Preamble Context Section Thing: Played on Switch Online but not an option for platforms here. To date, the only other Paper Mario game I'd played was The Thousand Year Door (just gonna refer to this as TTYD or PM2 from here on out).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I finally played Paper Mario after years of meaning to, and it only took me starting 2023 with the worst flu of my life to get there.

Paper Mario may hold up the best visually out of every N64 game, which makes sense given how late it released into the console lifespan. Other games push the envelope more in terms of the N64's capabilities, but in terms of a consistent visual style that's just pleasing from start to finish I would struggle to argue for any other game looking nicer on the platform.

Most of the rest of the game just sorta... works fine. The story never really deviates from expectations too much as a standard save-the-princess adventure. Each individual chapter feels self-contained and not like it's adding to a greater whole; a new minor threat appears in a new area and once it's been cleared, you have few reasons to return other than somewhat tedious side quests that never really feel worth the rewards. The only thing linking each chapter is grabbing the Star Spirit for that chapter, but this through line never feels particularly important to the story except for during the opening and closing moments.

PM's attempts to be humorous succeed more than they fail. Characters are loveable, quirky and memorable (mostly). One major outlier for me was the recurring gag rival character, who I can only describe as a pissbaby. It was a joke that had grown stale by chapter 2 and continued to rear its head until the final moments of the game, with the rival having no motivation outside of getting dunked on in the first 20 minutes of the game and apparently never letting that go. If the writing had supported this comedic bit, I'd be more inclined to give it a pass. Much like other elements of the game it simply dragged on far too long for its own good.

My major presiding thought playing through PM1 was "Okay, I get it" for a lot of the dungeons, traversal challenges, puzzles and character dialogue. Navigating the Forever Forest felt chore-like. It's not that the challenge posed was difficult, it just remained consistently unappealing for 20 minutes whilst you visited 10 or so identical looking rooms with fairly easy observational puzzles.

Character build experimentation was also incredibly limited with a maximum of only 30 badge points here compared to TTYD's cap of 99. Badges and their effects define the characters, but whereas TTYD will let you explore the depths of its systems fairly freely, PM1 is more content to keep you in the paddling pool and strap arm bands on you, just to be safe.

I think the major takeaway from this I had was that PM1 is a tough game to return to after years of only knowing TTYD and replaying it multiple times. PM1 is a fantastic baseline but it feels almost entirely redundant to return to after TTYD's release.

So much of this feels like a TTYD prototype, with elements in specific chapters having direct parallels that are far more grandiose, entertaining and well-realised in the sequel. This is true on a narrative level, where a somewhat shoehorned in progression-blocking murder mystery in PM1 is transformed into a chapter long Murder on the Orient Express style detective fiction romp in PM2 among other examples. But, this is also true mechanically and structurally. The Paper part of Paper Mario feels almost incidental in PM1, it's a visual choice with no real depth. TTYD folds the Paper theming into the world and mechanics of the game seamlessly in a way that always feels exciting and new. The paper transformations add more key progression milestones which feel few and far between in the original.

Characterisation of partners also improves ten-fold in TTYD, with your companions getting far more fleshed out stories and interesting motives, desires and dreams compared to the gang from PM1 who mostly feel like they're merely tagging along for the ride and never experience growth in any major way. I will make an exception and say that Lady Bow owns and as much as I didn't care for the electricity baby who's name I already forgot I have to admit he was at least kinda useful in battles. Parakarry is not a character, he's an overworld ravine traversal mechanic.

Aurally, PM1 was at worst a nightmare (with some of the starting areas having grating 10 second loops with horrendous instrumentation) to forgettable at best. The team really hit a stride with TTYD on the audio front, it seems, and that's a huge disappointment to me because I've walked away from the original with no new all time greatest gaming bangers like I hoped I would.

I'm not sure that I'll ever return to PM1. It was enjoyable enough and I'm glad I cleared it from the backlog, I just see no reason to ever play this over the team's second attempt where they'd learned from their test run and refined it to hell and back.

The toybox chapter with all the shy guys sucked.

The end.

This is a game that is incredibly important to me due to the role it played in my childhood, but despite that, I don't think nostalgia does the heavy lifting for my opinion on it today. This is a wonderful game with great music, a fun story with a good sense of humor, one of my favorite battle systems in an RPG, and a pleasant art style that helped its visuals age incredibly well.
To comment on the battle system: I think it provides a great mix of strategy, puzzle solving, and timing. Due to the low numbers and simple math used in combat, you can figure out how to "optimize" certain encounters. However, there are often many different ways to go about this, and battles aren't entirely predictable. They can be pretty challenging at times.
My only real issues with the game are that a couple chapters aren't quite there in terms of story, some short segments are a bit slow, and there are a handful of relatively minor gameplay problems. (For example: you don't have quite enough good combat choices when battling single opponents with high defense, and a few areas could use some work level-design wise)

Paper Mario 64 was the second video game that introduced me to RPGs. Even without that fact, it still holds up to be one of my favorite games. The story and character designs are fairly simple, but it's really nice collecting each party member as i replayed through the game, something i haven't done in about a decade. The beginning is definitely a little slow, but once you get past that prologue, it's a wonderful and charming time. I did NOT collect all of the badges and star pieces, but i really didn't feel like i needed to.