Paper Mario is a JRPG style video game developed by Intelligent Systems for the Nintendo 64 and was released in North America in 2001. Though Paper Mario is not officially a squeal some would call it the emotional sequel to Mario RPG. Since it is the second Mario role-playing game to be released following Super Mario RPG. Though itself got squeals like Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year-Door, Super Paper Mario, and more. Though I am still waiting on Carboard Mario. The game received critical acclaim upon release and was often included in many of the “best video games” lists of its time. Paper Mario is set inside of a storybook, where Bowser uses the magic of his second in command, Kammy Koopa, to steal the star rod from the start spirits and use its power to… you guessed it… kidnap the princess… like always.

Pros:

If you have been following my blog you know I love me some JRPGs, so I will try not to let my bias shine through too much. That being said this franchise comes from a platformer background and it really has some of the best mixes of platforming and JRPG that I have ever seen. As you battle in the classic turn-based JRPG style, you can use various button timings to improve your attack and defense. while you are roaming the world view, you can jump on your enemies and such to help you get an early strick in the combat mode. Once you get strong enough you can just jump on the enemies and kill them right there, skilling the whole battle mode. The characters you get for your party are pretty great and well varied, though its a bit weird fighting alongside creators you would normally call your enemies in past Marios. They each have their own power-ups that can help you in battle and in the world view. Mario also gets powerups with using what are called badges. There are a bunch of them and you can really have some fun customizing your favorite set up since you are limited based on how many Badge Points (BP) you have. There is a handful of other random fun things you can do in the game like running tedious errors, delivering mail, and Cooking items together. The last one can be fun with interesting combinations, but you are limited in how many items you can carry so there is a bit of back and forth involved if you want to build up a rocking inventory. One of the best parts of the game though I think are the graphics. They are really great for how much they lean into the paper feel. Almost every area you battle it has its own battle screen background that’s done great in the paper pop up book kind of a way and as you explore the world various areas “unfold” in your surroundings to give you different views. This guy loves it… maybe a little bit too much, but he sums it up really well.

Cons:

There is nothing catastrophically wrong with it, it’s just a bit lackluster in a bit too many areas. First of all most would call this one too easy of a game. There are puzzles throughout the game, but they are really just bumps in the rough. It also gets a bit anti-climatic at the end since pretty much everything you need to bet any boss is spelled out from you beforehand and the boss battle with Bowser has no real difference to it compared to any other boss battle you have had up to this point. One of the things that really annoyed me at the beginning is that you can’t experience from “weaker” enemies. So as you level up, past enemies start to give you no experience what so ever. So you can never really stay in one area and grind for your level ups. This was actually kind of a good thing later on since it forced me to keep moving forward. However you can still get caught in a now pointless battle with some weaker enemies and walk away with no experience points… you also have a limit to how far you can level up your HP/FP/BP which makes the game pretty linear and I think kills any kind of minor replay value it had left. There is a decent amount of wandering back and forth at the start of the game before you unlock the teleporting pipes which makes the game take even longer when you are trying to run away from pointless enemies littered throughout. The music isn’t bad, just again, a bit lackluster. It has many motives hidden throughout that play off of past Mario games, which is fun, but it doesn’t scream of any kind of new amazing soundtrack. Not saying it was bad, but there were only a few new decent songs and the rest was more or less the same old, same old. Just like kidnapping the princes… same old same old.