Paper Mario

Some of you may be wondering by this point “Well, yeah, the Playstation and Playstation 2 had some great RPGs, but what about other systems?” Weeeell, okay. I don’t have a SNES, so I won’t go into those, but there’s always the Nintendo 64 right? Ha. Ha. Hah. But the good old N64 had two or three good RPGs, and today’s review is paying homage to one of those. Paper Mario.

Paper Mario starts off with a traditional Mario premise. “Dear Mario. Please come to the castle. Bowser’s about to kidnap me, and I need you there so that you’ll know about it and start rescuing me. Princess Peach.” So you show up, watch Bowser, yada yada, get sent flying to a corner of Mushroom Kingdom, blah blah blah. It’s not the best story out there, but it holds. The characters you meet on the way are… mostly okay. Each of the characters in your party has a special ability, and you’ll need to use them to get through the dungeons of the game. There’s some pretty decent puzzles involving the use of different character abilities. There’s one really great character (you can boo me any day Lady Bow) and the rest are good enough. Lady Bow is a boo with bows on her head, hence her name. Clever. Her special ability is to turn Mario invisible, but he can’t move while this is active. She’s also sneaky in that she’s captured the star spirit you need to rescue, but forces you to help her with her own problems before she’ll give him to you. She’s just a little sneaky, with a cultured attitude that occasionally slips. No, we don’t have amazingly deep, soul searching characters in this game. I’m not sure that’s strictly necessary for a JRPG. In any case, Lady Bow is the best of the bunch in context, which is kind of unfortunate. Kooper’s an all-Mushroom-Kingdom guy, and doesn’t really get any more development than that. You can jump on him, making him go into his shell and hit switches (and enemies) or grab items. Bombette’s a pink bombshell, but beyond the fact that she’s a girl bob-omb, she doesn’t have any interesting personality traits. She can blow up cracked walls. Lackilester is one bad Lakitu, with mildly interesting speech mannerisms, but that’s about it, since he’s your last party member, and doesn’t have much time to be developed. He can glide over spikes indefinitely. So, really, the characters are functional for the game, and their special abilities add just a little bit of variety to the otherwise pretty standard gameplay.

The gameplay is a cool combination of classic Mario, RPG, and the quirky “paper” conceit. You can get a literal jump on enemies ala Mario, but the battles play out like a standard RPG, complete with timing based attacks. You’ll find that your papery nature helps you get into some areas, but mostly it serves as a background detail that is irrelevant to the gameplay. As for your vital statistics, you have a very simple system. You have hit points, which act just like they do in every RPG. Flower points are this game’s magic points, which means you can use them for special attacks. You also get star power, which can be used for a different set of special attacks. This charges a little every turn, but there are no items that restore star power. Finally, you get a certain number of badge points. Badges help you customize your Mario. Some badges do things like give you special attacks, like the Power Bounce Badge, which lets you perform a power bounce. This attack allows you to continue hitting an enemy until you mess up the timing. There’s also badges that affect your attack power or defense power, like the Mega Rush Badge, which increases your attack by 4 when Mario has 1 hit point left. There’s even a number of general capability badges, which do various things. The Zap Tap Badge, for example, makes it so enemies that touch Mario take one damage. With each level up you get increase only one of your HP, your FP, or your B[adge]P gauges though, so you’ll have to strategize how you build up Mario. Some people enjoy having enough FP to constantly perform specials, other prefer BP for lots of customization. Finally, at the end of every chapter there’s a bit of tactical stealth espionage featuring Princess Peach.

Well, now we come to replay value. Fortunately, this is an aspect of Paper Mario that is handled quite well. Depending on the choices you make when leveling up, the game presents different challenges. Furthermore, your selection of badges can make all the difference. Prioritize defense, so you take less damage, work on your hammer skills, or even trust to luck based skills, there’s a lot of ways to set things up. Thus, this game gets “good for a couple of afternoons every once in a while.” It’s not a super long game, but sidequests extend gameplay a little, and it’s a game that will take a few sittings for most people to finish.

Overall, this is a pretty good game, especially for a console that has very few RPGs at all. There’s nothing really wrong with it, as far a games go, so I’m going to have to give it a 9 out of 10. No, it doesn’t stand out anywhere, and it’s a bit short, but for a quick romp, there are few games that are better. The gameplay’s addictive, and it never really gets old. That counts for something.

Quick Tip: In the Dry Dry Ruins, there’s a room where you’ll have to switch the orientation of red and green staircases to get over a wall to the Super Hammer. But if you walk along the ledge above the Super Hammer chest, against the far wall you’ll find a hidden room, with the completely useless Slow Go badge. LOL.

If you liked this game, I’d recommend you look at these games. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, is pretty much better in almost every way, which is saying something. Grandia and Grandia III are pretty fun, and incorporate some pre-emptive striking into their encounters.