Super Paper Mario (2007)

This is a drastic pivot from the previous entries in the series. That makes this a very polarizing game for folks. If you went in expecting more of TTYD, you will be disappointed. If you go in with an open mind, you may end up pleasantly surprised. I wouldn't consider this the best Mario RPG, but it's certainly an interesting take on the franchise and a welcomed (from my perspective) experimentation. It's good to see Bowser becoming an ally again like in the original Square's Mario RPG. The writing in this is one of it's greatest strengths. Featuring plenty of bad puns and silly humor. It also has plenty of heavy hitting emotional beats and an antagonist who actually has a character arc! I won't spoil the story because it's worth experiencing blind. It's far from the best video game story I have experienced, but is easily one of the best Mario plots (which to be fair is a very low bar).

The biggest shift in the game is in the gameplay. They fully removed any form of turn based combat and returned to the Mario basics of platforming and jumping. The game is primarily 2-D, but with a new mechanic you can temporarily shift the game into 3-D. This opens the door to puzzles that need to be solved primarily via your perspective (2d vs 3d). These can be fun to figure out, but mostly these are pretty trivial. Especially since most cases are you seeing a block or pipe that you couldn't see in the 2-D plane.

Combat is mostly you jumping on enemies heads, like the classic Super Mario games. You do unlock powers (pixls in this case) that give you more combat and puzzle solving options. Sadly though, these pixls aren't used efficiently. Plenty of pixls are only used a handful of times and often just get forgotten (slim, carry and fleep all are sorely lacking). It does fall into the Legend of Zelda trapping where the new power-up/tool is mostly used in the level they are introduced then swiftly dropped and forgotten. Still it can be fun to traverse through the game worlds and there is decent variety to the worlds.

The art design is great, but mostly in the 2D which seemed to be the devs main focus. I don't think the aesthetics are bad in the 3-D space, but most levels feel big and empty when shifting the perspective and it makes everything feel kind of blocky. The music is also varied and you meet plenty of memorable characters along the way. One problem with this Paper Mario game (and all previous Mario RPGs except for the original on the SNES) is a lack of characterization from party members after they join your party. Peach, Bowser and Luigi rarely talk and voice their opinions. Also due to how tightly designed the game is around swapping between 2D and 3D means you will mostly be using Mario. Which is kind of a bummer. It does also result in you tediously swapping between characters and Pixl's often to solve one puzzle then go back to Mario or your main offensive Pixl.

They did scrap the badge system, which is a pity. I actually liked the customization that badges added to Mario. Here you don't have any real inventory system and most items honestly suck (except for healing items). So items feel half baked, the RPG elements are bare minimal (you level up, but have no choice in what you power up like in previous mario RPGs) and combat is mostly easy. The difficulty does spike towards the end game, but it's still overall pretty easy. Certainly the easiest of the Mario RPGs. But I still had fun. It's short (only about 20 hours) so it's not the biggest time sink either.

I'm currently doing a Super Mario series marathon, and I decided to include this game as well (even though it's from the Paper Mario series) because I'm not a fan of turn-based combat and I'm not going to play the rest of the Paper Mario series. I feel extreme nostalgia with this game, that's why I had to include it.

I enjoyed a lot of things about it. The story. The innovation of switching between 2D and 3D, while also having the different character powers and the different Pixls. As a fan of platformers, I liked it a lot.

I'm not a huge RPG fan, so it might be usual for RPG fans, but the dialogue in this game is so stretched for my taste. I wish it would be shorter. Also, as a non-native English speaker, it was difficult for me to follow the conversations where the text is altered to reflect certain dialects. All of that made me feel like skipping much of the dialogue in the second half of the game, and instead focus on the platforming and the puzzle solving.

The game has some comedic elements which I enjoyed very much. I liked that the story has a "twist".

In conclusion, it is an excellent platformer with a more than decent story, but comes with the baggage of huge amounts of dialogue.

I just recently finished this game and while I don’t like it as much as Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door this game is fantastic in it’s own right. A great story(that I won’t spoil) that has a bit of a twist that you will see coming about half way through the game, wraps up the story nicely at the end. Funny dialogue great gameplay that allows the player to “Flip” to a 3D view for approximately 10 seconds at a time and then flip back to 2D or take damage is a really fun game mechanic that allows you to find hidden items and switches in order to move forward. The music as in any Mario game is great and it’s very upbeat and unique as Nintendo seems to always do in their first party titles. For visuals everything looks like paper basically and continues the fantastic art style from the previous games. The game took me around 20 hours to finish and it was great the whole time.

The objective of the game is to collect Pure hearts from 8 chapters to stop the evil Count Bleck who has the chaos heart. These pure hearts are scattered over 8 chapters with 4 parts to each chapter and a small prologue level to start each chapter as well.

The only thing I’ll complain about is motion controls and that’s not the game’s fault that is on Nintendo. Luckily though there are not many motion controls for this game other than an occasional point at the screen or shaking the wii mote. You do not need a nunchuck attachment which is nice and you tilt the wii mote sideways giving it an old school Mario feel for an old guy like me(haha)

In my opinion I thought this game was fantastic and highly recommend 5/5

I by no means think this game is bad or even average, but I have to give it three stars cause my worldbuilding heart LOVES so many of the quirkier elements here. Where did Flipside come from? Count Bleck?? I love them! But the theme of worlds and dimensions and the hyper-flattened aesthetics don't really do it for me, they just didn't feel fleshed out. The 3-D flip effect, while compelling as a mechanic, had me flipping into barren environments dotted with a few tiny 2-D enemies.

I like my RPGs sumptuous. And this game is not that! It's bare in places and while sometimes that is nice to look at, a game with 30+ hours of playtime needs to engage me just a bit more for it to be beloved.

What's this? A Paper Mario game with proper level design? Villains with complex backstories? Plot twists? And you play as Bowser? Say it ain't so! Of course, all these great new additions to the franchise come at a cost: no more turn-based fighting, no more lovable partners, and no more being thrust into the Mushroom Kingdom and seeing entire villages made up of Koopas, Goombas, Toads, and whatever else Intelligent Systems could come up with. Thus, it's not a perfect Paper Mario game, but I honestly think it's better.

This Paper Mario adventure has "Super" in its name. You know that whenever that happens, it's usually a throwback to classic Mario, and this game pays homage to old-school Mario in spades (and includes pretty sweet Paper Mario easter eggs as well). In fact, the game is really just an imagining of what a Paper Mario game would like in the format of a Super Mario Bros. game: sidescrolling, platforming, world progression, and the likes. So for people that got upset that they changed the format... well, that's what they were going for. And that's what Nintendo is known for. So quit crying about it just because you didn't get what you wanted.

Like I said, I do miss some of the qualities of the previous two games, and I wish we could have a Paper Mario game with great parters, turn-based fighting, AND good level design. However, when presented with the choice, I take the level design. The other games are more charming, sure, but they're so linear and easy! Even though Super Paper Mario largely plays in just two dimensions, most of the worlds are actually complicated and maze-like. I got lost several times, and I had to actually think about what to do next or how to solve a puzzle. And that's what I want out of a game! I want to be challenged.

Before moving on from level design, I want to mention something I didn't talk about in my reviews for the other two games but has been a problem with every Paper Mario game so far: pathways to optional goodies. Sometimes you get a nice, secret passage that's tucked away and difficult to find, only accessible to those who really pay attention, but most of the time, optional paths are right in your way. Most games, I find, make the way forward obvious, so that novice players will take that path automatically, while other players will do a bit of snooping and find another path. Almost always in Paper Mario, when I find an obvious door or path, I want to keep moving and find something else. When I do, it turns out that the something else was the way forward and the obvious path was optional, leading to a treasure or something, as if the designers want you to go find it first. I just find it really annoying and I had to get it off my chest.

Super Paper Mario took the franchise in a different direction and experimented with a lot of new mechanics, but it did not fail in the comedy department. It is at least as funny as Thousand-Year Door, and that game made me laugh vocally several times. The writing is so good that I forget it was originally written in Japanese; I do have to wonder how the dialects, slang, rhyming, and comedy work in different languages. However they do it, they're doing a great job!

Being limited to the Wii remote did mean that you had to press pause and scroll through the options a lot when you wanted to use an item or change partners or characters, but I honestly didn't find it that burdensome most of the time. The game is slightly shorter than the previous two (my times were 22:41 for PM, 30:01 for TYD, and 20:22 for SPM), but when you consider that you don't have any turn-based fights to take up your time, I actually think they packed more content into this game.

All in all, I still love this game, and unlike the previous two entries, replaying it as an adult didn't worsen the experience for me. I still think people should play the other two games just to experience classic Paper Mario, but right now, I'm definitively declaring Super Paper Mario as the best in the series. We'll see how that stands when I take on the much-despised Sticker Star next.

Links to my other Paper Mario reviews, if you're interested:

Paper Mario: https://www.grouvee.com/user/hyrumsutton/reviews/1125395/

The Thousand-Year Door: https://www.grouvee.com/user/hyrumsutton/reviews/1125396/

As a long-time fan of Paper Mario (the original and the sequel) I was excited to finally play the third game in the series. I've heard strange things about this title, and most of what I heard turned out to be true. Though an excellent game it is definitely a different experience than the previous games have been. Here is how it went for me:

--The Good--

Just like the previous Paper Mario games (for Nintendo 64 and Game Cube) the real charm of this title is in the writing. I had a great time seeing characters from one of my favorite game franchises actually talking to each other (not just grunting and gesticulating) and each character showed real personality. The great writing carried over into all the dialogue and especially to the story. That is where this game is a little strange, but in a way I really enjoyed. Others have said it and I agree; this game feels more like an anime than a Mario game. This is a different feel than the two previous games (which focused more on traditional RPG adventuring over narrative).

--The Bad--

Most people criticize this game for having some troubling gameplay. It is true that you have to use menus to switch between characters and powers constantly throughout the game, but I personally did not find that as bothersome as other people. It is an RPG. There will be menus. What bothered me the most though were some of the obtuse puzzles where if you missed one tiny hint twenty minutes previous you will get stuck. I also often found myself trying every character and every power over and over again just to solve a single puzzle and progress. It felt like wasted time to me. For those with more love for puzzle platformers though you may find that this works for you.

--The Verdict--

This is definitely more of a plot-driven puzzle platformer than an RPG. If you are very attached to the RPG elements (especially the battles and badges) of the two previous titles there might be an adjustment period getting used to the different feel of this game. But the writing, the visuals, and the overall tone of the game will really help anyone with any love for Mario to settle in for a fun twenty hours.

SEE YOU IN HELL, MARIO