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Game Debate #134: Paper Mario


Reed Rothchild

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30 members have voted

  1. 1. Rate based on your own personal preferences, NOT HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE

    • 10/10 - One of your very favorite movies of all time. Top 10.
    • 9/10 - Killer f'ing game. Everyone should play it.
    • 8/10 - Great game. Easy to recommend.
    • 7/10 - Very good, but not quite great.
    • 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it.
    • 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.
    • 4/10 - Meh. There's plenty of better alternatives to this.
    • 3/10 - Not very good.
      0
    • 2/10 - Pretty crappy.
      0
    • 1/10 - Horrible in every way.
      0
    • 0/10 - The Desert Bus of painful experiences. You'd rather shove an icepick in your genitals than play this.
      0
    • Never played it, but you're interested.
    • Never played it, never will.


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Cool game, worth a playthrough, would recommend.

In context of the other Mario RPGs I do think it comes off a little middle of the road without quite excelling. TTYD has a few particular pain points but in general is just kind of a straight improvement.

And that first hour or so suffers a bit particularly on replays. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make Action Commands something you have to unlock should be shot.

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Love this game. Easy 9/10.

When this game came out I refused to play it though. This is because Super Mario RPG on SNES was one of my favorite games of the time (still is) and this game was announced as Super Mario RPG 2, which naturally made me very excited. Once I saw this looked nothing like this SMRPG and ended getting a name change to Paper Mario, I refused to play this game. It looked so kiddy and dumb to me at the time. Eventually I came around and played it several years later and ended up loving it. Not quite as much as SMRPG but just barely a notch below it. Still an N64 favorite for me.

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Great game! Had a ton of false starts over the past couple decades, but I eventually managed to get all the way through last year - after playing TTYD which in hindsight might be a bit of a mistake, because a lot of the gags in the sequel are kinda building on what happens in Paper Mario 64, such as the seemingly pointless sequences where you're playing as Peach which when standing on their own just make a ton more sense in the original game.

Although it seems the world is much more vanilla at a glance, I do find the original game a lot more interesting. There are some super clever ideas, with the mirror themed dungeon really taking the cake, and most places have actual level design compared to the straight backtrack-heavy corridors of TTYD. All in all, Paper Mario 64 got the formula right the first time around, with just the combat being a bit too simplistic to really carry the game. That's of course something Bug Fables fixes to a massive degree - and as I've said repeatedly in here, any Paper Mario fan who still hasn't played that, really needs to get going 😄 

Edited by Sumez
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34 minutes ago, Sumez said:

That's of course something Bug Fables fixes to a massive degree - and as I've said repeatedly in here, any Paper Mario fan who still hasn't played that, really needs to get going

Can confirm. Sumez held a gun to my head and made me play it. It’s an amazing game, I’m about halfway through and I feel like it does surpass the Paper Mario games.

Like a lot of indie games these days, they take inspiration from the classics and make it better than the original. Anyway, enough about bug fables…

9/10. Really love this game. Definitely add it to your 2023 backlog challenge 🙂

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So far at this rate I'm the lowest grade and I'm comfortable with it as it very well deserved the 4/10 I hit it with.  The game is meh, but despite that, you could do worse in the limited RPG spread on the system not that the bar is all that high which is all the worse. 🙂

I'd tell someone to play Quest definitely before this one, also Hybrid Heaven and Aidyns Chronicles too before this first party flotsam...but I'd not wish shadowgate on someone even more.

The problem with Paper Mario is not the story, it's not the graphics and audio package either, nor is it the basic side of the RPG mechanics.  The part I tank it with is the gameplay design, the demoralizing and disgustingly forced gimping of Mario and friends so badly you're forced to have a musical sense of timing and rhythm (think Rhythm Heaven franchise that has no visual queues to the beat) or you will eventually lose.  I don't mean lose by being bad at RPGs, not getting the prompts, or just bungling, but bad because the game hard limit caps how much you can level up like any normal RPG allows.

If you try and grind a stretch of land before a boss eventually a pack of goomba worth 5xp per battle will immediately when you hit level X drop to just 1xp per battle...1 XP!  The game forces you to suffer miserably if you can't time every movement of battle.  They give you such few HP, attack, and defense timing is forced or you will die, it's unavoidable, you can't buy/find enough curatives to get around that.  SMRPG had the timing but it was 100% optional, helpful to add like a 25% boost to a hit/defense if that, but you could just level up and slug it out, grinding capable.  Future Paper Mario games didn't pull this shit either, nor did the more of a SMRPG spinoff the Mario & Luigi RPG series do this either, all optional, but that first in franchise N64 turd was rhythm heaven in disguise.  It took what really would have been one of the best games, and best RPG for sure and made it one of the utter worst hiding behind some eye and ear candy to cover up the garbage under the hood.

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I'm pretty sure that it's a game I'll enjoy, as the little I have played before was fun. That said, I haven't played enough to give it any kind of rating at this point. Maybe it's a good candidate for my 2023 backlog list. I'm notoriously bad at seeing RPGs through to completion but the other games in the Mario RPG series tend to be a lot shorter on average, so maybe this is one I actually can finish.

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...So Tanooki, I'm baffled. I don't recall The Action Commands here being at all hard or particularly different than in TTYD and you saying they're both just doesn't square for me?

Any chance you had a screwed up controller, bad emulation, or were just going through a particularly bad/weird time while playing it? Age when playing this vs. the others?

 

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Awesome game like its sequel. My favorite N64 game, and possibly also my favorite game in the series. It was my only contribution to the beat the N64 library topic this year. This game and TTYD are far more enjoyable than Super Paper Mario (which I played through earlier this year), which was where there series started to go downhill somewhat IMO. i still have my Paper Mario Player's Guide and issue 141 of NP that I've had since 2001, as well as some printings from the game's site.

I'd like to get Bug Fables sometime. I actually saw a sealed collector's edition copy of that game at an Antique Store a few months ago. Wonder if it's still there.

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Edited by MegaMan52
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2 hours ago, MagusSmurf said:

...So Tanooki, I'm baffled. I don't recall The Action Commands here being at all hard or particularly different than in TTYD and you saying they're both just doesn't square for me?

They aren't that hard, but some of them can be pretty obscure, I think a lot the defensive ones can be very hard to get consistently. But that's the other thing, the game really doesn't demand that you hit them either. You can miss most of them and still get by quite well. Someone around here is making up facts again 😄 

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17 hours ago, MagusSmurf said:

...So Tanooki, I'm baffled. I don't recall The Action Commands here being at all hard or particularly different than in TTYD and you saying they're both just doesn't square for me?

Any chance you had a screwed up controller, bad emulation, or were just going through a particularly bad/weird time while playing it? Age when playing this vs. the others?

 

It was a good controller on original hardware.  I've tried it originally when it came out, a couple times since again whenever I've found a second hand cart after the fact.  The actions are fine, I had no button problems.

It's the forced rhythm/timing mechanic they require so you don't get killed while battling, actually defending really to be specific.  As someone else pointed out, the defensive ones are far more touchy and precise, and given the grossly low level of HP they force upon you, you're kind of screwed if you don't have good rhythm in the game.

Old SMRPG or TTYD it's not stiff like that, sure it's there, but it's not where you're stuck, you can level up like a normal RPG to get around the timing thing, but Paper Mario you can't.  I can't do rhythm heaven even through the training stage on GBA, can't get the shitty hear it to time it mechanic of Mother 3 either, I can't hear/feel the beat so I get roughed up.  Rhythm Heaven I sold off because of it, Mother 3 I just grind levels, TTYD I grind levels, Paper Mario I can't so the game is garbage to me since it's basically impossible to finish.

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Events Team · Posted

I gave it a 5.  I couldn't get into it.  Really, I think it's pretty meh from my little bit of exposure but I really like the art style so it gets an extra point.  I always dig unique graphics or mechanics which this game definitely has, it's just not for me.  Most likely the RPG aspect turned me off.  IDK, it's been at least 5 years since I last attempted and I no longer own the cart, or a 64 for that matter.

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I'm giving it a 6. Just didn't really click with me. I played through the whole thing, but I kinda had to force myself to get through it. I wouldn't say it's bad, but it just didn't feel special to me in any way. Plus, I think the loads of quirky dialogue you have to sit through turned me off a bit, as well.

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