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

Quintet Quadrilogy

This is an old IGN blog, but I decided to update it because despite being average games, they did leave behind an impression of afterthoughts even to this day. Mostly because of the themes they play around with.

Courtesy goes to Hardcore Gaming 101 for laying the connection between the original trilogy and the fourth title which I recently beat. Technically, The Granstream Saga isn't developed by Quintet but by Shade, who had staff members of the former. Still, I like the title for this particular post.

Soul Blazer

Soul Blazer is where it all started. Well, almost everything, since some things were definitely borrowed from Quintet's previous game ActRaiser, which by the way is also worthwhile to play. You emerge from some kind of godlike altar where The Master informs you of the situation and asks you to fulfill your destiny, which is releasing every kind of souls in the world, be it human, animal or wooden objects such as doors or even vines. 

The action RPG gameplay is fun, but quickly starts to get repetitive as well because of the way the enemies spawn constantly like a precursor to tower defense and how each level in the game starts basically the same and ends the same. There are some memorable songs such as Dr.Leo's lab dungeon, his painting and after listening to it more my personal favorite being the Mountain of Souls. 

The reward feeling is nice for releasing the souls, but even that becomes so repetitive that you either want to drop the game or finish it quickly, like me. In overall, it's a good start, but in the end it remains a decent game with not much to offer other than hacking a lot of enemies, freeing souls and repeating the process.

+Fast-paced hack and slash action RPG.
+Rescue souls in order to restore parts of several villages.
+Challenging moments including some of the bosses.

Rating: 7.3

Illusion of Gaia

My personal favorite out of the four by far. Now why is that, when Terranigma is favored by pretty much everyone else? I will get to that game soon, but first let me explain this. Like HG101 already said, this is the odd one of the bunch, focusing on 1 literal forced route to take only, because once you are done with a town or a dungeon, you will never access that part of the game again in Illusion of Gaia. Quite an unusual game design in the way it is executed, but it works in a way. 

Not only does this contain some very successful songs such as Sky Garden, The Guardian and my personal favorite Angkor Wat, it also has a likable cast that goes through some heavy emotional moments. Perhaps the very reason I talked about that unusual game design before and because of the presented story is why I enjoy reading up on their emotions so much throughout the game.

 
I really like the action RPG gameplay this time, where you will have to defeat every enemy on each screen to advance further or to level up your main character Will, who by the way can morph into 2 other forms as well. It is perhaps the most difficult game out of them all... yeah it is, no question about that. I mean Illusion of Gaia instantly throws at you one of the most difficult first bosses in any game I had played back then as a kid. Mu remains the worst place to be though.

I am intrigued by the established ancient civilizations this game provides, and the brief fantasy history lessons it teaches gamers, also talking about the majority of the dungeons found here, which are awesome and most of them are even based on real life locations.

Backpacking towards these locations in the world is still possible and so far, I have visited Cambodia. There's a strong possibility that a next "dungeon" will also be visited this year, and it would be fun to complete the others as well such as Mu being partially based on Eastern Island in Chile.

Illusion of Gaia has memorable parts. For example, the gold ship part was surreal to say the least. The Nazca Lines being the entry point for the Sky Garden was a nice touch, and who could forget about the Russian Roullete part involving deadly alcoholic drinks?

And with a nice side quest involving finding red gems as well, this is a one of a kind game, where I would had liked to see more of, but I also think at the same time that this story is over and there is no need for continuation.

+Dungeons based on real life locations.
+Large graphics for the sprites, buildings and effects.
+Memorable bosses such as Castoth and the Vampires.
+Likable cast.
+Diversity in enemy design plus 3 different playable characters available. 

Rating: 7.9 

Terranigma

 

Oh, how so very dissapointing. Don't get me wrong, because this game really started off great, full of mystery, a beautiful unfolding plot and good action RPG gameplay. But this game is split up for me into two parts.

First, you start with the awesome part, which contains Crysta, the 5 towers, resurrecting the plants, animals and humans containing several dungeons each and finally the mirage town which turns out to be a zombie infested town in actual reality, a great twist right there during the era of the SNES.

But then comes the terrible part in my opinion, which starts once you get to be introduced to a second Ella at the surface world. Right at that moment, inconsistent parts appear where it would be impossible to know how to proceed at some random points.

Unless you were using a guide to navigate to lessen the frustration, repetitiveness is written everywhere including Terranigma's music, the many similar area's and even the enemies themselves. It really dragged down for what was done at the first half.

Furthermore, the magic system straight out sucks and is pretty much useless EXCEPT for 1 boss battle, the bosses were boring and the backtracking parts were painful as well. I can't recall the exact backtrack parts, but they are definitely there to be found in the terrible part.

Which is all really too bad. Because the reason I decided to go back to this game and beat it as an adult was because of the best song in the game, which is Mountains. You already know what I'm talking about here. Because of that song, I wanted to see beyond the zombie town, which is the point where I got stuck as a kid and never could figure out how to proceed further in the game, yeah.

But even this song was so horribly repeated so many times that it somehow has become a lesser song to listen to. How sad. Terranigma's soundtrack however remains pretty, but it's second part of the gameplay really isn't, with the surface map being revealed as a mirror reflection towards the real world and having all of these towns that can shape their prosperities slightly by your actions.

That isn't really a deal, unless you could excuse the wacky random characters, the cryptic proceedings, the repetitiveness of things and the dull moments. About the only part I liked during this second half was Beruga's Lab.

In overall, in the end, it's a dissapointing game for me. Even after seeing the much loved ending by everyone and understanding it and how the underworld and the surface world work, or how Light and Dark work in this game, I wasn't thrilled by all of it, unlike Illusion of Gaia's ending. 

+Strong themed songs.
+Heavy emphasis upon ideologies.
+Arguably the best resurrection plot of all four games.
-Repetitive at locations and enemies.
-2nd half is almost a complete dissapointment after the zombie town.

Rating: 6.6

The Granstream Saga

 

As a spiritual successor towards the resurrection trilogy from Quintet on the SNES, The Granstream Saga is sadly the least qualified one. The main quirks are the overall story, the voice acting, the length and the rather limited battle system.

It’s one on one fights, in which you are able to attack, defend, dodge, use spells and some special moves. But because of the minor variety in enemy design and the way each tactic is laid out, it turns out to be disappointing. 

Also, the game is very easy, especially when you are able to get the best weapon in the game very early on. What I did like though are the same themes of resurrection and sacrifice that also played in Quintet’s other games, plus I dig the old PSX graphics similar to Final Fantasy VII. 

Eon is an alright hero, but the world and its inhabitants were small and I wasn’t too fond of the supporting characters either. Korky was annoying. However, I liked how the game ended into starting out in what seems to be a different life for the cast. The Granstream Saga is supposedly Quintet’s last game. Rest in peace, you guys made some pretty interesting action RPG’s.

+One on one fights.
+Early smooth PSX graphics.
-Typical early bad voice acting.

Rating: 6.5

Game of Thrones

Excellent dark medieval fantasy story about Seven Kingdoms and their noble houses trying to control the land of Westeros. I was instantly immensely impressed with the first episode. So many interesting occurrences happening at once, and the plot only got thicker and darker the more I saw. 

With Sean Bean as the main leading character, and a very strong cast to support him with old and new faces, there is lots of political events happening, twisted and tied to traditions and insanity. Adapted from what happen to be excellent books as well, Game of Thrones has absolute beautiful sceneries, costumes, writings and performances. 

Violence, vulgarity and sex are displayed in a strong mature form, and the main theme is an instant classic. Tons of secrets wait inside this epic struggle of a story, where cultures, opinions and ethics clash. And best of all, you never know for certain whom to root for in this, meaning that the morality values are often thrown into a grey zone, allowing for complex situations to arise.

My favorite character turns out to be the most popular one, which is Tyrion Lannister. He has such a way of manipulating people that it's almost inevitable not to get affected by his actions. But he isn't alone, no. There are others who are considerably admirable when it comes to tales of promises, letting people die for causes and hiding behind barriers of deceitfulness.

I would like to read the books, but it turns out that I have a giant backlog for those as well, so they will have to wait in line. In the mean time, I am enthusiastically anticipating the end of march, as Game of Thrones shall continue the many cliffhangers it left behind on the television.

As a rare and shiny TV-series where EVERYONE has interesting stuff to say (even Hodor!), Game of Thrones is my current favorite one for all of the many quality based series available in present time, like it is for many others as well.

However, it shares the number one spot of mine with a series from the early 90's of which I shall speak soon enough at Flok Factory. So that actually means, depending on when GoT will end, I will be able to decide between the two eventually.

Rating: 9.0

Robotics

This field of technology has fascinated me since I knew about the possibilities it could have upon the world. Since the words robot and machine are associated heavily, I could be wrong somewhere on this post regarding their differences.

Since discovering upon it first through science fiction, robotics tackle with numerous branches of life that only will get more intriguing to follow in present time as mainstream news occassionally mentions their breakthroughs.

From industrial manipulators that manufacture equipment, products or materials inside factories to  domestic service assistents that automate regular work to be done, robots can be helpful in many ways.

Thinking of examples that are currently already happening, such as tasked machines being able to create complete houses in a matter of a day, or a possible example in the medical fields where machines could operate on people entirely capable of doing so given by their data and tools, these thoughts make me very excited.

However, there are many skeptical topics that surround robotics for decades now. One such thread is about robots "stealing our" jobs. Primarily physical ones for the time being are every day affected by our machines simply being much better workers than us.

Personally, I do not mind these major changes at all, because it eliminates old fashioned jobs that could easily be replaced by better hands and feet. As long as the monetary and the market systems would also be succeeded by superior ones, no one would complain about it anymore.

Those two systems are too large of a topic to elaborate upon here, but I will most likely give my detailed support about replacing them once more in my blog. For now, let's just say that lesser jobs will in overall be better in the long term.

Then there are the evil robots that have long been anticipated by films, books, other forms of mediums and the scientific community itself also takes the subject seriously. But as long as people design their potential and their possible moral compass limited but relevant, this shouldn't happen right?

But that just perks my brain as to what to do with those who would be able to eventually abuse their artificial intelligence through sabotage, or perhaps even more complex, take two countries with clashing moralities and political ideals, and see how their robots get shaped.

Luckily, the well known three laws of robotics as mentioned by Isaac Asimov are the principles that could provide on how to develop the artificial intelligence of future extended robots, thwirling around the fundamental need for survival.

Ethically, advanced machines or AMA's that perhaps could make morale decisions on their own and even produce or make "baby" robots by their own in the future would make for a catastrophic change worldwide. It would certainly uproar humanity with endless amounts of protests and violence.

But that's assuming if these kinds of robots would be available for instance in the next decade. From our side, we should constantly question our ethics surrounding designing and constructing them as well.

As I continue to see robotics becoming ever more absolutely mandatory, I hope that our unavoidable future problems will be solved with the utmost care regarding ethics, economics, societies and technical details with them. So there are some scary thoughts about robots, but also many happy and beneficial ones.

Every branch or field has their positive and negative aspects though. It's just that robotics will most likely be the next huge event culturally that will continue to evolve mechanically or virtually.

Fruity!

Many years ago, around 2004, I created a topic discussing about fruits. Well actually, it was more about the lines of what kind of fruits each person had as favorites.

This time, I'd like to take a step back from the recent reviews and just give random comments towards fruits, because they can be quite awesome! This includes the ones I have tasted and the ones I would love to taste:

The durian looks intimidating visually as well as how it could taste, but apparently it is very high in demand in southeast Asia for consuming it.

Ah yes, the pitaya! I first tried these in Cambodia. Also known as dragon fruit, I wonder how they would taste inside one of my cocktails?

Still have to try the carambola, also known as star fruit. Such interesting forms of fruits to be found here and there.

Coincidentally, I tried a rambutan in Thailand after remembering how it looked like. Truthfully, I wasn't really enjoying it. Better luck next time!

The kiwi has been my favorite for a long time now for various reasons including awesome name, awesome color and awesome healthy, but I'm sure that there are plenty of eligible competitors available out there!

One of the many obscure ones, the salak with it's snake-like appearance seems to be challenging when imagining how it could taste!

This one should always been mentioned because of it's form alone. Worldwide famous because it can be used in so many ways, the banana continues to be dominant for many.