After playing through so many Paper Mario games a couple years ago, I'd been meaning to play through the others again, and the fun I had with Origami King pushed me to finally get to replaying the Wii and GameCube games. I couldn't find the GameCube one, so first up was the Wii game. While I have beaten this before, it was only once like 10+ years ago and it's not nearly as well engrained in my memory as the N64 and GameCube entries are. I remembered it not being my favorite, but liking the story all right. Where I'm at now that I've finished it is mostly just glad that I only paid 300 yen for this ^^;. It took me around 22 hours to play through the Japanese version of the game. While I didn't really rush through it, I definitely didn't go for 100%-ing the game.
Super Paper Mario starts with Mario & Luigi sitting at their living room table, as Luigi bittersweetly complains about how boring and peaceful everything is. Suddenly, a Toad rushes up announcing that Peach's Castle has been attacked, and the Bros. immediately rush over to Bowser's Castle to stop him! However, upon arriving, they're surprised to see that Bowser is at home simply preparing to make a move on Peach's Castle, and he's just as surprised as the Bros. are that she's been attacked. They're suddenly attacked by the evil Count Bleck (who is Count Noire in Japanese) who attacks Mario and spirits away Bowser, Peach, and Luigi. By having Peach marry Bowser, Bleck plans to use the power of chaotic love that spawns from it to destroy the universe and remake it in his own image. Mario awakens in Flipside (Hazama Town, in Japanese), where he meets Merlin and a Fairian named Tippi (who is simply "Anna" in Japanese). Mario then needs to go to a series of different worlds to collect the eight Pure Hearts to counteract the power of the chaotic love and defeat Count Bleck to save the universe! Compared to the other Paper Mario games (certainly the ones that came before it), even the basic plot summary is quite a lot to process, and that sets the tone for the rest of the game's writing. While there are funny and charming moments here and there, the massive bulk of the game is spent going from world to world engaging in neverending seas of uninteresting dialogue through one-note characters you almost never meet again, or through one-note characters you meet all the time who just never stop talking. Gone are the companions of previous games and in its place is Mario's companion Tippi, but she isn't much of a character until about 2/3rds through the game. While Peach, Bowser, and Luigi do eventually join up with Mario, they don't have a ton of commentary on the narrative either, and while the game's narrative does try to end strong, there just isn't enough buildup to actually make it feel all that significant. It feels like the seriously legwork of the interesting bits of the story are all held at the end, and the only things up to that point that really relate to it is foreshadowing too vague to really feel all that impactful even on a second playthrough. Between six main protagonists and six main antagonists (and those are conservative descriptions), the game is packed with too many characters with too little interesting to say, and the whole experience drags like heck because of it. The game has TONS of exposition that I just could not care about, and it really feels like a game whose main narrative thrust relies on you already caring about it without actually doing the work to give you reasons to care. The gameplay is very experimental and unique, but a lot of elements don't really flow together very well, and they end up exacerbating other problems the game has as a result. Super Paper Mario abandons the turn-based RPG style of the earlier games for an action RPG style that is also reminiscent of old Super Mario games. Rather than the chapter system of the old games, this game has stages with concrete beginnings and ends. There's sometimes an adventure game-like process to getting there, but generally it's just getting from the start to the end to get to the next bit. You walk around on a 2D plane and jump and hammer on enemies to deal damage (and characters like Bowser can breathe fire as well). There's a lot of platforming, with Peach having a parasol for hovering and Luigi having a spring jump to get up to really high places (which doubles as an attack). But the main draw is that Mario's special power is turning the world 3D to get up and around obstacles that the normal 2D perspective hides. In addition to that, in order to replace the companions whose narrative functions have been (fairly poorly) passed onto Tippi, their mechanical functions have been passed onto little fairies you find, who have purposes ranging from just a simple bomb to a hovering platform you can speed around on. All of this sounds good (albeit a little complicated) on paper, but the devil is in the details. The 2D nature of all of the level design makes them feel very same-y and unmemorable, as you don't even have turn-based battles to make you stay in a location longer to help get any kind of bearings to it. You're just getting from the start to the end. The 3D parts of them aren't much more interesting, as they're generally just barren rectangles, and you can only stay in 3D mode for so long before having to let the dimension-flipping power recharge, so that isn't really a viable method of exploration even if the 3D environments were interesting in the first place. The more adventure game-like stages are more memorable, but the puzzles in them range from annoying to blatant time wasting and backtracking. You're also constantly bringing up the quick menu to switch between characters and companion fairies, which breaks the flow of the already mediocre and flat platforming. Add in some fairly rough signposting, and you have a game with not just a boring story, but boring gameplay too. This is one of the only action games I can remember that I've nearly fallen asleep playing, and that in itself should say enough for just how good the actual gameplay is. The presentation of the game is pretty good, but still one of the weaker entries in the series. The graphics are colorful and bright, and the boss and character designs are also good. You don't spend all that much time with any of them, so the designs aren't super memorable, but what's there is fine. The music is also just an overall "fine" in quality. It may also have to do with just how much of the game is you just flying through levels, but none of the music really stood out to me as particularly memorable or good beyond just well suiting the atmosphere of the place you were in. None of it is bad, per se, but it's all definitely below most of the rest of the series for me. Verdict: Not Recommended. This really isn't a bad game, but with the experience I had with it, I simply cannot recommend it in good conscience. It's an interesting stepping stone from the turn-based RPG Paper Mario games to the turn-based action/adventure games they'd become, but aside from that it's mostly a pile of uncomplimentary experiments and gimmicks of both storytelling and game design. I think it's ultimately totally subjective, of course, but if I had to pick between the trudging, snail's pace design of this compared to the near total lack of a narrative in Sticker Star, I'd choose Sticker Star every time. At least that game has some pretty good music Xp
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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