two seperate points in the game, once near the start and once again in the second to last chapter, this game does the same joke of an elderly wizard telling mario some ancient important story with heavy lore implications. both times, mario falls asleep within moments and we miss all of the "important" lore, and mario carries on with his adventure. it's a silly bit of comedy that i like, as well kind of important to me that the game reminds you that the lore and story and other things we might associate with a JRPG don't really matter here. it's not that those things are bad, but that in paper mario, we're just a silly little plumber who jumps good. and really, what more can you ask for?
normally i break reviews into gameplay and story as the two main articles, but seeing as story is such a non-factor here, i think vibe is more important. and the vibe is immaculate. every chapter in this game is colourful and charming, committing to the bit, with good humour. even in chapters where the vibe is supposed to be a bit spooky they sneak the good jokes in and it's a good time. but the vibe isn't always comedy! there's a couple of chapters where they do something really special. chapter 7 specifically has these moments of like, wonderlust? just high up in the mountain with the aurora borealis, and the music twinkling in a special way. atop the star mountain near peach's caslte the music hits in a kind of mystical, wonderful way, that makes you feel like wishing upon stars is a real and tangible kind of magic. these moments are few and farbetween admittedly, but they really stand out to me as really quite incredible. as comedy and mario's hijinks are the most important factor of the game, they are highlighted, and are always good. it's strange just how endearing mario is in this game. he's just so humble - which is significantly different to hiself in Mario & Luigi where he's bombastically confident like Goku might be. the companions are pretty good. i was gonna say they ooze charm, but only about half of them do actually. goombario, lady bow, parakarry, and watt are the most fun companions as characters go. unfortunately there are just kind of too many companions and this game makes the classic JRPG mistake of giving you some in the final quarter of the game, which has always felt like a miss to me. you could probably scrap sushie and lackilester and the game would still feel well populated. parrakarry for life as far as companions go
the gameplay is seriously good too. i think TTYD improves upon it with its companions feeling more like actual party members, but that game's combat has to work significantly differently for it, and what we have here does work incredibly well. i think by keeping the numbers so small, literally most attacks througout the whole game do less than 10 damage (in final fantasy 7 cloud has over 300 health, the damage economy is seriously inflated), and damage is consistent. what this means is that attacking a specific way or defending a specifc way means it's always an incredibly considered decision. as every attack requires input from the player to properly work you end up with a very engaging battle system. unfortunately the N64 controller is Bad and so a lot of the time getting these moves right isn't quite as easy as it looks. parrakarry's normal attack as well as watt's were consistently hard for me to just get right, even though they felt like they should've worked? playing this on nintendo switch or wii u is definitely better than playing it on N64 these days, those controllers are more responsive, but the fault also lies in the coding of the game. something else TTYD improves upon
anyway you end up with a seriously good JRPG from start to finish. at no point in this game was i not having fun. it's nuts just how good this is, and nuts that the sequel does all the same things but more. i cant believe they just killed off such a formula-perfect series so fast! hopefully TTYD's remake is a sign of good things to come... but we'll see...
normally i break reviews into gameplay and story as the two main articles, but seeing as story is such a non-factor here, i think vibe is more important. and the vibe is immaculate. every chapter in this game is colourful and charming, committing to the bit, with good humour. even in chapters where the vibe is supposed to be a bit spooky they sneak the good jokes in and it's a good time. but the vibe isn't always comedy! there's a couple of chapters where they do something really special. chapter 7 specifically has these moments of like, wonderlust? just high up in the mountain with the aurora borealis, and the music twinkling in a special way. atop the star mountain near peach's caslte the music hits in a kind of mystical, wonderful way, that makes you feel like wishing upon stars is a real and tangible kind of magic. these moments are few and farbetween admittedly, but they really stand out to me as really quite incredible. as comedy and mario's hijinks are the most important factor of the game, they are highlighted, and are always good. it's strange just how endearing mario is in this game. he's just so humble - which is significantly different to hiself in Mario & Luigi where he's bombastically confident like Goku might be. the companions are pretty good. i was gonna say they ooze charm, but only about half of them do actually. goombario, lady bow, parakarry, and watt are the most fun companions as characters go. unfortunately there are just kind of too many companions and this game makes the classic JRPG mistake of giving you some in the final quarter of the game, which has always felt like a miss to me. you could probably scrap sushie and lackilester and the game would still feel well populated. parrakarry for life as far as companions go
the gameplay is seriously good too. i think TTYD improves upon it with its companions feeling more like actual party members, but that game's combat has to work significantly differently for it, and what we have here does work incredibly well. i think by keeping the numbers so small, literally most attacks througout the whole game do less than 10 damage (in final fantasy 7 cloud has over 300 health, the damage economy is seriously inflated), and damage is consistent. what this means is that attacking a specific way or defending a specifc way means it's always an incredibly considered decision. as every attack requires input from the player to properly work you end up with a very engaging battle system. unfortunately the N64 controller is Bad and so a lot of the time getting these moves right isn't quite as easy as it looks. parrakarry's normal attack as well as watt's were consistently hard for me to just get right, even though they felt like they should've worked? playing this on nintendo switch or wii u is definitely better than playing it on N64 these days, those controllers are more responsive, but the fault also lies in the coding of the game. something else TTYD improves upon
anyway you end up with a seriously good JRPG from start to finish. at no point in this game was i not having fun. it's nuts just how good this is, and nuts that the sequel does all the same things but more. i cant believe they just killed off such a formula-perfect series so fast! hopefully TTYD's remake is a sign of good things to come... but we'll see...