defeat, particularly the bosses, which are unbelievably obnoxious and tedious. All that said, the art and music are beautiful, and enough of the characters' charm still shines through to make this a game I saw through to the end.

Score

❤️️🖤️🖤️🖤🖤

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