Paper Mario Tetralogy

Paper Mario

Has it been a decade already since this spiritual sequel of Super Mario RPG went retail?

I remember when I skipped a day of school once specifically, calling in sick because I had to continue playing this game at some point. And, admittedly, I also have a confession to make about this(I cried during the credits thinking Mario would never return), plus in many ways I see Paper Mario as the last childhood game I played, before the internet, high school and other new events arrived.

When it comes to RPG's, everyone has their favorite. It is always a massive distinction, resulting into popular ones such as Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger, or underrated ones such as EarthBound and Suikoden II. Despite many of them sharing the same traditional RPG standards, the debates continue to blaze constantly.

I might have truly disliked Final Fantasy X, but plenty of people hail it as one of the best, if not the best in the franchise. Therefore I think that certain RPG's can be very personal for some, and for others very out there.

Paper Mario, for me, is my personal favorite and best RPG. The game's design, content and gameplay are the prime reasons for being so. For being the only worthy RPG and one of the last games released on the N64, it surely was a triumphant way to go.

Intelligent Systems, the incredible first party developer for Nintendo, is responsible for what has become another sub series for Mario. They have an amazing portfolio consisting of series such as Advance Wars and Fire Emblem. 

They took the basic combat gameplay from Super Mario RPG, but decided to change many things considerably. It is no secret that Paper Mario plays fairly simple. For instance, damage charts start at the scale of 10, as Mario will hit not harder than 1 point of damage when the adventure begins.

The world is comprised of paper objects, allowing the player to interact with their "paperistic physics", resulting in both visual as well as gameplay enhancements. As you wander around in this pretty big land, the NPC's, or non playable characters provide not just any dialogue, but humoristic, helpful and curious ones.

It's sequel by the way might have even better dialogue, but the reason why this part of the game is so good is because of how closely it is connected with the gameplay and the world. The story, game mechanics and the controls combining RPG and platform segments just work in harmony here.

It has been the only game in my life where I wept for the future when I was thirteen. I did so, in combination with the charming ending and thinking by myself, when the internet was still unknown territory for me, that this was the final Mario game(the GameCube and Luigi's Mansion for that matter were still unknown to me.) Thinking about it now, Paper Mario was the last game I played before the internet became a part of my daily activities.

And there is so much to see and so much to do. From discovering star pieces to being a postman to experimenting with cake recipes and intriguing badges, opitional boss fights, secret areas, empowering your partner allies even further and more.  

Personally, Paper Mario is my favorite Mario game out of them all. When speaking of Mario platformers, that would have to be Super Mario Bros. 3. But Paper Mario has such a
charm to it, because of its simplicity, it's graphics, it's humoristic dialogue and its sublime soundtrack that it beats out even the best of the traditional platformers.

Rating: 9.6 

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

An explosive sequel with many new fun locations to be found, and the difficulty actually got harder. Mario will have to unlock the mystery of The Thousand Year Door(and beyond!) and battle Grodus's army simultaneously.

As was previously happening as well, Peach will once again have minor parts during the chapters. Bowser and Luigi return as well, but this new world including Rogueport is breathing with interactive events and has such sights to show you that first time players will be in for a massive ride.

I don't recall anyone ever saying that TTYD was a bad game, because everyone seems to like it as their favorite Paper Mario game. And for very good reasons; it's highly replayable, very humoristic and has a rich soundtrack that rivals the original.

Come to think of it, it's in my top 3 GameCube games. The long adventure brings with it new ways of interacting with the paper elements to be found, including moving between very small spots normally inaccessible, rolling up and of course your partners like the previous one have their own attacks during the battles and outside them.

Also returning is a special detective chapter, when you will have to solve a murder mystery, which in reality is one of the many examples I can give when it comes to variety by the content. Each boss battle is once again accompanied usually by very cool battle themes, and the badge system, that offers various effects during battles, is developed even better now.

The references and cameos are too many to count, but so is the original content to be found as well! From a certain boss that steals names to intermissions with Bowser to an audience cheering the contestants during battles, The Thousand Year Door is worthy of being an amazing game to remember.

Rating: 9.4 

Super Paper Mario

Solid mix of a platformer with RPG elements and originality regarding flipping from 2D and 3D perspectives, but a huge consequence was made for this; the difficulty is way easier than the RPG's before Super Paper Mario. 

The bosses are around the same as TTYD's, but the chapters themselves have become less entertaining for me, probaply because I beat this game much quicker than the actual previous RPG's. Not only that, interactions somehow became less exciting as well.

What is done well though is the fact that you can play with the 4 most popular characters, which are Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser, each with their own movesets. Alongside your new quirky partners called Pixls, this time you are facing Count Bleck with his interdimensional plans of dominion.

The story and the music wasn't on par, but I appreciate Intelligent Systems for doing something different. The dialogue is still written well, and some chapters were fun to do such as the Bitlands or the Underwhere. Other chapters however can be absolutely frustrating.

Rating: 8.4 

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

The latest entry turns out to have another premise, as stickers have become a general theme where you will have to collect them in order to use them as ammunition for the upcoming battles. It's up to Mario to save Princess Peach from a mute less Bowser once again.

Sticker Star is the first portable version as well, offering some pretty 3D graphics combined with simple and colorful art to blitz your screens. Not to mention the overall theme of a paper world remains a solid tradition to use.

I liked moving the Nintendo 3DS around just to see the stickers shine pretty. Paperization is your new tool available for solving puzzles involving Things, Scraps and normal stickers. Scraps are random peel able objects which must be rotated or switched with locations in order to progress.

Things however are realistic objects such as a bowling ball, a mobile phone, a baseball bat and much more which most of the time can be devastating attacks to use at battles. They are sometimes also needed to progress much akin with Scraps, but when they are needed, it can be cryptic to either find them in the first place, or know which one to use for maximum effect.
 
While the battle system remains the same at it's core most similar to the first two games, stickers being involved as limited attacks means that you will have to collect them in the fields or buy them at shops in order to be able to fight back.

Partners, or even other playable characters have been dropped. Your only assisting character will be Kersti, a sticker fairy who will do the talking for you, offer minor hints and she looks similar to the previous Pixls.

As for the chapters, they have been divided upon into smaller sections in the form of a familiar world map setting much like the many 2D Mario platformers. Okay, I guess there's nothing wrong with that. But what did lower the overall enjoyment I was anticipating is the lack of such overall enjoyment in the first place.

The comedy was minor in amount, the NPC's were mostly toads, the bosses were generic giant versions of normal enemies and forgettable apart from Petey Piranha's reappearance, but perhaps worst of all is that the normal battles are fundamentally not even needed.

You see, you only collect coins and a few stickers each time, not experience points. What personally happened for me is that I ran away from battles more than that I fought them, because there simply was no urgency to do them.

Collecting coins and stickers would be better to do so during the levels themselves and at the end of them. As for side quests, there are optional Things to be found as well as Secret Doors to insert at almost every level, mostly to get more stickers and Things.

The soundtrack was lacking but nothing really bad. Also, because Miyamoto was more involved, original characters have almost completely deliberately been left out because of some reason I cannot remember at the moment. Thus enemy design is all too familiar, much like with the recent New Super Mario Bros. games.

So Sticker Star turns out to be the least entertaining Mario RPG yet, next to Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. The lack of an exciting adventure with fun NPC's, entertaining side quests, partners or playable characters and a better balanced battle system means that it sadly is nothing more than an average RPG at best.

Rating: 7.2