• As part of the relaunch of Skullheart, ALL previous threads have been archived. You can find them at the bottom of the forum in the Archives (2021) section. The archives are locked, so please use the new forum sections to create new discussion threads.

It's a me! Paper Mario!

Which Paper Mario game do you like best?

  • Total voters
    34
enjoy backtracking and terrible pacing then ;D
 
I don't remember any more backtracking or pacing issues then any of the other titles, but it's been a while.

Regardless, I think I like the combat better in TYD just because being able to negate all damage with a riskier block makes things a bit more interesting. The first Paper Mario just feels like a very limited/slow classic rpg to me where you don't have a ton of options to influence how the fight goes.
 
Ruin said:
chapter 4
Everything after chapter 2 makes the game completely awesome in TTYD.

Also the best thing about the original Paper Mario and Paper Mario 2 is that they had unqiue worlds and fun characters. The battle system was great and actually fun.

Sticker Star was a complete steam pile that had a shitty battle system, terrible visuals and no unique characters worth talking about.
 
Last edited:
ttyd's battle system was pretty impressive when I played it in fifth grade
going back to it now it's a lot too easy for its own good with meatshields they call partners and the Superguard (which isn't that hard to use)

the biggest problem with ttyd is the significant lowering of scale, combined with the incredible amounts of backtracking and padding that shoot the game's pacing in the foot. it's stuff you don't notice when you're nine but when you're twenty it smacks you in the face

areas in general were much smaller in TTYD and it made the game feel a lot less ambitious, even if it was trying to tell ~a story~ or whatever. You had entire chapters locked off to single areas that weren't that big and weren't that interesting, even if they were sound in concept. It removes a lot of the ability to really stretch your legs and explore the areas since most of them were very small, very dense, and full of stuff the game was gonna point you to regardless.

Do I enjoy the idea of flying wrestlemania and soul-stealing Vince McMahon and Rock Hogan the Bird? yes. Do I want a chapter that's nothing but gimmick fights with little variation or interesting events happening in-between? fuck no that's shit. Do I like the idea of Mario having his identity stolen? Sure, nothing wrong with it. Do I like the idea of going back and forth between two area multiple times with absolutely zero differences in the many trips it takes you? fuck no. that's shit. Do I like the idea of a bottle episode taking place on a train with an actually kind of engaging mystery for a grade schooler? sure, as long as you actually do stuff with it and not make the train three small areas wide, a mini dungeon with approximately zero interesting things in it, a space flea of a boss, and an absurd anticlimax. Then yeah we're cool.
ttyd just felt committed to wasting my time and wasting its own ideas, and that made my last replay of it feel really sour

also i don't like most of the music. it has one or two good boss themes, the opening, and a couple area themes. other than those, fuck it.

granted i'm not deriding everything about the game, it has some excellent ideas and setpieces, along with a pretty colorful cast of what most people call characters
but i don't think I could ever replay it again
i'm not in fifth grade anymore, the smoke has cleared and the mirrors are shattered

that said i can still play paper mario 64, i did last year even and I still find a lot to like about it!
it has good areas! good music! good bosses! Bowser being a fun and credible villain without being a fucking joke!

but whatever
TTYD isn't Super Paper Mario so it has a good mark in my book for that at least
 
Hmmm, you make some good points.

I haven't played either games in a while, but I don't remember Super Guard being that strong, at least not in the second half of the game. And even when I was younger, I was pretty good at games (I cleared a lot of the memeticly impossible ones like CV1 and 3, Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2, every Contra without dying, Ghouls and Ghosts, etc. etc.).

Then again, one thing I used to do back then, is that when a turn based rpg gave me some way of playing it like an action game (super guard, or the dodging in Mario and Luigi) I'd just ignore all the regular enemies and spend the game fighting only bosses, which tended to make them a lot harder and more drawn out then they should have been, and demanding a lot more consistency. Nowerdays I know better, and just adopt a "kill everything on the path from point a to point b" which is usually fine for exp in most games, so I wonder if a playthrough might feel like a cake walk as a result.

My main problem with Paper Mario 1, from what I can remember of it, is that with such limited defense and simple mechanics, all the fights really feel like pure damage-races (often with some gimmick to exploit, but still a damage race once you've got that down). Even though the badge attacks have a bit more variety in terms of little mini-games, I think I ultimately prefer the larger parties and tactics of Super Mario RPG, between the two of them...

...then again, I haven't played that one in a long time either, I think back in 2006 or 2007? Not sure.
 
Last edited:
Paper Mario to me was always something that gave us a story and characters we wouldn't have gotten with normal Mario games.

I was massively disappointed when I discovered Mario is the only character you play as in Sticker Star.
 
Paper mario is probably one of my favorite games of all time. I played it when I was way younger and I can honestly say I can still enjoy it to this day. Sure the graphics may be dated but the style itself has its own charm. What really appealed to me is how coherent it is despite being a different genre. It didn't seem just like an rpg game plastered with a mario skin, but it just feels natural, with every element fitting into its place. Don't know if it makes sense to you reading it, but that's how I feel about it haha. The experience really stuck with me. I really enjoyed the atmosphere. I just can't forget the first time I entered the Crystal Palace. The music and the design of that place was really beautiful.

Now thousand year door, while a better game than the first one in terms of gameplay mechanics and polish, I find less memorable than the first one. This one is completely subjective and I'm not really sure why it didn't grab me as much as the first because in retrospect, it had better graphics, the gameplay is tighter and the story is crazier. It did have a wow factor but the overall appeal is less than the first. Maybe because as a child, I found it too dark to be a mario game? I'll admit, it did disturb me a bit when Cortez (?) consumed the souls of the audience as well as the shadow queen pulverizing Grodus, leaving him as a disemboweled head.

For super paper mario, I actually enjoyed this game and it was probably because I didn't see it as a sequel of the previous two. It is a good game in its own right, but not as a paper mario game. Which is the reason why it was probably titled as such, to show its connection to the original super mario games, which is how it plays like. The story is a welcome change, which, in its very essence, is a love story. Now something you really expect from a mario game.

I'm guessing the problem with super paper mario as well as the succeeding entries is that they put the paper mario title on it, leading to lots of misunderstandings and ruined expectations. Maybe they should be clear on what they are presenting, to prevent further disappointments from the players. For the record, I do have sticker star lying around, haven't played it though so I can't really say anything about it. The color splash one seems to have good reviews, any thoughts on it who had the chance to play it?
 
Ruin said:
going back to it now it's a lot too easy for its own good with meatshields they call partners and the Superguard (which isn't that hard to use)
Uh, sure, the game is pretty easy. Only the final boss ever gave me trouble (Bonetail was nothing in comparison). Whether that in itself is a flaw is subjective, though I think difficulty spikes in story-required fights are a real flaw and the final boss is definitely that. I will always defend Megaman Battle Network's combat and those games were easy. The optional superbosses became cake after players labbed out the best decks and learned the enemy patterns.

But if you're going to talk about Superguard, that gets into very subjective territory with your mechanical ability and your experience with fighting games and all.
the biggest problem with ttyd is the significant lowering of scale, combined with the incredible amounts of backtracking and padding that shoot the game's pacing in the foot. it's stuff you don't notice when you're nine but when you're twenty it smacks you in the face

areas in general were much smaller in TTYD and it made the game feel a lot less ambitious, even if it was trying to tell ~a story~ or whatever. You had entire chapters locked off to single areas that weren't that big and weren't that interesting, even if they were sound in concept. It removes a lot of the ability to really stretch your legs and explore the areas since most of them were very small, very dense, and full of stuff the game was gonna point you to regardless.
Meh, I never liked the wandering-around parts. This is a RPG, not a platformer, so it doesn't engage me. Again, subjective, but give me all that condensed story and neat little gimmicks.

I'm not gonna say there's no backtracking or it's not a flaw. Twilight Town is tons of backtracking.
Do I enjoy the idea of flying wrestlemania and soul-stealing Vince McMahon and Rock Hogan the Bird? yes. Do I want a chapter that's nothing but gimmick fights with little variation or interesting events happening in-between? fuck no that's shit.
...
that said i can still play paper mario 64, i did last year even and I still find a lot to like about it!
it has good areas! good music! good bosses! Bowser being a fun and credible villain without being a fucking joke!
Do I want to jump around in my not-platformer avoiding fights because they're all the same and picking up some items that someone relevant needs? You decide.
 
that post was a year ago get outta here
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back