And so completes my time with the final Mario & Luigi game I had not yet beaten. It isn't the best one, that honor still goes to the first game in the series (as far as my memory goes, although I plan to play the remake soon, so I'll be testing that memory soon enough), but it's a really strong contender for 2nd place. The crossover gimmick is one of the strongest the series has had and one of the best incorporated into the overall whole (a big complaint I've always had of Inside Story is that it feels like a game of two halves: a really fun Bowser half and a really standard, kinda boring Bros. half). It took me a little over 30 hours to beat the game, and I played it in Japanese. I didn't find ALL the things, but I did find most of them (and did 60 of the mini-game challenges).
So the main gimmick is that the Paper Mario universe has exploded out into the Mario & Luigi universe, and the Marios (and a Luigi) need to join forces to fight the power of two Bowsers and their combined armies from kidnapping the two Princess Peaches. The game has nowhere NEAR as much text in it as something like Paper Mario: Color Splash, but I enjoyed the writing that was there. The way the Mario & Luigi characters interact with their flat counterparts is consistently amusing, and I especially enjoyed the way that the Peaches and Bowser Jr.s respectively bonded with their doubles, and how the Kameks and Bowsers constantly fought and bickered with their respective doubles XD .
The normal combat will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played a Mario & Luigi game, especially Dream Team. There aren't just a lot of animations reused from Dream Team, but a lot of Bro Moves taken wholesale from that game too (although Dream Team really needed improvements, so I'm completely fine with this game building off of what that game did well). As normal, Mario is the A button, Luigi is the B button, and the new addition Paper Mario takes the Y button.
Paper Mario fights really differently to the other Bros., and it really helps make up for how similar the Bros fight compared to Dream Team. Paper Mario can summon up to 6 copies of himself to help him fight and also tank hits for him. If he gets hit, he'll lose some copies, but he can just use his next turn to resummon them (meaning you REALLY wanna keep him from getting hit if you want him to be as effective as possible). His copies allow him to let each copy do a successive jump on a target, as well as spread out as evenly as possible to hit each enemy on screen with a hammer strike. He also has Trio Moves, which are basically Bro Moves that require all 3 Bros to be up and unincumbered to do, and they usually are effectively Bro Moves with better AOE damage. The Mario & Luigi games have always had very similar combat from game to game, but Paper Jam does a good job of varying things up without making enemies feel too spongey or the combo attacks feeling too technical (a problem Partners in Time had pretty bad). If anything, the game has a bit of the opposite effect where it can get pretty hard against later-game bosses and enemies, as both you and them tend to hit quite hard, and dodging their attacks gets pretty tricky. I never got a game over, but this is definitely one of the harder Mario & Luigi games there's been.
The last addition to the combat are battle cards (but not like Paper Mario Color Splash). As you do better action commands, you earn star points, which allow you to play battle cards from the touch screen. You can find cards from rare shiny enemies (who hit like freakin' cars and are real scary despite the rewards they give if they catch you off guard) as well as buy them from shops, and you can have a deck of 10 cards and you can see 3 cards to potentially play at a time. They go a long way as to making what is otherwise probably the hardest Mario & Luigi game a lot less unforgiving, and certain boss battles even put interesting spins on them.
Speaking of making things easier, this game has some incredible accessibility and quality of life features. The game has an easy mode you can turn on to make the whole thing easier, nearly every tutorial has a skip option, and you can hold R to fast-forward through any cutscene. The game does a really good job of giving the player the option to play it no matter their skill level, and that's something I always appreciate.
However, the best change, in my opinion, is they have FINALLY gotten rid of the gimmicky, slow, and simple giant battles that Inside Story and Partners in Time had. In their place are giant papercraft battles which are basically giant 3D environment mech battles. Now this is hardly Virtual On in terms of complexity, but it manages to be engaging and fun in a much more simple package. B is your dash, A is your jump, and you move vaguely like a tank with the L button focusing the camera and allowing strafing and the R button allowing for a quick 180-degree turn. You play as 5 different paper mechs through the course of the game, and each plays a little bit differently. It spices up the boss battles really nicely, and I never had the "oh heck this again" feeling that Inside Story and Dream Team's giant battles gave me.
What I did have a bit less patience for are the Paper Toad rescue missions. There are certain points in the game where you need to do different mini games to rescue Paper Toads who are lost and terrified in the Mario & Luigi kingdom. They vary them well, and they definitely don't grate as badly if you aren't doing the hard-mode versions of them (some of which are downright vindictively unforgiving) to try and unlock some of the best battle cards like I did, but it's still something I wish weren't in the game quite as much.
As a final note, I did play the game on a NEW 2DS XL, and that did bring with it some good things and bad things. The good things are some minor NEW 3DS functionality. You can press the ZR and ZL buttons to automatically top up your BP and HP respectively in the most efficient way possible from the items currently in your inventory. You can also use the C-stick to turn the camera (albeit a bit too slowly to be that useful) in the mech battle sections, and you can also use it to move the map around on the touch-screen when walking around instead of moving it with your finger. The bad parts came from the 2D. It doesn't happen that often, but there are a few bosses and normal enemies whose attacks are more difficult to dodge than they should be when playing in 2D rather than 3D. The game isn't really hard enough to make it anything more than an annoyance, but it's something that happened enough that I can't not mention it here.
Verdict: Recommended. Though it does not top the original, it is the Mario & Luigi game that has come closest. The games have always had a problem in not really sicking out that much from each other, and Paper Jam is no exception to that, but it is one of the better in the series for sure, and an excellent swansong to the series (at least a far better one than Dream Team was). If you can only play one Mario & Luigi game, you should definitely play Superstar Saga, but if you can only play TWO, there is very good reason to make Paper Jam your second pick. It's certainly not the best RPG on the 3DS, but it's still a great addition to any 3DS library, and an overall good time.
So the main gimmick is that the Paper Mario universe has exploded out into the Mario & Luigi universe, and the Marios (and a Luigi) need to join forces to fight the power of two Bowsers and their combined armies from kidnapping the two Princess Peaches. The game has nowhere NEAR as much text in it as something like Paper Mario: Color Splash, but I enjoyed the writing that was there. The way the Mario & Luigi characters interact with their flat counterparts is consistently amusing, and I especially enjoyed the way that the Peaches and Bowser Jr.s respectively bonded with their doubles, and how the Kameks and Bowsers constantly fought and bickered with their respective doubles XD .
The normal combat will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played a Mario & Luigi game, especially Dream Team. There aren't just a lot of animations reused from Dream Team, but a lot of Bro Moves taken wholesale from that game too (although Dream Team really needed improvements, so I'm completely fine with this game building off of what that game did well). As normal, Mario is the A button, Luigi is the B button, and the new addition Paper Mario takes the Y button.
Paper Mario fights really differently to the other Bros., and it really helps make up for how similar the Bros fight compared to Dream Team. Paper Mario can summon up to 6 copies of himself to help him fight and also tank hits for him. If he gets hit, he'll lose some copies, but he can just use his next turn to resummon them (meaning you REALLY wanna keep him from getting hit if you want him to be as effective as possible). His copies allow him to let each copy do a successive jump on a target, as well as spread out as evenly as possible to hit each enemy on screen with a hammer strike. He also has Trio Moves, which are basically Bro Moves that require all 3 Bros to be up and unincumbered to do, and they usually are effectively Bro Moves with better AOE damage. The Mario & Luigi games have always had very similar combat from game to game, but Paper Jam does a good job of varying things up without making enemies feel too spongey or the combo attacks feeling too technical (a problem Partners in Time had pretty bad). If anything, the game has a bit of the opposite effect where it can get pretty hard against later-game bosses and enemies, as both you and them tend to hit quite hard, and dodging their attacks gets pretty tricky. I never got a game over, but this is definitely one of the harder Mario & Luigi games there's been.
The last addition to the combat are battle cards (but not like Paper Mario Color Splash). As you do better action commands, you earn star points, which allow you to play battle cards from the touch screen. You can find cards from rare shiny enemies (who hit like freakin' cars and are real scary despite the rewards they give if they catch you off guard) as well as buy them from shops, and you can have a deck of 10 cards and you can see 3 cards to potentially play at a time. They go a long way as to making what is otherwise probably the hardest Mario & Luigi game a lot less unforgiving, and certain boss battles even put interesting spins on them.
Speaking of making things easier, this game has some incredible accessibility and quality of life features. The game has an easy mode you can turn on to make the whole thing easier, nearly every tutorial has a skip option, and you can hold R to fast-forward through any cutscene. The game does a really good job of giving the player the option to play it no matter their skill level, and that's something I always appreciate.
However, the best change, in my opinion, is they have FINALLY gotten rid of the gimmicky, slow, and simple giant battles that Inside Story and Partners in Time had. In their place are giant papercraft battles which are basically giant 3D environment mech battles. Now this is hardly Virtual On in terms of complexity, but it manages to be engaging and fun in a much more simple package. B is your dash, A is your jump, and you move vaguely like a tank with the L button focusing the camera and allowing strafing and the R button allowing for a quick 180-degree turn. You play as 5 different paper mechs through the course of the game, and each plays a little bit differently. It spices up the boss battles really nicely, and I never had the "oh heck this again" feeling that Inside Story and Dream Team's giant battles gave me.
What I did have a bit less patience for are the Paper Toad rescue missions. There are certain points in the game where you need to do different mini games to rescue Paper Toads who are lost and terrified in the Mario & Luigi kingdom. They vary them well, and they definitely don't grate as badly if you aren't doing the hard-mode versions of them (some of which are downright vindictively unforgiving) to try and unlock some of the best battle cards like I did, but it's still something I wish weren't in the game quite as much.
As a final note, I did play the game on a NEW 2DS XL, and that did bring with it some good things and bad things. The good things are some minor NEW 3DS functionality. You can press the ZR and ZL buttons to automatically top up your BP and HP respectively in the most efficient way possible from the items currently in your inventory. You can also use the C-stick to turn the camera (albeit a bit too slowly to be that useful) in the mech battle sections, and you can also use it to move the map around on the touch-screen when walking around instead of moving it with your finger. The bad parts came from the 2D. It doesn't happen that often, but there are a few bosses and normal enemies whose attacks are more difficult to dodge than they should be when playing in 2D rather than 3D. The game isn't really hard enough to make it anything more than an annoyance, but it's something that happened enough that I can't not mention it here.
Verdict: Recommended. Though it does not top the original, it is the Mario & Luigi game that has come closest. The games have always had a problem in not really sicking out that much from each other, and Paper Jam is no exception to that, but it is one of the better in the series for sure, and an excellent swansong to the series (at least a far better one than Dream Team was). If you can only play one Mario & Luigi game, you should definitely play Superstar Saga, but if you can only play TWO, there is very good reason to make Paper Jam your second pick. It's certainly not the best RPG on the 3DS, but it's still a great addition to any 3DS library, and an overall good time.