This review contains spoilers
If one radically changes the elements of any franchise, this decision is naturally going to garner some contempt from long-time fans. One of the most appealing aspects of franchises is a sense of familiarity. Too much deviation away from this familiarity might alienate those fans who expect to be at a certain level of comfort for a new experience. Judging by the massive scope franchises have across film and video games, most consumers are enticed by this familiarity as it gives them comfort. It's the difference between dipping your toe in the water and running headfirst into it with a cannonball. A franchise one is familiar with connotes that they somewhat know what to expect from a new entry. When the developers pull the rug out from under the player and offer something completely different, one's expectations need to be forcefully modified. This feeling of being taken out of my comfort zone to an uneasy degree was what I endured when Super Paper Mario was released, and I was not the only person who was taken aback by this game. In 2007, the previous Paper Mario titles were two new favorites in recent memory, and I was over the hill about a new Paper Mario title on the new Wii system. Once I played it, the obvious signs that this was a different kind of Paper Mario immediately sent pangs of disappointment running throughout my being. In retrospect, the series has disgraced itself to the point where Super Paper Mario looks like a masterpiece in comparison. Still, the game's bold direction after creating a solid RPG foundation at the time was likely to cause some severe ire.
I can't think of a more polarizing decision on the part of the developers than to change the genre of a long-running series. As an adult, I'm impressed by the brass balls on Intelligent Systems for doing this to Paper Mario. I was distraught and even borderline offended at their gumption as a child. The series' unique and accessible approach to the JRPG genre was blown to the wayside in favor of a 2D platformer with JRPG elements. How could they strip away the most fundamental aspect that made Paper Mario the refreshing, invigorating series that it was? One of the most compelling aspects of the previous two Paper Mario games was how they used the JRPG genre to flesh out the Mario universe and subvert the tired tropes we had become all too familiar with while playing the mainline series. A Paper Mario title in the 2D platformer realm felt asinine, like emulating the genre of the main series made the Paper Mario series irrelevant and redundant. Paper Mario had proverbially crawled back into the womb, a disheartening event that left many fans, myself included, disenfranchised with Paper Mario. Upon further reflection after picking this game back up after so many years, I've reached a point of clarity. Perhaps the core aspect of Paper Mario isn't the JRPG gameplay, after all. As I've stated before, the key ingredient in Paper Mario's evolution is irreverence. The first game subverted the tropes of the mainline Mario series, and The Thousand-Year Door expanded on this by subverting the makeup of the first game. If irreverence is the most vital initiative to Paper Mario, then Super Paper Mario is on the right track.
One of the most subversive things about the plot of The Thousand-Year Door was the fact that Bowser was not the central antagonist. Grodus and his legion of X-Naut ignoramuses made for enticing bad guys for Mario to defeat, even though their villainous plans involved the exhausted Mario series staple of kidnapping Peach. Super Paper Mario follows this trend of deviating from Bowser as the main villain splendidly, introducing us to the mysterious debonair Count Bleck. The first course of irreverence that Super Paper Mario introduces to the player is the opening, where a panicked Toad runs up to Mario's house and tells them the princess has been captured once again. Naturally, both Mario and Luigi assume that Bowser is the perpetrator and confront him at his castle. A violent skirmish is negated when Mario realizes that it was not Bowser who kidnapped Peach. The real culprit, Count Bleck, materializes both himself and Peach using an alien, indescribable magic force. Count Bleck then uses the same power to summon a black hole that sucks in Bowser, Luigi, and all of Bowser's minions. Mario is unscathed by the ordeal, left alone in Bowser's castle. Once he awakens, he meets a butterfly-shaped "pixl" named Tippi. She urgently beckons Mario to come with her to rescue all of his friends, for Count Bleck has formed something known as the "Chaos Heart" by marrying Bowser and Peach. This event has created a dark void in the sky, said to be a prophetic catalyst foretold in the Dark Prognosticus book that will swallow the universe whole. Conversely, a book called the Light Prognosticus tells of this impending doom being stopped by heroes, namely Mario and his friends.
Immediately as Mario arrives at the hub of Flipside, the player gets the impression that this is not the standard Paper Mario fare. While it is off-putting at first, I suppose I can diplomatically say that Paper Mario translates competently into the 2D platformer genre. After all, the range of movement across the 2D platformer genre is as flat as paper. Ironically for a game that explicitly uses paper as a design choice, the world of the first two Paper Mario games is surprisingly robust. The developers fused a pleasing aesthetic that incorporated 2D and 3D textures to flesh out the world and makes it seem vast. The other-worldly dimension Mario finds in Super Paper Mario looks as flat as…well, as flat as paper. Conveying paper's smooth, leveled qualities was never a clear initiative of Paper Mario's design, but it comes as natural when the game has been shifted to a 2D platformer. However, the developers compensate for streamlining the design of Paper Mario by giving it a surrealistic quality. The foregrounds, backgrounds, and NPC characters have a consistently abstract, cubist design fitting for something of a Picasso painting. The third entry in the Paper Mario series was ostensibly the time to get expressionistic, fitting for this entry because cubism was arguably an irreverent movement that subverted the shape and design of art. The world may seem comparatively shallow to the first two games in terms of design, but at least its look is refreshing and seems appropriate for Paper Mario.
The more important and controversial aspect of the series' transition to a 2D platformer is Super Paper Mario's gameplay. Gone is the idiosyncratic, accessible JRPG battle system that acted as the main appeal of the first two games, opting for a game with strictly 2D platformer gameplay like many of the mainline Mario games. The 2D platformer gameplay of the mainline Mario titles is perfectly fine, and I'd even argue that they are some of the tightest, most fluid 2D platformer games. However, the appeal of Paper Mario is that the JRPG foundation deviates entirely from the main series. Yet another 2D platformer in a series that basically sets the standards for the genre does not pique the interests of gamers who yearn for something different. As one can expect if they've played a Mario game, Mario moves from one side of the screen to the other while jumping onto his enemies and crushing them with the might of his brown Italian loafers. What separates Super Paper Mario from the mainline series is the experience points that Mario accumulates that automatically levels up either his health or his attack power. It's a good thing that Super Paper Mario still retains some RPG elements from the previous games because the 2D platformer gameplay is not up to par with the fluidity and grace of Mario's movement found in the mainline series. Mario's jump hitboxes can be wildly inconsistent, damaging him unfairly. Fortunately, the JRPG health system makes the amount of total health plentiful, so the player will only be moderately irked by taking damage from slightly inaccurate jumps. The controls in Super Paper Mario are overall very slippery. The greasy, slick movement often results in many awkward moments, such as periodically slipping off of platforms and knockback from both receiving and dealing damage. The platforming controls are competent enough that they don't become too much of a grievance, but they wouldn't fly in a typical 2D Mario platformer.
When I said that the world of Super Paper Mario became as flat as paper to fit the 2D platformer genre better, that wasn't entirely true. The new "flip" mechanic allows Mario to see this strange new world from an entirely new perspective, a three-dimensional perspective, to be exact. This mechanic is mainly used for traversal as the 3D angle gives Mario a more in-depth glance at his surroundings. In theory, this mechanic should widen the aesthetic depth of a level and flesh out the levels from a gameplay standpoint. However, it does none of the former and only slightly for the latter. "Flipping" is a logical way to solve a platforming puzzle when the player feels stuck because of the new viewpoint it provides, but executing the mechanic is a frequent chore. The tedium is caused by the "flip meter," which diminishes when Mario is in 3D. Mario has to flip back into 2D like swimming up from the water to catch a breath of air, lest he takes a hit of damage. I understand why the developers limit using this mechanic, but its frequent use and how quickly the meter depletes make it tedious to use. The meter also doesn't entirely refresh when Mario flips back to 2D, which means the player will have to stand around and wait for it to replenish itself. The developers could have compromised to negate the tedium by having the meter increase with leveling up. As it is, I dreaded using this mechanic most of the time.
The most unfortunate aspect about the "flip" mechanic is that Mario is the only playable character that can use it. Yes, that's right: for the first time in Paper Mario, the player can man more than just Mario out on the field. The Light Prognosticus tells of four crucial characters that cease the universe's destruction, so Mario's posse includes three more notable figures from the Mario universe. Peach and Bowser have been playable since the first game, but this is the first time they work together with Mario on his adventure. Each new playable character has a unique ability, such as Peach being able to glide and deflect projectiles with her parasol and Bowser's innate ability to breathe fire and deal more damage. After two Paper Mario titles filled with gripes that Mario won't take him on his adventure, Luigi finally has some gravity in the narrative. He becomes "brainwashed" by Count Bleck and becomes a masked alternate persona called "Mr. L," who tries to take down Mario in a mechanized head shaped in his image. After a certain point in the story, Luigi comes to his senses and joins Mario's team. I'm unconvinced of the brainwashing aspect, however, and think that Luigi took it as an opportunity to combat his prick of an older brother who won't let him join in on the fun. Being able to play as three other characters at any point is a stimulating idea, but it isn't all that practical. Due to how persistent the flipping mechanic tends to be, the player will be forced to play as Mario because he is the only one who can do it. Every other playable character is relegated to only being used during certain platforming situations, also using Bowser for specific combat scenarios as well. Overall, I wonder why the developers even bothered with this addition.
One might assume that since Mario is accompanied by three additional playable characters, the partner system has been omitted. This assumption would only be half correct. While the traditional partner characters have been replaced, they have been reconstructed as pixls. These fluttering little symbols all possess unique properties that more or less substitute the staple partner mechanics and paper abilities from the previous two games. For instance, Boomer the bomb pixl replaces the bob-OMB partners with the same exploding capabilities. Slim allows Mario to slip through narrow crevices, Thudley replaces the super boots, and Cudge gives everyone the ability to use Mario's trusty ol' hammer. Other pixls such as Fleep and Dottie have new skills never before seen in previous games. Mario's arsenal of pixls is like a handy swiss-army knife, and I couldn't mean that with more negative connotations. I already used a swiss-army knife to compare the partner characters of the first game to illustrate their blandness despite their utility. Still, those characters are as dynamic of an ensemble as the cast of an HBO series compared to the floating units that follow Mario around here. The pixls are nothing but faceless tools made to do Mario's bidding and nothing more. They are one of the most underwhelming aspects of Super Paper Mario. Their inclusion to replace the charming partner characters from the previous two titles was one of the critical points of apprehension I had towards this game initially.
While the pixls exemplify a regression for the series, the villains certainly are not. In the previous two Paper Mario games, many villain encounters were situated over the sub-narrative of a particular chapter with a glimpse of an overarching narrative involving the main antagonist seen between chapters. The enigmatic Count Bleck comes with a gang of baddies just as intriguing as him. O’Chunks is a bearded, dumb-as-rocks Scotsman who speaks with a heavily exaggerated Scottish accent and rockets off from the ground by farting, with so much velocity that even Wario would be impressed. Mimi is a green, bratty little shapeshifter whose true form will inspire nightmares for several players. Dimentio is a shrewd magician whose magic prowess makes him a formidable foe and a hard book to read. Even Count Bleck’s diminutive assistant Nastasia has an interesting dynamic with the Count and his minions as she discusses their insidious plans on the vacant, dark platforms that they call their headquarters. Throughout the game, the player will become familiar with all of these baddies and become enamored with the amount of character all of these villains exude.
Unfortunately, these bad guys make for bad boss fights. I enjoy the contentious dialogue between these villains and Mario's company during the encounters, but dispatching them is always an underwhelming affair. Most of them are defeated through simple means of jumping on their head, if not through another uninvolved method. None of them even attempt to utilize the flipping mechanic in their fight, except for an unaffiliated boss named Fracktail, who uses the mechanic cleverly during the fight. The worst aspect is that none of Bleck's minions incorporate any new moves upon repeat encounters. They should've honed their combat skills instead of conducting those meetings with the Count to make for a more exciting fight. The lack of a substantial challenge with these boss battles is unfortunately indicative of the game's difficulty. Paper Mario was intended to be more accessible than the average JRPG game, but it could still offer a hefty challenge at times. I did not die even once throughout the entire game, and it's not because I acclimated to the new system quickly. I'd argue that Nintendo watered down the difficulty level due to a streamlining prerogative for the Wii. I think it has more to do with the cumbrous marriage of the 2D platformer and JRPG genres. A large, numbered health system from the RPG genre makes the difficulty of every combat situation trivial.
Gameplay is not Super Paper Mario's strong suit, but it is not too significant of a deterrent to the game's overall quality. The more meaningful and substantial aspects of Super Paper Mario lie in the narrative. Like the previous two games, Mario's quest to save the world involves collecting seven different MacGuffins ranging in color, but this time, they are heart-shaped instead of star-shaped. The peak of the hub of Flipside houses seven different doors that warp Mario to seven different areas divided by chapters. The usual eight chapters that divide the story of a Paper Mario game are split even further into four subchapters, almost similar to how the levels of a world are divided in the first Super Mario Bros. Each subchapter may include a different area with another objective while retaining a concrete goal to obtain that chapter's, pure heart. Despite its fragmented presentation, the chapters of Super Paper Mario are paced just as well as the chapters of the previous two games.
It's a good thing the pacing isn't compromised because Super Paper Mario is filled to the brim with wackiness. The game's prime source of irreverence is all the kooky shit that happens throughout the game, almost rivaling Nintendo's absurdist classic Earthbound in daft occurrences. Like with detailing Earthbound, a highlight reel of Super Paper Mario's moments must be listed for brevity. First off, Dimentio gives Bowser some serious competition for hilarious quips of dialogue, and Bowser is still in prime, comedic form from The Thousand-Year Door. The fourth chapter is a Gradius-style space shooter with platforming sections. The alien taking Mario through space urgently needs to use an occupied space port-a-potty to avoid an accident. The game constantly breaks the fourth wall, describing death in general as "ended games." Those with "ended games' 'end up in the Underwhere, a comical take on the underworld from Greek mythos with Super Paper Mario's signature style. My favorite funny moment of Super Paper Mario is the interactive dating simulation between Peach and the reptilian uber-dork Francis, a standout character of the game and a possible stab at fans (like me) who found fault with Super Paper Mario's new direction. Touche, Intelligent Systems. Unfortunately, this game's "Earthbound syndrome" also tends to verge on quirky moments that I don't find amusing. In the fifth chapter, the game makes the player memorize a combination that is too long to remember, forcing the player to write it down. In the second chapter, Mario has to work off a massive debt after breaking something in a mansion and is forced into enslavement to work it off. The game expects the player to continuously run on a treadmill for up to 10 whole minutes to earn enough money, but the player can look up the combination of a safe to pay off the debt. I, like a sucker, did it the hard way and played a game on my phone while holding the Wiimote down. Yes, you heard me correctly; I felt inclined to play another game while playing this one. I can hear the people down at Intelligent Systems giggling while I roll my eyes.
Despite all of the funny bits, Super Paper Mario's core narrative is incredibly bleak. As the game progresses, the dark void keeps growing and growing, having a more ominous presence like the moon from Majora's Mask after the first day. The full extent of the void is displayed in chapter six when a world modeled like feudal Japan in this game's version of Glitzville is destroyed by the void. Upon reentry, Mario and his friends see the remains of this world, eerie white oblivion with minuscule remnants of what was here before. It depicts existential dread that makes stopping Bleck even more pressing. The void concept naturally lends itself to the more ruinous subject matter, but the game's narrative progressively becomes surprisingly touching. It's revealed that Bleck's impetus for wanting to destroy the universe with the Chaos Heart is that the human version of Tippi and his former persona Blumiere used to be star-crossed lovers. Timpani, the human version of Tippi, disappeared into the body of pixl, and her absence made Bleck believe that he had nothing to live for in this world. Once Mario and the gang recover all seven pure hearts, they face Bleck in his dark, monochromatic castle with a sublime atmosphere fitting for a Jean Cocteau film.
Bleck and Tippi reunite, and Bleck has second thoughts about his plan, but Dimentio reveals himself to be the game's true antagonist and wants to enact the dark prophecy. Bleck and Tippi sacrifice themselves to aid Mario in stopping Dimentio, sending themselves away to a wistful land to reconvene their romantic relationship. I can't believe this, but this ending is more poignant and satisfying than in the first two games. Bleck's character arc and the resolution to it admittedly got me a bit choked up, just as much as the ending of the first game does. Unfortunately, the Dimentio/Mr. L hybrid of a final boss is not up to the same level as something like the Shadow Queen and almost ruins the impact of the ending.
I feel that Super Paper Mario will always have a mixed reputation in the eyes of Paper Mario fans. I've come to admire the level of experimentation the developers were willing to implement after creating two of the greatest JRPGs I've ever played. The initial disappointment I had for this game as a child has been melted away by my growth and maturity. However, Super Paper Mario's experimentation level has introduced the franchise to many new problems. The melding of a 2D platformer and a JRPG does not work on a fundamental basis. The two genres constantly contradict each other like a game of tug-of-war, resulting in clumsy gameplay with a tepid difficulty curve. While the gameplay is incredibly flawed, Super Paper Mario still upholds (some) fantastic characters, old and new, with a delightfully humorous, compelling, and surprisingly profound narrative. Super Paper Mario is a Paper Mario game on the inside, not the outside. As the adage goes, it's what's on the inside that matters, making Super Paper Mario a worthy inclusion to the series.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
I can't think of a more polarizing decision on the part of the developers than to change the genre of a long-running series. As an adult, I'm impressed by the brass balls on Intelligent Systems for doing this to Paper Mario. I was distraught and even borderline offended at their gumption as a child. The series' unique and accessible approach to the JRPG genre was blown to the wayside in favor of a 2D platformer with JRPG elements. How could they strip away the most fundamental aspect that made Paper Mario the refreshing, invigorating series that it was? One of the most compelling aspects of the previous two Paper Mario games was how they used the JRPG genre to flesh out the Mario universe and subvert the tired tropes we had become all too familiar with while playing the mainline series. A Paper Mario title in the 2D platformer realm felt asinine, like emulating the genre of the main series made the Paper Mario series irrelevant and redundant. Paper Mario had proverbially crawled back into the womb, a disheartening event that left many fans, myself included, disenfranchised with Paper Mario. Upon further reflection after picking this game back up after so many years, I've reached a point of clarity. Perhaps the core aspect of Paper Mario isn't the JRPG gameplay, after all. As I've stated before, the key ingredient in Paper Mario's evolution is irreverence. The first game subverted the tropes of the mainline Mario series, and The Thousand-Year Door expanded on this by subverting the makeup of the first game. If irreverence is the most vital initiative to Paper Mario, then Super Paper Mario is on the right track.
One of the most subversive things about the plot of The Thousand-Year Door was the fact that Bowser was not the central antagonist. Grodus and his legion of X-Naut ignoramuses made for enticing bad guys for Mario to defeat, even though their villainous plans involved the exhausted Mario series staple of kidnapping Peach. Super Paper Mario follows this trend of deviating from Bowser as the main villain splendidly, introducing us to the mysterious debonair Count Bleck. The first course of irreverence that Super Paper Mario introduces to the player is the opening, where a panicked Toad runs up to Mario's house and tells them the princess has been captured once again. Naturally, both Mario and Luigi assume that Bowser is the perpetrator and confront him at his castle. A violent skirmish is negated when Mario realizes that it was not Bowser who kidnapped Peach. The real culprit, Count Bleck, materializes both himself and Peach using an alien, indescribable magic force. Count Bleck then uses the same power to summon a black hole that sucks in Bowser, Luigi, and all of Bowser's minions. Mario is unscathed by the ordeal, left alone in Bowser's castle. Once he awakens, he meets a butterfly-shaped "pixl" named Tippi. She urgently beckons Mario to come with her to rescue all of his friends, for Count Bleck has formed something known as the "Chaos Heart" by marrying Bowser and Peach. This event has created a dark void in the sky, said to be a prophetic catalyst foretold in the Dark Prognosticus book that will swallow the universe whole. Conversely, a book called the Light Prognosticus tells of this impending doom being stopped by heroes, namely Mario and his friends.
Immediately as Mario arrives at the hub of Flipside, the player gets the impression that this is not the standard Paper Mario fare. While it is off-putting at first, I suppose I can diplomatically say that Paper Mario translates competently into the 2D platformer genre. After all, the range of movement across the 2D platformer genre is as flat as paper. Ironically for a game that explicitly uses paper as a design choice, the world of the first two Paper Mario games is surprisingly robust. The developers fused a pleasing aesthetic that incorporated 2D and 3D textures to flesh out the world and makes it seem vast. The other-worldly dimension Mario finds in Super Paper Mario looks as flat as…well, as flat as paper. Conveying paper's smooth, leveled qualities was never a clear initiative of Paper Mario's design, but it comes as natural when the game has been shifted to a 2D platformer. However, the developers compensate for streamlining the design of Paper Mario by giving it a surrealistic quality. The foregrounds, backgrounds, and NPC characters have a consistently abstract, cubist design fitting for something of a Picasso painting. The third entry in the Paper Mario series was ostensibly the time to get expressionistic, fitting for this entry because cubism was arguably an irreverent movement that subverted the shape and design of art. The world may seem comparatively shallow to the first two games in terms of design, but at least its look is refreshing and seems appropriate for Paper Mario.
The more important and controversial aspect of the series' transition to a 2D platformer is Super Paper Mario's gameplay. Gone is the idiosyncratic, accessible JRPG battle system that acted as the main appeal of the first two games, opting for a game with strictly 2D platformer gameplay like many of the mainline Mario games. The 2D platformer gameplay of the mainline Mario titles is perfectly fine, and I'd even argue that they are some of the tightest, most fluid 2D platformer games. However, the appeal of Paper Mario is that the JRPG foundation deviates entirely from the main series. Yet another 2D platformer in a series that basically sets the standards for the genre does not pique the interests of gamers who yearn for something different. As one can expect if they've played a Mario game, Mario moves from one side of the screen to the other while jumping onto his enemies and crushing them with the might of his brown Italian loafers. What separates Super Paper Mario from the mainline series is the experience points that Mario accumulates that automatically levels up either his health or his attack power. It's a good thing that Super Paper Mario still retains some RPG elements from the previous games because the 2D platformer gameplay is not up to par with the fluidity and grace of Mario's movement found in the mainline series. Mario's jump hitboxes can be wildly inconsistent, damaging him unfairly. Fortunately, the JRPG health system makes the amount of total health plentiful, so the player will only be moderately irked by taking damage from slightly inaccurate jumps. The controls in Super Paper Mario are overall very slippery. The greasy, slick movement often results in many awkward moments, such as periodically slipping off of platforms and knockback from both receiving and dealing damage. The platforming controls are competent enough that they don't become too much of a grievance, but they wouldn't fly in a typical 2D Mario platformer.
When I said that the world of Super Paper Mario became as flat as paper to fit the 2D platformer genre better, that wasn't entirely true. The new "flip" mechanic allows Mario to see this strange new world from an entirely new perspective, a three-dimensional perspective, to be exact. This mechanic is mainly used for traversal as the 3D angle gives Mario a more in-depth glance at his surroundings. In theory, this mechanic should widen the aesthetic depth of a level and flesh out the levels from a gameplay standpoint. However, it does none of the former and only slightly for the latter. "Flipping" is a logical way to solve a platforming puzzle when the player feels stuck because of the new viewpoint it provides, but executing the mechanic is a frequent chore. The tedium is caused by the "flip meter," which diminishes when Mario is in 3D. Mario has to flip back into 2D like swimming up from the water to catch a breath of air, lest he takes a hit of damage. I understand why the developers limit using this mechanic, but its frequent use and how quickly the meter depletes make it tedious to use. The meter also doesn't entirely refresh when Mario flips back to 2D, which means the player will have to stand around and wait for it to replenish itself. The developers could have compromised to negate the tedium by having the meter increase with leveling up. As it is, I dreaded using this mechanic most of the time.
The most unfortunate aspect about the "flip" mechanic is that Mario is the only playable character that can use it. Yes, that's right: for the first time in Paper Mario, the player can man more than just Mario out on the field. The Light Prognosticus tells of four crucial characters that cease the universe's destruction, so Mario's posse includes three more notable figures from the Mario universe. Peach and Bowser have been playable since the first game, but this is the first time they work together with Mario on his adventure. Each new playable character has a unique ability, such as Peach being able to glide and deflect projectiles with her parasol and Bowser's innate ability to breathe fire and deal more damage. After two Paper Mario titles filled with gripes that Mario won't take him on his adventure, Luigi finally has some gravity in the narrative. He becomes "brainwashed" by Count Bleck and becomes a masked alternate persona called "Mr. L," who tries to take down Mario in a mechanized head shaped in his image. After a certain point in the story, Luigi comes to his senses and joins Mario's team. I'm unconvinced of the brainwashing aspect, however, and think that Luigi took it as an opportunity to combat his prick of an older brother who won't let him join in on the fun. Being able to play as three other characters at any point is a stimulating idea, but it isn't all that practical. Due to how persistent the flipping mechanic tends to be, the player will be forced to play as Mario because he is the only one who can do it. Every other playable character is relegated to only being used during certain platforming situations, also using Bowser for specific combat scenarios as well. Overall, I wonder why the developers even bothered with this addition.
One might assume that since Mario is accompanied by three additional playable characters, the partner system has been omitted. This assumption would only be half correct. While the traditional partner characters have been replaced, they have been reconstructed as pixls. These fluttering little symbols all possess unique properties that more or less substitute the staple partner mechanics and paper abilities from the previous two games. For instance, Boomer the bomb pixl replaces the bob-OMB partners with the same exploding capabilities. Slim allows Mario to slip through narrow crevices, Thudley replaces the super boots, and Cudge gives everyone the ability to use Mario's trusty ol' hammer. Other pixls such as Fleep and Dottie have new skills never before seen in previous games. Mario's arsenal of pixls is like a handy swiss-army knife, and I couldn't mean that with more negative connotations. I already used a swiss-army knife to compare the partner characters of the first game to illustrate their blandness despite their utility. Still, those characters are as dynamic of an ensemble as the cast of an HBO series compared to the floating units that follow Mario around here. The pixls are nothing but faceless tools made to do Mario's bidding and nothing more. They are one of the most underwhelming aspects of Super Paper Mario. Their inclusion to replace the charming partner characters from the previous two titles was one of the critical points of apprehension I had towards this game initially.
While the pixls exemplify a regression for the series, the villains certainly are not. In the previous two Paper Mario games, many villain encounters were situated over the sub-narrative of a particular chapter with a glimpse of an overarching narrative involving the main antagonist seen between chapters. The enigmatic Count Bleck comes with a gang of baddies just as intriguing as him. O’Chunks is a bearded, dumb-as-rocks Scotsman who speaks with a heavily exaggerated Scottish accent and rockets off from the ground by farting, with so much velocity that even Wario would be impressed. Mimi is a green, bratty little shapeshifter whose true form will inspire nightmares for several players. Dimentio is a shrewd magician whose magic prowess makes him a formidable foe and a hard book to read. Even Count Bleck’s diminutive assistant Nastasia has an interesting dynamic with the Count and his minions as she discusses their insidious plans on the vacant, dark platforms that they call their headquarters. Throughout the game, the player will become familiar with all of these baddies and become enamored with the amount of character all of these villains exude.
Unfortunately, these bad guys make for bad boss fights. I enjoy the contentious dialogue between these villains and Mario's company during the encounters, but dispatching them is always an underwhelming affair. Most of them are defeated through simple means of jumping on their head, if not through another uninvolved method. None of them even attempt to utilize the flipping mechanic in their fight, except for an unaffiliated boss named Fracktail, who uses the mechanic cleverly during the fight. The worst aspect is that none of Bleck's minions incorporate any new moves upon repeat encounters. They should've honed their combat skills instead of conducting those meetings with the Count to make for a more exciting fight. The lack of a substantial challenge with these boss battles is unfortunately indicative of the game's difficulty. Paper Mario was intended to be more accessible than the average JRPG game, but it could still offer a hefty challenge at times. I did not die even once throughout the entire game, and it's not because I acclimated to the new system quickly. I'd argue that Nintendo watered down the difficulty level due to a streamlining prerogative for the Wii. I think it has more to do with the cumbrous marriage of the 2D platformer and JRPG genres. A large, numbered health system from the RPG genre makes the difficulty of every combat situation trivial.
Gameplay is not Super Paper Mario's strong suit, but it is not too significant of a deterrent to the game's overall quality. The more meaningful and substantial aspects of Super Paper Mario lie in the narrative. Like the previous two games, Mario's quest to save the world involves collecting seven different MacGuffins ranging in color, but this time, they are heart-shaped instead of star-shaped. The peak of the hub of Flipside houses seven different doors that warp Mario to seven different areas divided by chapters. The usual eight chapters that divide the story of a Paper Mario game are split even further into four subchapters, almost similar to how the levels of a world are divided in the first Super Mario Bros. Each subchapter may include a different area with another objective while retaining a concrete goal to obtain that chapter's, pure heart. Despite its fragmented presentation, the chapters of Super Paper Mario are paced just as well as the chapters of the previous two games.
It's a good thing the pacing isn't compromised because Super Paper Mario is filled to the brim with wackiness. The game's prime source of irreverence is all the kooky shit that happens throughout the game, almost rivaling Nintendo's absurdist classic Earthbound in daft occurrences. Like with detailing Earthbound, a highlight reel of Super Paper Mario's moments must be listed for brevity. First off, Dimentio gives Bowser some serious competition for hilarious quips of dialogue, and Bowser is still in prime, comedic form from The Thousand-Year Door. The fourth chapter is a Gradius-style space shooter with platforming sections. The alien taking Mario through space urgently needs to use an occupied space port-a-potty to avoid an accident. The game constantly breaks the fourth wall, describing death in general as "ended games." Those with "ended games' 'end up in the Underwhere, a comical take on the underworld from Greek mythos with Super Paper Mario's signature style. My favorite funny moment of Super Paper Mario is the interactive dating simulation between Peach and the reptilian uber-dork Francis, a standout character of the game and a possible stab at fans (like me) who found fault with Super Paper Mario's new direction. Touche, Intelligent Systems. Unfortunately, this game's "Earthbound syndrome" also tends to verge on quirky moments that I don't find amusing. In the fifth chapter, the game makes the player memorize a combination that is too long to remember, forcing the player to write it down. In the second chapter, Mario has to work off a massive debt after breaking something in a mansion and is forced into enslavement to work it off. The game expects the player to continuously run on a treadmill for up to 10 whole minutes to earn enough money, but the player can look up the combination of a safe to pay off the debt. I, like a sucker, did it the hard way and played a game on my phone while holding the Wiimote down. Yes, you heard me correctly; I felt inclined to play another game while playing this one. I can hear the people down at Intelligent Systems giggling while I roll my eyes.
Despite all of the funny bits, Super Paper Mario's core narrative is incredibly bleak. As the game progresses, the dark void keeps growing and growing, having a more ominous presence like the moon from Majora's Mask after the first day. The full extent of the void is displayed in chapter six when a world modeled like feudal Japan in this game's version of Glitzville is destroyed by the void. Upon reentry, Mario and his friends see the remains of this world, eerie white oblivion with minuscule remnants of what was here before. It depicts existential dread that makes stopping Bleck even more pressing. The void concept naturally lends itself to the more ruinous subject matter, but the game's narrative progressively becomes surprisingly touching. It's revealed that Bleck's impetus for wanting to destroy the universe with the Chaos Heart is that the human version of Tippi and his former persona Blumiere used to be star-crossed lovers. Timpani, the human version of Tippi, disappeared into the body of pixl, and her absence made Bleck believe that he had nothing to live for in this world. Once Mario and the gang recover all seven pure hearts, they face Bleck in his dark, monochromatic castle with a sublime atmosphere fitting for a Jean Cocteau film.
Bleck and Tippi reunite, and Bleck has second thoughts about his plan, but Dimentio reveals himself to be the game's true antagonist and wants to enact the dark prophecy. Bleck and Tippi sacrifice themselves to aid Mario in stopping Dimentio, sending themselves away to a wistful land to reconvene their romantic relationship. I can't believe this, but this ending is more poignant and satisfying than in the first two games. Bleck's character arc and the resolution to it admittedly got me a bit choked up, just as much as the ending of the first game does. Unfortunately, the Dimentio/Mr. L hybrid of a final boss is not up to the same level as something like the Shadow Queen and almost ruins the impact of the ending.
I feel that Super Paper Mario will always have a mixed reputation in the eyes of Paper Mario fans. I've come to admire the level of experimentation the developers were willing to implement after creating two of the greatest JRPGs I've ever played. The initial disappointment I had for this game as a child has been melted away by my growth and maturity. However, Super Paper Mario's experimentation level has introduced the franchise to many new problems. The melding of a 2D platformer and a JRPG does not work on a fundamental basis. The two genres constantly contradict each other like a game of tug-of-war, resulting in clumsy gameplay with a tepid difficulty curve. While the gameplay is incredibly flawed, Super Paper Mario still upholds (some) fantastic characters, old and new, with a delightfully humorous, compelling, and surprisingly profound narrative. Super Paper Mario is a Paper Mario game on the inside, not the outside. As the adage goes, it's what's on the inside that matters, making Super Paper Mario a worthy inclusion to the series.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com