When one discusses Paper Mario, there's one thing that can't go without mention: The Iwata Asks interview that caused the whole backlash. Miyamoto looked at Sticker Star, disagreed with the RPG loop, and told IS to take it out. If you hate Sticker Star, you are going to point at this as the root of your problems. And why wouldn't you? The RPG Paper Marios were good, the new ones aren't, surely that's what the issue was? Looking at SPM, though, I'm not as sure. Sure, the game doesn't have the onslaught of nothing but Toads that characterises the modern trilogy, but do the Flipside Folk really distinguish themselves much further? In the rare instances where they even appear at all?
While Mario is a household name, there are three others that share a similar amount of spotlight, to the point that anyone who knows enough about video games to know more than Mario's face knows about them, too. I'm talking about Luigi, Peach and Bowser, and while one of those may not be as heroic as the rest, that's the collective noun Super Paper Mario goes with, and he does enough of his best to earn it. These are probably Nintendo's most valuable assets- and while Super Mario is intentionally flexible enough that Nintendo's willing to share them around, that doesn't mean they don't have some basics to adhere to. And Paper Mario is... somewhat interesting in its relationship with them. It's interesting to ask oneself why exactly Intelligent Systems grapples with an official mandate limiting their story prowess while thinking of how they used the Four Big Ones.
Oh boy, where do I begin with Super Paper Mario... this is very definitely a game in the Paper Mario franchise. On one side, there is the RPG elements of 64 and TTYD shining brightly through. And on the other, there is the straightforward nature of making Paper Mario appeal more to the sensibilities of the platformers Mario starts with. And how exactly can one judge it, when they don't even fully understand on which side the game is to fall?
Plot-wise, an ancient artifact of doom has predicted the end of the world through the means of a second artifact of doom, and a particularly suicidal man reads this and decides he should help facilitate this. The Heroes arise to stop him, gathering the pieces of the artifact crafted specifically to counteract this particular prophecy, but even they are held back and the only one who can truly set things to right is undoing the problem that caused his depression in the first place. At no point in this plot description does the fact this game is part of the Mario brand become apparent. Bowser and Peach's wedding creating the Chaos Heart is not explicitly linked to their decades-long history, nor is the fact that Luigi is the thing that controls it because he was the first to touch it. And even then, neither of these things required that these be the Mario characters, and the only difficulty in finding replacements is creating the characters who should never be married. This story is not a Mario game. There is no two ways about it.
That's not to say it's horrible, but... the story does have its flaws. Blumiere and Timpani's romance, the keystone to the entire story and its conclusion, is taken for granted and has no time to develop because of the writers' distinct lack of interest in letting the characters in on its existence until the final hours. The Town Stories are almost completely detached from Count Bleck's plan, with the impending Void and general machinations of Team Bleck having little influence over each individual segment. There are precious few characters for the audience to connect to, and even fewer they're meant to get attached to- especially since most stay in their Town Stories. As an RPG, these are particularly painful flaws, and while 64 and TTYD did not necessarily lack them, they certainly managed them far better. They make sure to maintain the audience's interest through strong writing and connecting how things work in the moment. SPM often prefers to spend this time teasing you about how much it's not telling you about the ending.
The individual chapters, of course, get hit hardest here. Partially because navigation is on a linear basis (we never go back to Yold Town or the Underwhere because that's not how platformers work), only a few characters get to shine. With Pixls divorced from the story as partners instead of actual characters, we don't even get them to pick up the slack. Francis has to win his reputation based on two appearances and all the things he wrote down in his castle. Squirps doesn't even understand what his job is. Flint Cragley is lost in his own delusions. Luvbi is the best they have, and she suffers because she's unpleasant to be around until a key reveal and they backload that one, too. The chapter stories are microcosms of the whole story- they don't want to interrupt the platforming, perhaps, but that simply shows the mismatch between RPG and platformer.
And then we've got to discuss the gameplay. It's bad. But it's not bad because it's frustrating. If you come to hate a game's gameplay, odds are this problem happens because you are not given the options you wish you had or "luck-based" elements repeatedly come up in player-negative ways a few too many times- think TTYD's stage mechanics or any time you got walled by an evasion-heavy build. Super Paper Mario, on the other hand... it's not very hard to be good at Super Paper Mario. Even without Bowser/Carrie, you can get very good at combat with Carrie, Cudge, Bowser's fire breath, Peach's parasol shield, and simply the way your Atk stat goes up so high so quickly. This makes boss fights incredibly difficult to come off as threatening, especially since they're all fought on flat plains (it took until the final boss for platforming to be in a platforming game). The hardest parts of the game are areas where platforming goals are covered by enemies on ledges higher than/too far away from you- even with your high jump, it's hard to deal with these enemies, especially if there happens to be a low ceiling. This is why Bowser/Carrie is so strong- that is a good way of dealing with it. This isn't a problem in the platformers- those are games that reward speed and technique, and enemies are less obstacles to avoid and more opportunities to facilitate elaborate movement. The way the RPG mechanics require you to stop and consider your options, stop and deal with an enemy because you need the points to level up, or stop and play conservatively because of your low HP, since the punishment for getting killed is so much greater here than in the platformers. Dying and trying again is part of the point of the platformers. In RPGs, this is a punishment. Super Paper Mario may not be hard to master, but the gameplay doesn't form a cohesive whole and the seams still shine through, even if they can be brushed aside to get to the end.
I've gotta be honest... I think Super Paper Mario is a Modern Paper Mario title. I mean this to uplift the modern games as much as I denigrate SPM, but all the qualities we ascribe to modern Paper Mario to describe it's failures are found here. Indistinguishable characters with the bare minimum of development. Skeletal Town Stories with better concepts than executions. Progression that follows its own logic in a way that seems to have fun at the expense of the player. And a gameplay loop that been improperly balanced- just far too easy instead of far too hard. It's a game aimed at young people, and those people latched onto the romance of Tippi and Bleck. And because, when SPM was new, every game in the franchise was good and beloved, no one thought there was a good reason to question this one. But now, Paper Mario has an anvil around its neck: Sticker Star. Sticker Star is a bad game. I don't think it is possible to redeem that game. But Colour Splash and especially Origami King have to struggle under the weight of being follow-ups to Sticker Star. These games aren't as strong as a cohesive whole as TTYD's narrative or even how 64 makes Mario's playful world feel larger than life. But SPM, a game that struggles under the weight of the mechanics it borrows and stories that only get to work with their fundamentals, lacking the bells and whistles of a more well-polished experience, fits in more closely with them than it does its predecessors. I don't think Super and Origami King are that different- but only one of them was judged in the light of Sticker Star. In a way, the problems that made Sticker Star particularly offensive were always bubbling under the surface, but because of the way we saw that problem take form, we only consider the games following it to suffer under its yoke.
This is absolutely an ominous room.
...Guys.
Are we really walking into the final battle with a Paper Mario short-sightedness joke?
The countdown has now started. Pay no attention to the half of the castle we've already gotten through.
...You know, 1-2 didn't have dialogue at the start of it. We really didn't need to re-establish premises when they're just off.
Once again, the game confidently and proudly states we are much less far in in the title card than I feel we should be. Now we're in the interior? I can see the Void outside!
Skellobits have followed us even into Castle Bleck. They seem to like these guys even as the literal legions of hell.
And hey, they're fun to fight.
After finding every Pure Heart, the band of heroes set off for Castle Bleck. The stakes were high as the ominous void grew larger and the end drew near. Could Mario and friends stave off the inevitable and overturn the prophecy? What strange twist of fate awaited Tippi and Count Bleck? These thoughts plagued the minds of our heroes as the curtain rose on the final act...
Fortunately, that oppressive atmosphere is relatively isolated to the text. We don't have to listen to this out of the characters quite so much.
Remember this place? It's been a while since we've left the room Count Bleck stays in, but this is where Peach and Luigi escaped from. It's time to come back.
...He's gone all out on the decor. I love it.
Not that we can see the detail from this distance. It makes the castle look kinda scary, but I think I prefer the "some detail".
Bowser: Don't you run, Bleck! Your face is about to feel the burn!
Luigi: Yes! Count Bleck is deep inside this castle.
Peach is the only party member to acknowledge she's been here before. Sorry, Bowser, but this time Peach is the cool one.
...Are you going to be like this the whole time?
Time for us to delve into Castle Bleck, which has prepared a suitably nifty ominous theme. Probably a candidate for the best final dungeon theme of the trilogy- the atmosphere of Bowser's Castle and Palace of Shadow were nice, but this one nails both atmosphere and being a bop.
