This game is so good, but it has a huge drawback; the pacing.
There's a looooot of padding in this game.... the dungeons/levels/chapters you're going through are agonizingly long with very little interesting environment to look at. I felt myself bored to tears at times with some of the levels, and it's really unfortunate because there's some things this game does really well.
Another misstep is that the companions you collect that give Mario his special abilities are painfully stale opposed to the colorful cast of characters in Paper Mario 64 & Thousand-Year Door. Its really unfortunate that this game is doomed to be compared with it's predecessors in such a way, but it's really shocking that they couldn't come up with more visually interesting partners.... Especially since the villains in this game have REALLY good design. What happened?
Despite all of that, this game redeems itself with one aspect-- the plot.
The plot is good. Really good. The dialogue is incredibly witty and entertaining as well. Peach, Bowser, and Luigi are given really great characterization and you can tell the writing team put in their A-game for this one.
The gameplay is alright. They took out the strategy aspect of it. As a fan of the last two Paper Mario games, I remember being incredibly disappointed that they nixed the turn based combat, but with how long the game is I can see why they did it. I try to be a little kinder about it now, but at worst its just nothing to write home about. You hop or pound enemies to fight them and they explode into coins. Its a much more streamlined battle system.
This game should be played!! It's a story you don't want to miss. Pushing through the long bits is worth it, in my opinion, but if you can't well... look up the cutscenes on YouTube or something.
Anyway. Mr. L.
There's a looooot of padding in this game.... the dungeons/levels/chapters you're going through are agonizingly long with very little interesting environment to look at. I felt myself bored to tears at times with some of the levels, and it's really unfortunate because there's some things this game does really well.
Another misstep is that the companions you collect that give Mario his special abilities are painfully stale opposed to the colorful cast of characters in Paper Mario 64 & Thousand-Year Door. Its really unfortunate that this game is doomed to be compared with it's predecessors in such a way, but it's really shocking that they couldn't come up with more visually interesting partners.... Especially since the villains in this game have REALLY good design. What happened?
Despite all of that, this game redeems itself with one aspect-- the plot.
The plot is good. Really good. The dialogue is incredibly witty and entertaining as well. Peach, Bowser, and Luigi are given really great characterization and you can tell the writing team put in their A-game for this one.
The gameplay is alright. They took out the strategy aspect of it. As a fan of the last two Paper Mario games, I remember being incredibly disappointed that they nixed the turn based combat, but with how long the game is I can see why they did it. I try to be a little kinder about it now, but at worst its just nothing to write home about. You hop or pound enemies to fight them and they explode into coins. Its a much more streamlined battle system.
This game should be played!! It's a story you don't want to miss. Pushing through the long bits is worth it, in my opinion, but if you can't well... look up the cutscenes on YouTube or something.
Anyway. Mr. L.