Paper Mario (Series)

[ShiraNoMai]

There'd be no reason to make it cost BP when the only badges that do cost BP affect actual gameplay.

Ummmmmmmm akshully, sir, the Attack FX R badge, which costs 0BP, does affect the actual gameplay by making the first major boss weaker to and at attacks. 

I don't know how substantiated the claims are, but folks are reporting the game runs at 30fps as compared to the GameCube version's 60fps performance. Not sure how to feel about that.

[Moonface]

There'd be no reason to make it cost BP when the only badges that do cost BP affect actual gameplay.

Ummmmmmmm akshully, sir, the Attack FX R badge, which costs 0BP, does affect the actual gameplay by making the first major boss weaker to and at attacks. 

I don't know how substantiated the claims are, but folks are reporting the game runs at 30fps as compared to the GameCube version's 60fps performance. Not sure how to feel about that.

Well dang, I didn't know that. Although, it seems in the remake it'll be the FX G badge that will be strong against Hooktail in the English version just as it is in non-English versions. Which makes me wonder how the script was translated wrong about what Hooktail is weak to because clearly somebody realized the FX G badge doesn't match the translated weakness and swapped it for the FX R badge in the English version of the game. It's practically this games own version of the Skinner meme of "Am I that out of touch? No, it's the non-English teams who are wrong."


Yeah, I've seen people saying it runs at 30fps but I don't know if a preview stated that or if people picked it out from recent footage. I can't say it's a good look that a visual upgrade of a 20 year old game runs worse on hardware that's 3 generations newer, especially when there's no way this game is more taxing than something like Metroid Dread which does run at 60fps. I don't care about this game running at 60 because I want 60fps gameplay from it btw; I just care that Nintendo somehow can't make this game run at 60fps when it feels like it should be able to.

[Dragon Lord]

I've been practicing my Necromancy lately and I am using it to bring this topic back from the dead.

I've been considering finally getting myself into the Paper Mario games. I never gave them a try since I really liked Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars and never really looked upon the Paper Mario games with much favor compared to it. But with the ability to access the Nintendo 64 game on NSO, and being able to pick up a Switch copy of The Thousand-Year Door remaster/remake (whatever it is), I've been thinking about finally trying them out for myself.

So my question for those who have played multiple games in the series, are they all worth playing, or should I only focus on certain ones? Playing through Paper Mario and Thousand-Year Door seem like the no-brainers of the series, but which of the other games are worth it? Super Paper Mario and Color Splash are probably off the table for me since I'm too lazy to look into and set-up Wii and Wii U emulators, but what about the 3DS games and The Origami King?

[Mr EliteL]

I've only played Paper Mario to Super Paper Mario, nothing after them. The first two are a no-brainer as you already know, I rate them very highly. Don't blame ya for potentially skipping SPM, it becomes a platformer with RPG qualities, though I still personally enjoyed it and it has the best plot and villain (imo).

I have next to no opinion of the other three games other than I avoided them at all costs. Origami King seems to be the best of those three though. Not played the Mario & Luigi Paper Jam, though obviously that falls under the M&L series really than being a proper Paper Mario game. Heh, I say "proper"...I'll just leave it at that.

[Dragon Lord]

Yeah, I've read that the first two games are by far the absolute best, so I'm interested in them.

My friend did tell me that Origami King ditches all of the RPG elements though? If that's the case, then that would be an easy skip for me. The big draw of trying out the Paper Mario games after all these years is just to experience more RPGs. If they removed all those elements and just made it some type of platformer, then why would I play that over just playing Mario Sunshine on NSO? Or getting the Galaxy/Galaxy 2 bundle? If I want to play Mario platformers, I'll go play Mario platformers.

[Moonface]

I've only played TTYD and Sticker Star myself, and while the latter isn't a bad game it has the issue this series as a whole has post-TTYD; it makes changes to the core gameplay that never really build off of what came before. Sticker Star for example has no allies and removes other RPG mechanics, which are key components of the games before it, and the sticker mechanic it introduces doesn't really match how good allies were. I don't recall it being bad, but the issue of no level up mechanics and battles using exclusively consumable items can at times incentivize just avoiding battles entirely if you would rather save the stickers you have for a required battle. Furthermore, it means you won't dare touch really good stickers for anything but boss fights, whereas in the earlier games you could use all the best abilities in any battle if you so wish so long as you have the FP for it.

Fortunately, none of the stories connect to each other so if you only want to focus on the RPG heavy entries, then at least the first two games fall into that. For the rest, it's there but varies wildly and ultimately is always less compared to those first two.

[Dragon Lord]

Ah, good to know then. I'll definitely avoid anything post-TTYD then. Thanks for the feedback though, it's always nice to hear from people who have played the games before I dive in and potentially waste who knows how many hours on a game and end up just disliking it. At least PM64 will be free for me to play, haha. I'll have to find a new copy of TTYD (doesn't seem to be too expensive though, looks like I can find sealed copies for around $45), but from what I've heard about the game, it's actually really good so should be worth the purchase.