Just finished the Paper Mario TTYD remake and I had a lot of fun with it and thought it was very good, but also I think this is probably my least favourite of the Paper Mario games I've played.

I think the battle system has a lot more potential for intricacy and interesting play than in the first Paper Mario, but the badges this game showers you with are mostly just stat upgrades including Health Points and Flower Points with the rest not feeling as useful since the partners can make up for most of them, which leads to a kinda uninteresting level up system as there's not much reason to upgrade anything other than Badge Points. I'm gonna replay the N64 game to compare, but I feel like I remember the badges in that one lending themselves to some more interesting mechanical experimentation as you progress. That said a number of the bosses really show this battle system at its best. The extra fight in the Glitz Pit is maybe my favourite fight in any of the games.

Another thing in terms of gameplay is that I feel like this game maybe could've used random encounters instead of having to manually enter battle. With how linear, flat, simple, and large the map design is it makes traversal extremely dull, especially compared to the battles which are much more fun. However, with having a set number of enemies on each screen it means you'll only ever have a limited number of them to fight and they'll always be in the same configuration to boot. Combined with the backtracking the game has (even with the QoL improvements), it means you'll either be engaging in the exact same couple battles each time which gets boring after a while, or ignoring them and just walking through the map which isn't much more fun.

As for the narrative, it's like... fine? I do think a lot of the scenarios are very charming and I do like a couple of the individual Chapter stories, but overall it's pretty thematically empty, or at least I couldn't piece together any interesting themes its trying to express outside of "love is powerful", which I mean like, sure. I get that's a weird complaint for a Mario game, but with how much people talk it up I'm just a little surprised. Especially when my only other frame of reference for a wild and weirdly good Paper Mario story is Super Paper Mario, which goes for a similar thing but with some more layers and a more interesting villain, this can't help but feel lacking.

On the topic of villains, wow is Grodus boring. With all that I've been spoiled on with this game over the years I always wondered why I've never really heard about him. Now I get why, it's cause he's a nothing character haha. Compounding this is the fact that Bowser is in this game and he's completely pointless. I get that that's the joke, and his scenes are funny and cute, but he's such a big and fun personality that it can't help but feel like wasted potential and shine even more of a light on the fact that Grodus is super unentertaining and uninteresting. I will say I did like TEC's story and I know for a fact that if I played this as a kid that would've really impacted me and implanted itself on my mind forever.

I've been pretty negative so far, so I want to highlight a specific part of this game that really impressed me, Chapter 4. This is maybe the most impressed I've been with anything in all the Paper Mario games I've played in how it not only ties narrative together with gameplay, but how it uses one of the game's weaknesses, that being the overly simple and linear map design, to its advantage (SPOILERS AHEAD FOR CHAPTER 4).

The first time you go past Twilight Town and travel to Creepy Steeple it's pretty standard fare as far as what you usually do in this game, but once Mario loses his name and party members and has to trek all the way back alone suddenly the dynamic completely shifts. Now you can't just trounce every enemy like it's nothing like you did the first time, you now have to be more on your toes and because of that it stings all the more when you see your party with Doopliss and it makes you feel even more incentivized to get them back. Then going back the same way with Vivian changes the tone again, both due to having a party member again but also narratively by both you and her being separated from your respective groups, you having them taken from you and her being bullied, othered, and left behind by her sisters. This feeling of solidarity and strength is already excellent, but the fact that it's experienced through very simple and linear level design makes it even more effective because it ensures nothing distracts from this feeling. I now totally understand why Vivian is so beloved (and I love her too!). She's already a very appealing character who's useful in battle, but her introduction to you as a party member here is so strong that it's no wonder why a lot of people like her.

So yeah, while I do have my criticisms and don't think it holds together as well as it could as a whole, it still has a number of great elements and some individual shining moments that still make this a very fun game overall.