Paper Mario Review
I’ve talked about Paper Mario in the past. I reviewed the newest game in the series, The Origami King, when it came out a few years ago. I’ve also reviewed the indie game Bug Fables, which was a game made in the style of the first two games in the series.
I enjoyed both titles a lot. Bug Fables was a great take on the old Paper Mario formula that gave us what we love about it while also building upon it in interesting ways. While Origami King was a noticeable improvement on more recent efforts, with an interesting battle system and more engaging story. It still doesn’t matchup to the classic games, but it was a step in the right direction.
I’ve made no secret that I adore the original games in the series. Those first two games are some of the most creative, funny, and charming RPGs ever made, and while Super Paper Mario isn’t as good in my opinion, it’s still an interesting take on the Mario RPG idea with a great story.
They’re some of my favourite games of all time. Hell, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door IS my favourite game of all time. And yet, I’ve never reviewed them and explained why I love them so much. My Bug Fables review can give you a general idea of the reason, but it’s not quite the same as reviewing the real deal.
Part of why I haven’t gotten to them yet is because I don’t have the set up to play them. I don’t have and HDMI connector for my Wii yet, so I can’t play Thousand Year Door or Super to review them properly. And before you ask, no, my laptop can’t emulate them properly either.
Fortunately, I recently got the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass which allows me to play a selection of Nintendo 64 games. And one of those games just so happens to be the first Paper Mario game. So, I can’t review the sequels, yet, but I can at least look at the very first game in the series.
While Paper Mario is the first game in the series, it isn’t the first Mario RPG. That would be Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Developed by Square Soft for the Super Nintendo, Super Mario RPG was a decent success when it came out.
Not only did it show that Mario could work in an RPG, but also that you could make a beginner friendly RPG without insulting the audience’s intelligence. Something that Square had tried and failed at with Mystic Quest a few years earlier.
Naturally, Nintendo wanted Square to do a sequel. Unfortunately, Square was busy working on Final Fantasy VII and would decide not to develop for the Nintendo 64 due to it using cartridges, leading to a falling out between the two companies that would last until the GameCube.
With Square no longer on the cards, Nintendo got one of their own studios, Intelligent Systems, to do it instead. They would prove they didn’t need Square Soft. They’d make their own Mario RPG, and it’d be better than theirs, with blackjack and hookers.
Intelligent Systems made perfect sense as the developer since they are the same studio behind the Fire Emblem series. So, they already had prior experience working on RPG titles. The game was originally named Super Mario RPG 2, but this was changed during development. Probably to differentiate itself from the first game.
Which was a good call. Despite some slight similarities, the two games are very distinct from one another. It isn’t a sequel and doesn’t contain anything from the first Mario RPG outside of the main Mario characters. Naming it a sequel to Mario RPG would have created an expectation it couldn’t hope to match.
It was also supposed to be a 64DD title, but it was changed to a regular N64 title when the DD was discontinued. The game released in 2001 and received critical acclaim due to its graphics, gameplay and writing, with many considering it the best RPG on the system. Probably because it was one of the only RPGs on the system. I mean what was the competition? Quest 64?
I did not play Paper Mario when it first came out. I was a PlayStation child and didn’t own a Nintendo 64. I wouldn’t play it until it released on the Wii virtual Console years later. I remember enjoying it well enough, but I also remember something feeling, off about it.
There is a specific reason for that, but I want to save that for the very end. For now, let’s just look at what the game is and whether or not it still holds up.
Paper Mario begins as most Mario games do, with Mario being invited to Princess Peach’s Castle to attend a party. And as predictably as a sunrise, Bowser shows up to try to kidnap Peach. It is what he does after all. However, in a bit of a twist, it’s not just Peach he’s taking, but the whole castle. Literally using his own floating castle to lift Peach’s into the sky.
On top of that, Bowser also has a secret weapon, the Star Rod. Which he stole from the Fountain of Dreams preventing people from dreaming therefore unsealing the Nightmare Wizard and… wait, wait no that’s Kirby’s Adventure.
No, this Star Rod is from Star Haven. A place where a race of living stars dwell that grant people’s wishes. The Star Rod being the source of their power means the stars are unable to grant peoples wishes as long as Bowser possesses it.
With the rod’s power Bowser is effectively invincible and he makes short work of the portly plumber. Sending Mario flying down to the earth below to his doom, only for Mario to be saved by the seven Star Spirits. The guardians of the Star Rod who were captured and turned into cards by Bowser when the rod was stolen.
They also inform Mario that they can help him negate the Star Rod’s power with their own. But he’ll need to rescue them first, and they’re being guarded by Bowser’s most powerful henchmen. So, it’s up to Mario to rescue the Star Spirits, save Princess Peach, and restore wishes back to the world.
The story here isn’t too out of the ordinary for a Mario game. It is the standard rescue Peach from Bowser storyline we all know and love. Even the structure to the game of having eight chapters across eight worlds is very similar to that of a standard Mario platformer.
That said, because this is an RPG, the story is expanded on far more than it would be in the main games. There’s a lot more character and world building this time around. For example, chapter two takes place in a desert, much like how world two in most Mario games takes place in a desert.
But in Paper Mario there’s an entire village of desert wandering Toads to visit, with back-alley fortune tellers, a secretive leader that will only talk to you if buy certain items in the right order, and it’s all topped off with you finding a secret temple in the desert and fighting an evil Koopa Mummy. It takes something familiar and expands upon them in interesting ways.
Even the party members you gather are all based on classic Mario enemies. There’s Goombario the Goomba, Kooper the Koopa, Bow the Boo, Lakilester the Lakitu, Sushie the Cheep-Cheep and more. The names aren’t exactly creative, except Sushie that one is golden, but their designs and personalities are unique.
In fact a lot of the designs are like that. You won’t just see the same generic toad over and over like in recent titles. You’ll still run into a lot of Toads, but they do change up the designs. The Toads in the desert all wear turbans, the Toads in the snow level all have winter gear, there’s even plenty of female toads throughout the game.
But it’s not just the Toads, every NPC is a variation on some kind of Mario character or enemy. It helps give the game its own unique charm and personality, while keeping it distinctly Mario.
Even then, the game still makes room for characters of its own. The Star Spirits are a wholly unique creation for this game, but there’s also a family of wizards and fortune tellers you can visit across the game, on top of a bunch of other odd ball characters to see as well.
This was at a time when Nintendo was a little more open to experimenting with their franchises, and it really helps give Paper Mario its own identity. I miss when they did this. It really was a breath of fresh air going back to this and seeing that Mario could still be creative and weird.
I don’t hate modern Mario. The games are still fun, and Mario Odyssey proved the series still had some creative spark left in it. But this era of Mario is so much more interesting because of how willing they were to let other studios to experiment with their franchises. Give me Mario Land 2 over the overly safe blandness of New Super Mario Bros any day.
The writing and dialogue are pretty good for what the game is. Paper Mario goes for a more humorous tone throughout, and while nothing here is ever laugh out loud funny, it is very witty and charming and did get a few chuckles out of me.
The story itself is very episodic. Every chapter feeling like its own mini adventure with a clear end goal tying everything together. It’s more of a series of moments than one long epic narrative, which works perfectly well for the games more light-hearted nature.
It also helps that these moments are very enjoyable. One moment your embroiled in a penguin murder, the next your treasure hunting in a volcano on Yoshi Island. You’ll be dealing with rowdy Shy Guy’s in Toad Town in one chapter, before traveling through a land of flowers to deal with an evil cloud monster in another.
The chapters aren’t all created equal. I personally didn’t care for chapters four or six, and there is a lot of going back in some chapters that can be a little tiring. But it hits far more than it misses. Even the games duller chapters have something interesting in them and the game is constantly throwing new surprises at you, so things never become stale or boring.
Even Peach gets in on the action. In between chapters we get interludes with Peach sneaking around Bowsers castle to get information to help Mario. She even gets her own little sidekick in a little star child named Twink. Their interactions are cute and it’s nice to see Peach be more than a damsel in distress without making her an action girl at the same time.
It also does a good job of poking fun of certain Mario and RPG clichés in a humorous manner. One example in Koopa Jr who acts as a recurring rival character throughout the game. But unlike other RPG rivals, he’s never portrayed as a serious threat, just a minor annoyance who’s constantly trying to one up Mario for no reason other than he’s butt hurt Mario keeps beating him. Which makes for a fun parody of the trope.
The characterization of most of the cast is very well done. None of the characters are especially deep, but they do have distinct personalities. Bow is very haughty, Twink is precocious, Sushie is over-protective, and Bowser is just the absolute best.
Rather than a big vicious monster, he’s just a love-struck dork who just really likes being evil. He’s not bad for any particular reason, he just likes being bad. He doesn’t kidnap Peach for her power, he just really likes her. It makes him a much more lovable villain, and this would go on to be Bowser’s defining personality in later games. Even the new movie had him like this.
Even the basic NPC’s have recognisable personality traits. Even the Toads in Toad Town have distinct characters, which made talking to them to get their reactions to what was going on fun. I actually looked forward to talking to NPC’s, which very rarely happens for me in RPGs.
Really the only character I didn’t care for was Mario himself. Mainly because they didn’t give him much of a personality in this. He’s just our fearless silent protagonist and that’s about it. A shame because Super Mario RPG did give him a personality, making him hot headed and gung-ho. I’m a little disappointed they didn’t do more with him here.
Actually, comparing Mario RPG and Paper Mario is funny because both stories are very similar. They both involve an evil force taking over a castle, both involve restoring a wish granting object connected to stars and both involve collecting stars to beat the big villain. Granted that’s largely where the similarities end, at least the major ones, but they are there.
The similarities aren’t just in the story though. Paper Mario does include some gameplay elements from Mario RPG as well. But before we get to that, let’s quickly talk about the presentation.
Contrary to what you may think, Paper Mario isn’t named that way because the characters are actually made of paper. In fact, the whole paper gimmick wouldn’t become a thing until the later games in the series. Which admittedly was to the series detriment but that’s a discussion for another day.
No, the name is simply because the game uses 2D characters on 3D backdrops which gives the characters a flat, paper like look. Hence the name Paper Mario.
The games art direction was inspired by 2 different sources. The 2D characters on 3D backgrounds idea came from the game PaRappa the Rapper, which used a similar idea albeit in a more exaggerated way.
Meanwhile the character designs were inspired by the golden age of animation. This is most obvious when it comes to Mario. His dotted eyes are indicative of early Mickey Mouse designs. Which is the best Mickey so that’s a ok with me.
The game stylistically still looks pretty good. I’m always a sucker for 2D characters on 3D backgrounds and Paper Mario is one of the better examples of this style from this generation. The game is framed in a way to make every scene like a mini diorama, with battles being viewed like a stage show. It gives the game a unique visual presentation that still holds up even today.
That being said, it is still a Nintendo 64 game and the technical limitations do hold the game back a bit. The 3D lacks a lot of the charm a lot of early polygonal games have and is a little flat by todays standards.
The sprites fare a bit better, but they aren’t the best I’ve seen from this generation either. They aren’t as expressive as I would have liked, and they look a little pixelated. Which I normally don’t mind, but it was a little more distracting here.
I can’t really blame the game for this though and the game overall still looks, ok. I love the style; it’s just unfortunately let down by the N64’s technical limitations. It’s not good as it could have been.
The music is as solid as it always is though. It’s suitably upbeat and thankfully never gets repetitive. It’s not as good as some other Mario RPG soundtracks, namely the ones made by Yoko Shimomura, but it’s still some good stuff that’s pleasant on the ears. And let’s be honest, few things compare to music by Yoko Shimomura.
The gameplay of Paper Mario is what you would expect from an PG. You’ll explore a big world, battle enemies in turn-based combat, visit towns to buy items and equipment, and tackle dungeons with a big boss at the end.
Typical RPG stuff, but it all comes with a distinctive Mario twist. For example, exploration has a much larger emphasis on platforming. Granted you can’t do any insane acrobatics, but you do have a jump button and there are plenty of sequences where you’ll need to jump over gaps and obstacles to progress.
Mario is a platforming icon, so it makes sense his RPG games would try to have elements from his platforming roots. And to its credit, Paper Mario’s platforming is decent. It’s not great, but you do have a clear jump arc so it’s easy the gauge distance and there are plenty of mini obstacle course challenges to do along the way.
Mario also has a hammer to break blocks, and the combination of jumping and hammering does lead to some fun puzzles. It’s nothing complicated or anything, but it adds some extra spice when exploring the world. And there are plenty of side areas to explore and treasures to uncover.
Later in the game you unlock new boots and hammers, allowing you to access areas and secrets you couldn’t before. Mario’s partners also all have a unique overworld ability. Kooper can hit far off switches, Parrykarry the Parakoopa can carry Mario across gaps he can’t jump over and Sushie can carry Mario across bodies of water just to list a few examples.
You’ll use these overworld abilities frequently throughout the adventure, but thankfully not too frequently that you’ll be swapping characters out every 5 seconds. Mind you, swapping out characters is made quick and easy anyway so it wouldn’t be a big deal even if you were.
All this, the platforming elements and partner abilities, adds an action element to the exploration. Which helps make exploring the world a lot more engaging than in most RPGs.
Let’s be honest, overworld exploration in RPG’s is usually very dry. Most of the time it amounts to little more than just running around and talking to people with the odd switch puzzle thrown in. Not that it can’t be engaging, especially if there’s tons of treasure to find, but it can be boring to those who aren’t big fans of the genre.
This is why the Mario RPG’s, including Paper Mario, are great beginner friendly RPG’s. The added action elements make it far more palatable for those new to the genre. And it isn’t just for the exploring, it affects the combat too.
For one thing there are no random battles. You can see enemies on the overworld, making it easy to skip fights if you so wish. If you do decide to battle though, jumping or hammering an enemy will let you get a free hit in. Giving you an opening advantage in combat.
The combat itself is turn based. Mario and his partners will attack first and then the enemy. Mario has access to his jump and hammer abilities with certain enemies requiring specific methods to defeat. For example, spiked enemies cannot be jumped on, while flying enemies cannot be hammered.
Meanwhile his partners all have a standard attack and three extra abilities which they unlock as they get stronger. Like Mario’s attacks though, the partner attacks are designed in a way where certain enemies aren’t affected by them. Bow’s slap attack can do a lot of damage, but is utterly useless against enemies high defence, whereas Bombette can do tons of damage with her explosive attacks, but only on grounded enemies.
You’ll be swapping out partners in battle a lot to take advantage of their different abilities. Well, at least until you get Watt. Watt is basically the best one for combat. They can attack almost anything, boost Mario’s attack, and their own attack pierces enemy defences. Watt is just utterly broken and I pretty much exclusive used them in the end game.
It’s a little unbalanced, but to make it clear, none of the partners are bad. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and there are certain situations where you’ll want a partner for a specific ability. Like Kooper being to hit every grounded enemy at once, or Sushie doing a water attack to one shot flame enemies.
The partners at the end of the day are just more options in combat. It’s up to the player to experiment with those options to decide which is best there playstyle. It’s just that one of those options has way more advantages.
Using any move in combat will involve action commands. These are inputs you use to boost your attacks. Sometimes it involves hitting a button at the right time, other times it involves holding the analogue stick in a direction for a time, and sometimes it just involves good old fashion button bashing.
They’re like little mini-games that reward you for completing them. They aren’t too intrusive, there’s a decent variety of them so they never get repetitive, and they help make the combat a little bit more engaging for those who see turn based combat as just picking things from a menu.
Any additional move aside from the main attacks cost FP to use. FP works similar to MP in traditional RPG’s. Moves with FP have additional properties such as increased damage, with more potent ones costing more to perform.
Though unlike in other RPG’s, FP is a shared resource. Meaning that if Mario uses a move that uses 2 FP, that’s 2 less FP the partners have access to and vice versa. So, there’s a little bit more strategy in how you manage FP in this game.
Resource management is very interesting in this game. Specifically because of how limited it is. Aside from having a single FP pool for both Mario and his partner, health is also limited to a single party member.
Mario is the only character with an actual HP stat. The partners don’t have any, they’re purely there for support. And because of that damage racks up fast. There are action commands for defence that decreases damage, but this only mitigates some of the damage and there are attacks that aren’t the easiest to block.
You can use an item to heal HP or FP, but there’s a limit to the number of items you can carry. You can only have ten items at any given point. Which means you’ll need to be careful about which items you carry, and how often you use them.
You could bring a few Fire Flowers to deal with groups of enemies, but that’s less space for healing items then. You want to bring plenty of healing items, but you also want to have a balance between items that heal HP and FP.
You do get the ability to combine items together later in the game. So you get one item that heals HP and FP instead of two items that heal one or the other, giving you an item that performs two actions and once while freeing up space for items that serve different purposes.
Even then it helps to be conservative with item use since healing items in the wild aren’t too common. And while you can buy them in stores, trekking back there isn’t always an option. Especially in the middle of a long dungeon. You’ll want to be frugal and only use items when you really need to.
One way to save resources is by using Special Moves. These are unlocked by rescuing the Star Spirits, with each one giving you a new move. These can range from lightly healing Mario, to lowering enemy attack, to just straight up damaging every enemy on screen.
To use these, you’ll need to build up your Special Meter. It builds up slowly during battle but there is an action Mario can take called Focus to give it a bigger boost. The special moves can be very helpful in a pinch, though stronger ones require more meter so you can’t just spam them.
I know a lot of this sounds restrictive, and that’s because it is, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If anything, it works because it adds a layer of challenge to the game. You can’t just do what you want, you have to think about your actions, strategize carefully and think of a plan of attack to effectively get through the game.
Paper Mario isn’t a difficult game. It’s designed in a way to be as accessible as possible. Making a game accessible isn’t as easy as you might think. Go too far and the game can end up feeling like it’s holding your hand. The aforementioned Final Fantasy Mystic Quest suffered this exact problem.
Paper Mario thankfully does not. Your constantly engaged with the games systems and mechanics, even when it’s something as basic as item management. It’s simple enough to understand for newcomers, in fact if you want an RPG that kids can enjoy Paper Mario is a great choice, but there’s enough depth to the systems to keep veterans invested. Some things have been simplified, but it isn’t overly simplified it’s insulting.
The level up system being a prime example of this. Instead of getting Experience Points, Mario gets Star Points and will gain a level when he gets one hundred of them. it’s simplified from other RPGs, but it still requires some form of mathematical skill to find out when you will level up.
This is the right way to make a beginner friendly game. Instead of bringing the game down to the players level, it brings the player up to the games level. It doesn’t talk down to you, it simply gives you the means to catch up.
I should also mention that partners don’t level up the same way. For them you’ll need to find Super Blocks which give a selected partner a new move as well as a stronger base attack. You’ll want to keep your eye out for these because some can be very well hidden.
I should also mention that Mario’s attack will only increase when he finds a new hammer or pair of boots and not via levelling up. Instead, whenever Mario levels up he’s given a choice to boost one of three stats. HP, FP and BP, or Badge Points, which are what Mario uses to equip Badges.
And now I finally get to talk about the Badges. These are your main form of equipment in the game and have a variety of effects. Some unlock new moves in combat, while others offer more passive buffs like allowing Mario to jump on spiked enemies or making action commands easier to pull off.
You can find Badges hidden across the world. You can find them in treasure chests, buy them from stores, or find them by performing certain tasks. But if you want to get the good shit, you’ll need to go out of your way to find Star Pieces. Super hidden collectables that can be traded for some very powerful Badges.
Each badge has a BP cost, with more powerful ones costing more. Once you run out of BP you won’t be able to equip any more badges leading you to have to make decisions. Do I equip one badge worth three BP Or do I equip three badges worth one BP each. The former might give me a more powerful ability while the latter gives me more abilities that aren’t as potent.
There really isn’t a right answer to this. It’s up to you to experiment with a badge loadout that fits your playstyle. It’s a great system that on paper, heh, gives you a lot of freedom to customise the game to your liking.
But in practice, it has one fatal flaw. You can only get up to thirty BP which, in my opinion, doesn’t give you enough wiggle room to play around with the system.
Late game badges are very expensive. Some costing up to six BP a piece. Granted these are very powerful badges, but that is still a steep cost. And if you want to equip those badges, which you will want to because they are very useful, you have very few BP to spend on much else.
You could argue the BP is like this to prevent you from breaking the game. After all, if you could equip everything the game would turn into a joke. However, the way BP works already has things that balance it out.
If you want to equip all the badges that means you need to exclusively focus on BP, which means losing out on HP and FP upgrades. This can severely limit you in the late game, and while there are badges that mitigate this, it still makes the game a lot more challenging.
Then there’s the fact that you can’t really grind out levels in the first place. The way Star Points work in this game is that the stronger you get the less the enemies drop. If your weaker than the enemy they drop more, if your stronger than them they drop less. Until, eventually, they drop none at all.
This means it’s impossible to grind out levels. At some point you’re going to peak and not be able to get stronger. This does at least come with the benefit of removing grinding, which is great since that’s always the worst part in RPGs, but it also means there’s a strict limit in how high your stats can go.
So capping the BP like this just feels pointless. It doesn’t balance the game at all because the core design already does that. It just feels like an unnecessary restriction that severely limits what you can do with the games systems.
That isn’t to say this ruins the Badge System. it’s still a great customisation mechanic that allows you to tweak the game to your liking. I only wish it wasn’t so limiting, like how it is in the sequel.
And it’s here where I want to talk about the large shadow hanging over Paper Mario. See, when judging the game on its own merits, Paper Mario is great. It has strong writing, great game mechanics and a solid art direction.
It has everything a good game needs. It has its flaws as all games do, namely the limited customisation and lack of meaningful side quests, but overall it’s a solid RPG. The problem is that absolutely everything it does is done better in Thousand Year Door.
Thousand Year Door is one of those sequels that improves on the original in almost every way. The story is more interesting, the writing and humour are wittier, the mechanics are deeper and more engaging, your partners are given more personality, the badge system offers more freedom, the scenarios are more inventive and creative, and there’s way more side content and things to do.
It fixed what flaws were in the original and even improved things that were already great to begin with. It is in many ways a perfect sequel, and because of this, it’s hard to go back to the original Paper Mario after playing the sequel and not see it as a lesser version of it.
This is what threw me off when I first played it on the Wii Virtual Console. I had already played Thousand Year Door and couldn’t help but feel the original was lacking. Is that fair? Absolutely not, but it’s a feeling you can’t escape from if you play Thousand Year Door beforehand.
I like to think of it like this, playing Paper Mario after playing Thousand Year Door is like eating a raisin after eating a chocolate raisin. You may like and it goes down easy, but you’ll always have that taste in the back of your mouth that feels missing.
I do like the Paper Mario. I think it’s a solid RPG and one of the best games on the Nintendo 64. But it will always live in the shadow of its successor and that’s a fate it simply can’t escape from.
It’s one of the most tragic cases of first game syndrome I’ve seen. At least games like the first Ratchet and Clank and Devil May Cry have core issues with their design that make them hard to go back to. Paper Mario is still as good to play today as it was back then. It’s just that the sequel is superior.
That said it is still better than the later games in the series. Though considering how bad Sticker Star and Colour Splash are that isn’t saying much. Still, I like it more than Super and Origami King and would still recommend you check it out. But do so before you play Thousand Year Door.
And if you have played Thousand Year Door, it is still worth playing. If for no other reason than to see how the series got started. Just go in with the right expectations and you should have a good time with it.
Thousand Year Door to this day is still a GameCube exclusive. Paper Mario has been re-released a few times, but the sequel has not. I’ve heard rumours they might be remastering it like they did with Metroid Prime, and I really hope that’s true. We need a way to be able to play it on modern systems.
But I would also like to see the original Paper Mario get the same treatment. If only to make it closer to its sequel in terms of quality. Hell do it for Super too, that would be great to revisit even if I wasn’t huge on it at first. As for the rest, we can leave those behind. And considering they’re on the 3DS and Wii U, that’s not hard to do.