Paper Mario is a turn-based RPG for the Nintendo 64, and one of the few RPGs, period, that released for that console. It was developed by Intelligent Systems, longtime Nintendo collaborators best known for their work on the Fire Emblem series. The game follows Mario's attempts to rescue Princess Peach and the Mushroom Kingdom itself from the tyrannical reign of, you guessed it, Bowser! Can't these people ever come up with another plot?
The combat is similar to that in Super Mario RPG, albeit with a different view perspective. While Mario RPG uses an isometric faux-3D style, Paper Mario's view is from the side and mimics the look of a 2D platformer, more similar to the style seen in Mario & Luigi. You have the chance to time buttons and inputs correctly to increase your damage on your attacks, or reduce it on the enemy's attacks. You also have flower points that can be used to attempt more powerful special attacks, and a new resource that allows you to tap into the various star powers you'll learn along the way. The combat is slightly more fun than in Super Mario RPG, in that you have more ways of increasing damage than just pressing A at the right time, but not quite as fun as the highly interactive and engaging system in Mario & Luigi, particularly defensively. There's a really nice system of attacking types that you'll need to use strategically to defeat the various enemies that will keep you thinking and needing to swap in and out your various allies. So, for an enemy with spikes on it, you won't want to use your jumping attacks, but for your shelled enemies, you will.
The game's plot and story are extremely simple and predictable, but pleasing nonetheless. You'll get the beats you expect, and you'll enjoy them just like I did. The highlight of the game, from a writing standpoint, is the great cast of supporting characters you'll attain throughout your journey. These are, in keeping with the tradition of having Bowser in your team in Mario RPG, all representatives of the typical bad guy races in the Mario universe. You'll get a Goomba, a Boo, a Koopa, a Parakoopa, and more. All of them are super cute and have their own uses in battle, so you'll end up using all of them at least a handful of times throughout the game. You can have one ally active at once, which keeps combat simple. Each character also has their own uses outside of battle that you can use to solve the various puzzles separating Mario from his beloved princess. Someday he'll get off the hook and she'll make him an honest man!
The puzzles are simple and fun, and are definitely designed for a player who is new to the RPG genre, which is exactly how this entire game is designed. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems absolutely wanted to make a game to introduce RPG mechanics to RPG neophytes, and you can tell. Everything is as simple as possible, and it's a nice entry point for those unfamiliar with the genre, but who already know a bit about Mario.
The character building and progression system is pretty weak, and is one of my biggest complaints with the game. You can equip badges on Mario, but can't really adjust anything about your allies, aside from two big chunk "level ups" that you find throughout the game for each of them. These badges are pretty pedestrian. Most are special attacks that underwhelm, or little perks that underwhelm, or bigger perks that are way too expensive. There's very little you can do to make Mario feel different between playthroughs, which drastically reduces the replay value of this game compared to other RPGs. There's also a lot less role playing, which intrinsically reduces the fun of the game for me, for whom character development means a ton. All of this can be forgiven due to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems branding of this game as a starter RPG, but what I find more difficult to forgive is the throttling of leveling up.
Like some other games the experience you get from each enemy is affected not only by the strength of that enemy, but also by your overall level. You need 100 experience to level up, and each enemy will contribute a small chunk when you defeat them. A simple koopa, defeated while you are level 1, will grant (just a hypothetical) 2 experience, but if you level up to level 2, you only get 1 experience from that. Worst of all, if you are level 3, you'll get 0 experience (you should never, ever, get 0 experience for defeating an enemy). All of this serves to give you a functional, if not technical, level cap for each part of the game until you can venture to new worlds and find stronger enemies that will actually give you experience to continue your development.
Part of the fun of RPGs to me is the ability you have to grind to feel extremely powerful. Games with heavy grind systems with huge payoffs and lots of customization in character development (Bravely Default, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy V, etc.) are far more rewarding to me than a simpler RPG, particularly when you have level caps like this. Level caps in a game like Final Fantasy Tactics actually don't bother me overly much because they serve a purpose in game (encouraging you to try to level up your weaker characters rather than only relying on stronger ones) and because there are actually ways in which you can be building and developing your characters even when they're at their level cap (i.e. jobs systems). But Paper Mario totally lacks the ability to develop your characters at all aside from the simple level up system and the gear you'll obtain along the way just by completing the story, and so the level cap here just serves as a means to control the difficulty curve, which to me subverts the very nature of the RPG itself as an art form. At least in simpler games like Dragon Quest you can grind away at a wall you've hit, but here the only answer is to better craft your strategy.
The visuals in this game are excellent, and are some of the most delightful on the N64. Intelligent Systems did a great job of creating an iconic look that aged really well, and there are plenty of little delightful paper-themed winks to the player, such as when Mario slides easily under the covers when he's resting. Paper Mario also takes a significant number of design cues from Super Mario Bros. 3, including the sprite work, curtains on the main title screen, star rods, etc. These cues are really nice and make Paper Mario feel like it has a connection to the broader Mario universe.
The music here is good. There's nothing that will particularly get stuck in your head, but there are plenty of solid tracks.
The length of the game isn't too long, and is a real breath of fresh air to those tired of massive RPGs (me). There's very little fluff here, and the game will easily be over in 25 hours, even if you take your time.
All in all, Paper Mario is a quality game, and the best RPG on the N64 by a mile. I can't help wondering, though, how much better this game would have been with a few different choices. There's absolutely nothing about this game that's better than Mario & Luigi, and it does enough worse than Super Mario RPG (which came out four years earlier) that I really just feel let down by the game, particularly by the character progression system. This game is worth owning and playing, and would be solid for a child getting into RPGs for the first time or a true Mario fan, but not better than some other entry-level RPGs like Pokemon. I'll give it an 8.0/10.
Up next on What I'm Playing is a game I'll tease below. See you soon!
-TRO
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