Paper Mario is a charming little game that I never really had the chance to experience back when it came out, but having recently played through it, I can definitely see why it's held in high esteem. It was surprisingly challenging at times, and its take on how you level up your character is quite novel amongst RPGs that really fed into it having a very consistent experience across the whole game.

That said I don't think it quite holds up to Super Mario RPG before it in terms of story and characters, nor the Mario & Luigi games after it in terms of polish and mechanics. I definitely had a few minor quibbles with the overworld platforming, as well as how inconsistent the action commands could be at times, but none of that really took away from what was a fun experience overall.