Potata: Fairy Flower

If these minor technical blips are ironed out, we have no qualms in recommending Potata: Fairy Flower. It’s an odd name for a game, to be sure, but if you’re a fan of puzzle platformers and enjoy the magical fantasy tone on display here, you’ll have a great time over the course of its 10-hour runtime, and we’re more than looking forward to seeing an eventual sequel.

Far for being innovative in its form, Potata: Fairy Flower is still a charming title, thanks to its colorful universe and brazen protagonist. Quite short, the game presents some very few challenging puzzles but for the most part, it's an accessible experience.

Potato looks and plays great, but there are many flaws in its design. Overall, the experience can be enjoyable, as long as you understand you’ll be facing a few issues along the way.

I think the problem is that even if Potata: Fairy Flower does a lot of things well enough, it doesn’t do anything incredibly well. Even if, as I said, it looks better than plenty of other platformers — and, for that matter, it’s got more competent gameplay and a more engaging story than many of its competitors — there are also plenty more platformers that do all of those things much better than this game does. If you just want something that’s good enough, it’ll do, but I feel like there are lots of other games out there that you should probably play first.

At most, some people could consider Potata: Fairy Flower to be fine. The platforming is good enough, and the game's multiple endings provide a reason for a few replays of the short journey. Even the combat is serviceable once you recognize the game's faint tells about landing hits or being hit. However, from the boring puzzles to the bad translation and the performance and graphical issues, there's enough here to drain one's enthusiasm for the title. There are worse platformers out there, but there are also loads of other better platformers to enjoy before spending time with this one.

When Potata: Fairy Flower is doing what it does best – tense platforming among open, branching levels loaded with danger – it’s excellent. Sure, it can be punishing at times but it has been quite some time since a game made my palms as sweaty as this game did at times. For that, it has to be commended. It’s a shame these moments are offset by meandering, sometimes nonsensical quests coupled with reams of text to read, some of which are confusing, and puzzles which grind the game to a halt.

Potata: Fairy Flower is a cheerful little adventure filled with tricky platforming, puzzles, and challenging boss battles. It will not win any awards for originality and it falls flat compared to the top games in the genre. But in the end, some missteps do not stop Potata: Fairy Flower from being a surprisingly enjoyable experience for the whole family.

Once upon a time there was a platformer that aspired to be something good. It was called Potata: Fairy Flower, and tried to blend different things, in order to be unique. Its creators thought the world of it, but did not do their best to make it worthwhile. And it never did. In the end, Potata started her journey in a very simplistic and minimalistic manner, that does not comply with modern standards.