Summary
Easily one of the best games to ever hit the Sega CD.
The Good
Popful Mail was one of the last games to come out for the legendary (Night Trap, anyone?) Sega CD. You see this game talked about on RPG websites, but at heart, it's a simple platformer with some RPG sparkles mixed in, like being able to talk to people, buying power-ups and weapons from stores in villages, and meeting and rounding up group members as the game goes on. It's very similar to Zelda 2 for the NES in that you move around in an overworld view, but when you enter an area it becomes a side scrolling game. It's a good game to pick up and play when you're tired of the FMV schlock on the Sega CD, and when you finally finish Snatcher, this is a dandy game to turn to. The anime sequences are extremely well done. They look almost exactly like cartoons- kudos to the artists working on the game. I've heard people gripe about the music played throughout the game, but I had no problems with the BGM. The in-game graphics are colorful, but mostly average, but the voice acting is suprisingly well-done for its time, and almost every bit of dialogue is spoken. One of the game's major selling points was that it claimed to have almost 3 hours of voice-overs, and that figure is probably correct.
The Bad
The thing that turned me off right off the bat was the game's name. Shakespeare asked, "What's in a name?", but a main character called "Popful Mail" is just plain stupid. I'm sure that translates from something meaningful in Japanese, but in English it sounds silly. The thing I hated even more that was the fact you only have one life. As you may know, whenever you get hit by an enemy in a platform game, you get a short "invincibility period" where your character flickers and nothing can hurt you for a few seconds while you move away from whatever hit you. In Popful Mail, the invincibility period is very short, so you don't have enough time to move away from the enemy before it can inflict damage again. As a result, your health goes quickly, and when you die, that's it- game over. Luckily, you can save at any point in the game, but if you didn't, too bad. You can continue from a saved game, but if you didn't, you start right at the beginning again. So a warning to all who play this game- save often. Other than those two points, I don't have any problems with this game.
The Bottom Line
I think this is the perfect game to introduce non-RPG gamers to the role-playing genre, because it barely is one. A player like me who has always yearned for a light, creamy RPG found much to love here. If you own a Sega CD, definitely pick this one up. It's one of the best games you'll ever play on the system, and maybe even one of the games you'll ever play, period.
