Paper Mario

One of the disappointing aspects of the N64 was its lack of RPG, and especially seeing the PlayStation get a new one almost a monthly basis. We had to wait until Ogre Battle 64 to get a proper one, and that was amazing one. A little later we got Paper Mario, and since I wasn't a fan of Super Mario RPG at all, I actually skipped it on release.

Now 20 years later it was finally time to give it a chance, and it was to my surprise that Glitchwave users consider it one of the greatest games of all-time. As a massive RPG fan, I definitely feel that it was a must that I play to see if it really held up that way. And do put it short: It does not. While I do think it improves a lot over its predecessor Super Mario RPG, it's still keeping many of the flaws from that game. One of my main issues here is that everything is dumbed down. The battles are typical turn-based RPG, but when you start you do 1 dmg and you receive 1 dmg. There isn't much strategy to that. As you progress timed actions are introduced which allows you to do more damage if you hit the button at the right time, and the same thing for defending which will make you receive less damage. So instead of having great tactics in your battles to succeed, you are reliant on your dexterity to succeed or not. So it doesn't help that the battles are ultra repetitive, you will face the same enemies over and over again and your battle strategy remains mind-numbing and really all about hitting those timed actions. I can sort of understand why some people would like that (mostly non-RPG fans), but as my favorite genre it's taking away the best aspect of it and replacing with something that I don't like.

The story itself is about as exciting as a Saturday morning cartoon. I think they did well intro transferring the Mario story into a RPG setting, but let's face it that saving Peach from Bowser isn't the most emotionally or engaging story there is. You will encounter all the familiar enemies from the classic Mario games, and sometimes as NPCs. There game is split into 8 chapters, and on each of them you will have to save a star in order to face Bowser in the last one. As you advance you will get partners that help you in your fight, for a total of 8 in total. Each have their own ability outside of battles that will help you solve the little puzzles, some of which are a little reminiscent of Zelda games but feel a lot less exciting. In battle you are allowed to bring one of them with you, which makes you a party 2. This also very much limits the battle options as you will always only have 2 actions per turn, and your decisions are usually just juggling between AoE attacks or killing the enemies one by one (and trying to hit those damn timed actions!)

While I feel the games systems are rather dumbed down compared to most RPGs, the game isn't all that easy. The enemies hit hard and a lot of the times you might have to backtrack to get your health back. But I feel this completely breaks the flow of the game, as you will have to face the same respawning enemies all over again and they get pretty boring with a variance of only 2-3 enemies per chapter. The decision making is in 2 areas only: leveling up where you have to choose between HP, Flower Points (pretty much MP) and Badge points. The Badge points allow you to equip badges where they will aid you in various types of boosts (you can buy the badges or find them while exploring). This is one of the bigger improvements over Super Mario RPG, you have a little bit more of choices to do, but it's not quite enough to call it a great RPG.

Overall this game could have been worse. I mean compared to Super Mario RPG, I enjoyed it quite more. It does feel more like an actual quest and doesn't abruptly end too early when you are just starting to get somewhere. Intelligent Systems did a good job at taking over the series from Square and managed to make it move forward. At its core it's not something that I love, so it's not really for me, but at least they added some more interesting aspects. I found the game a little long to get through, like most RPGs it struggles in the 2nd half to keep things interesting with no new game systems introduced. On the whole this is definitely overrated, and not even comparing to todays RPGs, the RPGs released 5-6 years prior to this were far more advanced and didn't have so many bad design spots, I cannot really sing its praise like other people do but I've also played worse games than this.