Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream

"Dedicated to the idea of a magical boy anime starring five black guys who combine to form ULTRABLACK."

I first heard about this game from EGM. They had said the game was much like Klonoa, but that it was never going to be released here. Being a big fan of the Klonoa series I desperately wanted the game.

Even though the game was released in the year 2000, I never got to play the game until very recently after borrowing the game from a friend of mine ( Whom is also a reviewer on this site.) that happens to have a vast collection of video games. But when he lent it to me told it actually wasn’t like Klonoa at all. When I started playing it I realized that he was right.

Gameplay:9 Yes this game is a platformer, but it also has some RPG elements to it, so you could say that it’s actually a platformer/RPG.

More than feel like Klonoa I actually though this game felt a lot Zelda. I can't really say why, that's just how I felt.

Arsia, the main character is very easy to control. She possesses a staff to strike enemies with and she can do a double jump. But I did a have a small problem with the double jump though. If you don’t tap jump again right at the peak of your jump you wont do it. I would sometimes fall in pits because of this.
You start the game out in a town where you can talk to people and gather information or you can use a machine to create Animals that do things for you ( Such as creating a platform to reach higher places or restoring some of your health.) and you can also use the machine to create items that are placed all around the town. Most the items though serve no real purpose except for a few that are needed to trigger key events.
There is a total of 28 monsters and 43 items for you to create using Resipo’s. You will get these by gathering items in the levels of the game & extracting the Resipo’s from them in the machine room.
The town is split up into 4 different sections. ( Spring, Summer, Autumn, & Winter.) These sections all lead to areas in the game were you will be doing all the platforming.
There are 3 areas in each of the 4 sections. While some of stages are readily accessible some require you to do specific tasks before being able enter them and if it wasn’t for the Walkthrough on this web site I would never have found some of them.

At the end of every area (Except one) you will fight a boss. Most of the bosses though, are sadly very easy. Largely because of the fact that, unlike in most platformers, the boss are not temporarily invincble after being hit. You can just run up to some of them and keep whacking at them. There was only one boss fight that actually was fairly challenging. And it was not the last boss. It was the boss in ''Once Summer''.

This my main reason for giving the gameplay a 9 instead of a 10.
Of course it is very obvious when you boot the game up, that this is a game intended for a younger audiences so it is understandable.

But despite the weak bosses I still found it very fun to play. This is the only import game I’ve ever been able to play through that actually requires a fair amount of time to beat. Even great games like the Langrisser series can’t seem to hold my interest long enough.
It took me around 16 hours to beat. If it was in English and I didn’t have to use a walkthrough for it, it probably would have taken me a couple hours longer because since I don’t know Japanese I just looked at the walkthrough to find out where I had to go to next. I also probably would have done some of the side quests to, but I saw no reason to do any of them without knowing what it was that I was doing.

Story:N/A I can’t really give a rating for this since I don’t know Japanese. But I will tell you what I was able to piece together myself.
You are Arsia a teenage girl with hair that defies the laws of gravity, who is pulled into the land of Napple and is asked by a being known as ''Strynap'' to save it from destruction.
That’s pretty much all I can tell you.

I am sure though that this game has some amusing dialogue because it’s got some rather odd characters in it.

Graphics:9 While these may not be the best graphics on the DC, I still thought that they were very nice looking.
The characters for the most part are cute looking, since this is meant to be a little kids game after all. But like I said before, others are also very bizarre looking. A good example of that would be Frocar, a Frog that is always riding around in a car, even in his house.
Also, Arsia has some cute facial expressions.

Arsia and Strynap are the only characters in the game that change their facial expressions.

All of the levels are made to represent the season that they are aligned to. In the Summer area all the levels are sunny and in the Winter area all the levels have snow in them. My personal favorite levels are ''Once Summer'' and ''the Crystal Palace''. I liked Once Summer a lot because it was such a beautiful level and the water in it looked nice, even if it didn’t really look like real water.

Sound:8 The sound is kind of a mixed bag here. While the music that just plays through all the areas in the game is very good, whenever there is music that has vocals in it, it usually sounds horrible. With the exception of maybe one or two of them. Because for some reason, most of them just do not seem to sound right.

Every single area in the game has a different tune to it. Every single boss also has a different tune.
My favorite tunes in the game are: The music it makes in the church in the town. I found it very beautiful.
The boss music in Once Summer. I liked this one because the music was really upbeat and made me want to dance because it made me think of the Mambo.
And lastly, the music it made in the Door puzzle in ''the Secret Garden''.
The music sounded both very cool and beautiful at the same time.
I was sad that it only made it in one place. I really wish I had thought to record it.

Difficulty:5 As I said before this game is not very hard for an experienced gamer. But it would probably be somewhat more difficult if a child were playing it.

Replay:7 This game does have few good reasons you might want to play it again. Like finding all of the Resipo’s to create all Animals and Items. Plus there are all the side quests you can do.
I’ll probably never play through game again myself because my only drive to play it again is to hear the groovy door puzzle music. That is unless I learn Japanese. Then I’ll play through the game again and try to do everything.

Buy or Rent: Since this game is an import it is very unlikely that you can rent it anywhere. (Unless you happen to live in Japan.) So you will probably have no choice but to buy it if you want play it.
If you like Platformers and RPG’s then there is no way you could possibly go wrong with this game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/09/02, Updated 11/05/03