Paper Mario

"Super Mario RPG - Squaresoft = Paper Mario"

The Paper Mario series is a strange franchise. As an RPG created by Nintendo, it enjoys a certain level of prestige; if not on the merit of its gameplay, then simply on the merit that its creator doesn't seem to enjoy making standard RPGs.

To begin, the Paper Mario series is arguably the continuation of the game Nintendo made with Square on the SNES known as Super Mario RPG. They both contain the same elements of gameplay, the same type of plot progression, and so on; I suppose my argument is also helped by how Nintendo referred to the game as ‘Super Mario RPG 2' previously. Apparently, Nintendo liked Super Mario RPG so much that they decided to jack the entire game, and turn it into Paper Mario.

Today, the series is now up to its third iteration on the Wii, which I intend to play later on. This review is the result of me deciding to play through Paper Mario first (then Thousand Year Door afterwards) in order to prepare me for Super Paper Mario. Seems almost silly when you take into consideration that the series has little to no continuity, but hey, the life of a hardcore gamer with various OCDs is hard and arduous.

So it's been several years since the game has been released. How does it hold up? About as well as any of Nintendo's other games actually. For those who are wondering whether that is good or bad, ask yourself whether Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES is still fun or not, and you'll have the answer.

Man, those graphics has got me tripping!

If nothing else, Paper Mario is very famous for its graphics, which is based on its name. The first thing you'll notice upon starting the game is that everything has a paper-like appearance to it. Mario and Luigi, the first two people you see in the game, look like paper cutouts, except with better coloring.

The rest of the game also follows this similar format. Building, trees, and enemies all retain the 2.5D-type graphical appearance. Essentially, the only 3D thing in the entire game is, well, the background. Wherever you walk/run, the place you're at will be in 3D, but everything else will remain in a 2D quality.

It sounds strange if you've never played the series, but it actually looks quite unique. Furthermore, it also has the unique effect of making the game age better graphically. After all, there's only so much more detail you can add to a paper cutout, and I'm not sure if this is really the case, but when you're aiming for a novel graphical approach as opposed to the standard realism fare, there is a difference in judgment.

After all, it's easy to criticize the graphics in Perfect Dark when you compare it to Call of Duty 4. It's a bit more difficult to criticize Paper Mario's graphics when the only thing you have to compare it to…is Super Paper Mario.

So this is the ‘RPGs' those rapscallions are playing these days, eh?

Paper Mario is about as far from the traditional RPG fare as you can possibly get. I hardly even understand how this game could be classified as an ‘RPG'. If I had to put it under any genre, I would actually classify it as…Platform Adventure. Yes, the platform adventure genre with just a dash of RPG elements.

Some may think I'm exaggerating, but lets look at the battle system.

As any veteran of the RPG genre knows, RPGs generally comes in two distinctive battle systems: Turn-based and Action. Turn-based is when you choose an action from your players then wait as your players execute the actions then your enemies will do the same thing afterwards. Action is when fighting is real time and you have to use things like ‘Dodge' and ‘Block'; there is no waiting involved and skills tend to be more reflex-based.

Paper Mario appears to by a hybrid of the two systems. Enemies are visible on-screen and one initiates a battle by touching an enemy. However, how one touches the enemy results in a different beginning to the battle. When one approaches an enemy in this game, the enemy will become alerted to Mario's presence, and immediately head straight for him. If you're quick, you can either jump on him or hit him with a hammer. Whoever hits whomever first will result in that person getting a free first hit in the battle.

The Action battle system elements don't end there either. Unlike most turn-based battle systems, one can't mash the action button, and expect to win fights. Paper Mario utilizes a timed system in which pressing the action button at the right time after selecting ‘Attack' will either result in a second hit or more damage for Mario. If Mario is the one getting attacked, pressing the action button at the right time will result in him blocking, and receiving less damage.

Also atypical of the RPG genre, Mario's capabilities as a fighter make itself useful outside of battles. In fact, his companions' techniques make themselves useful outside of battles too. For example, Mario is basically capable of two things in this game: Jumping on things (obviously considering who it is) and hitting things with a hammer.

However, one can use his jumping capability in order to break things or use his hammer to break blocks that are blocking doorways. As for his companions, you can do the same with them, albeit they only get to use one technique outside of battle as opposed to Mario's two. For example, Goombario can only use Tattle to give you information.

This brings me to another point towards Paper Mario not being very RPG-like. In Paper Mario, you are required to use your various companions' techniques outside of battles in order to continue further in the game. This is why they follow you outside of battle as opposed to disappearing mysteriously ala your regular RPG.

Well, perhaps that's not completely accurate. Only one of your party members follows you, the others do disappear until you switch them out for their needed purpose.

Lastly, and another major point about Paper Mario, is the experience system. Perhaps more than even the battle systems and the concept of good stories, the experience system ties console RPGs together. This is the one system which is almost universally present in RPGs in what is pretty much an unaltered form.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), Paper Mario does decide to alter the system. In most RPGs, fighting enemies (and/or doing sidequests occasionally) gives experience points, and one levels up upon reaching the required experience points, which increases each time one levels up.

In Paper Mario, the required experience points remain the same throughout the game; that is 100 star points is needed to level up. What has not change from typical RPGs is that enemies gives lower and lower experience points as one levels up, which works to level out Paper Mario's system.

Albeit it's kind of annoying as most RPGs cap the lowest possible experience points to 1. In Paper Mario, it is entirely possible to fight an enemy (or a group of enemies) and not gain a single star point. Admittedly, this does help the pacing as players will then have an incentive to continue the story as opposed to staying in one place in order to powerlevel (something RPG lovers tend to do in other games). Yet it also has the negatives because, as said before, battles can be initiated by enemies, which means you'll then be forced to fight or run away at the cost of coins (game's currency).

Hmm, a Nintendo RPG, huh? This is going to be the easiest RPG ever.

By the way, I know some of you out there are already thinking this game is going to be ludicrously easy simply by merit that Nintendo only makes easy game. Well, you would be ¾ correct. The game is surprisingly difficult due to a number of factors.

To begin, Paper Mario uses a limited item inventory system ala Dragon Quest. Well, that is to say it uses the same limited item inventory system as Dragon Quest…except Nintendo decided to restrict users even more. This is impressive considering the system manages to be more restrictive than the most archaic, restrictive video game franchise known to man.

Okay, so to elaborate, Paper Mario has a limitation of 10 items. What makes it so restrictive is that items don't stack. Say, for example, you already had a mushroom (healing item), and you came upon another mushroom. If you pick up that mushroom, it will be added to your inventory as another item, and it will take up one space. Similar items do not stack on top of each other, they all take up one space by themselves.

This means that using the item inventory is a lesson in space management. If you're an offensive type fighter, your inventory will be filled with attack items. If you're a defensive type fighter, your inventory will be filled with replenishing items. Again, one may think this won't be an issue because it's Nintendo! They must fill every nook and cranny with replenishing items and bosses must be so easy that attack items aren't even needed.

Again, you would be surprised. The only thing that remains consistently easy with Paper Mario is the puzzles. The bosses will range from easy to difficult, but they do, in fact, get more difficult as the game go on. Some bosses in the game have 70-100 health points and do 8-10 damage per attack all while Mario has 30 health points and does 5-6 damage per attack.

Secondly, items are, indeed, plentiful in the game, but they're not so plentiful that you can just use them willy nilly without caring. You do need to conserve items and there are items in the game which are so incredibly useful that you'll inevitably save them for the bosses.

By the way, it may not seem so initially, but while you tend to get an overabundance of items most of the time, you're also likely to use a good deal of them when facing a boss or doing an overly long dungeon that does not contain enough replenishing blocks (which refills your HP/FP). Why is this? Well, look at it this way:

Mario has very low HP compared to bosses and he doesn't do enough damage to compensate for the disparity. You'll typically run out of HP if you don't heal yourself during a boss fight. Unless of course, you use your special techniques which allows Mario and his companion to do much more damage or avoid attacks altogether. Unfortunately, Mario uses typically anywhere from 2-7FP (flower points) all while having an FP limit of anywhere from 5-40. So yeah, you tend to run out of FP fast. That means you'll run out of FP replenishers fast.

Okay, okay, I get it. You use items fast. My partners should still make battles easy, however.

By the way, you can only have one companion in battle…and Nintendo decided to gimp them in favor of Mario. Let me explain further.

When you get into a battle, you'll have two people available to use: Mario and one battle partner (who is determined by who was with you outside of battle). Typically, your partners will do a good amount of damage which evens out the battle greatly, but they're also lacking in capabilities in other ways.

To begin, Mario is the only one who can activate Star Powers and use items in the game. This has really bad implications because Mario is also the one who gets hit in the game (your partner may sometimes get hit, but this is very rare). This means that if, for example, Mario gets paralyze by an enemy who begins to wail on him, you better hope that your partner can do enough damage to end the battle before Mario's HP hits zero because you can't use an item to remove the paralysis (there isn't even an item that can do that) or heal him.

Oh, and if Mario's HP hits zero, it's game over; your partners don't even have HP. So the answer is no, you can't use your partner as a decoy while using Mario for offensive.

You might be thinking all of that is alright because if an enemy gets too difficult, you can simply run. Here's another fun fact: Mario is the only one who can initiate a ‘Run Away' command. His partner can't do it.

So the game is difficult simply because of a few things you can't do?

Well, as I said before, the game is easy for the most part, but it does get difficult in certain areas due to these factors. However, make no mistake about it. Although the game does get harder because of the various inadequacies of your partners and the item limit, it is also true that the game is intrinsically difficult.

The reason for this is, again, how the battle system works. It also has to do with the experience system actually. After you get the 100 star points needed to get level up as said before, you are then given the ability to upgrade one of your stat: HP, FP, or BP. HP and FP are already discussed, but BP is Badge Points, which are points required for you to equip a badge.

Yeah, I sort of missed this before, but the game uses a Badge System which will allow you to perform various techniques or get various upgrades/capabilities depending on which badge you equip. All badges require BP to be equip and the more BP you have, the more badges you can equip. Basically, it's Paper Mario's version of other RPGs' ‘Accessories'.

Anyway, as I was saying, every time you level up, you get to increase one of those three stats. For those of you who might have assumed that the ‘other' stats simply increase by themselves, you would be wrong. There are no other stats. The only stats in the entire game are HP, FP, and BP.

So one may ask, ‘So how exactly does Mario do more damage then if there is no strength stat?”

Through rare weapon upgrades and badges that increase damage. It's as simple as that. This is how the game becomes difficult. While you remain the same level of strength for a certain percentage of the game, bosses/enemies gets stronger steadily.

The game was designed so that you'll get these upgrades when necessary, though, so as to keep the game from getting too difficult. This is a big thing with Paper Mario, by the way. Nintendo really wanted to keep the pacing for this game quick because a lot of the design is meant to keep you moving, but the game was also designed to not be overly challenging (which would force you to backtrack to healing points or to buy items constantly).

Well, this is all interesting. I hope the game is really cinematic, though, what with it being an RPG and all.

How is the story in Paper Mario? I would say fairly decent.

Again, Nintendo returns to the tried and true ‘Rescue The Princess'™ plot. This time, Bowser kidnaps Peach after stealing something called a Star Rod from a place called Star Haven and imprisoning the various star spirits guarding the rod in order to prevent them from interfering with his plans.

After kidnapping Peach (by lifting her entire castle off the ground), he fights Mario using the Star Rod, and pretty much obliterates Mario. After blasting Mario out of the castle, Mario is contacted by the star spirits who asks him to rescue them so that they can help him defeat Bowser.

This is the beginning of Mario's journey and pretty much the entire premise of the game. The main part of the story consists of you going to various areas in order to rescue the star spirits from Bowser's henchmen. Along the way, you'll find friends that will help you.

Unfortunately, and as expected of a Nintendo game, the story is not very deep. There is little to no character development. You do know the reason why many of the people joins Mario (and some of the reason are very flimsy, indeed), but overall, the entire game experience lies, as expected from a Nintendo game, in the gameplay more than the story.

Surprisingly enough, there is quite a bit of plot focus on Peach and her friend Twink (a star apprentice). You also get to play as her a few times which is also pretty fun, but the plot on her is limited to finding ways to help Mario.

For those of you looking for an epic story, you're in the wrong place. ‘Nintendo' and ‘storylines' go together like ‘milk' and ‘cereal'. In other words, very common, and nothing out of the ordinary.

Recommendation

I have to say, Nintendo designed an interesting game. Paper Mario is obviously a continuation of Super Mario RPG and it's rather interesting to see where Nintendo disagreed with Square on how to create an RPG.

On one hand, I do like the humor of the story somewhat (albeit the humor tends to be overdone) and the game has a fun, unique style that I probably won't find in any other RPG franchise.

I'm also guessing that a lot of gamers are going to appreciate how Nintendo designed the game to be paced quickly. This keeps the game from being boring and it's more action involved, but the game is a bit shorter than usual.

To put things into perspective, I was able to beat Paper Mario in 20 hours, which is very unusual as I tend to spend at least 50-60 hours on RPGs. Of course, this is typically because I spend an enormous amount of time powerleveling, and collecting powerful equips. Paper Mario doesn't have either of those, so the game was much shorter than what I typically spend on RPGs.

Of course, that is not to say Paper Mario is short. 20 hours is till quite a long game and due to the lower amount of time required to beat it and the gameplay style, Paper Mario is actually much easier to replay, so there are benefits. Overall, I would rank it as a good game regardless of length issues, and it is an enjoyable experience.

Overall Score – 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/13/09

Game Release: Paper Mario (US, 02/05/01)