4.5/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of Paper Mario.

Platform: Switch (via Switch Online) Time Played: 27.5 hours Status: Beaten ⟳ I played Paper Mario 64 for the first time back in 2020 in the lead-up to The Origami King’s release, followed by my first-ever full playthrough of The Thousand-Year Door and a replay of Super Paper Mario. I had been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons for months at that point, but the absolute charm that Paper Mario was filled with captured me, and I truthfully never picked up New Horizons again afterward. Ever since I made my initial Mario RPG ranked list, I had the original Paper Mario at the #3 spot as a 10/10, just behind Thousand-Year Door and Bowser’s Inside Story, and just ahead of Super Mario RPG (the original and its remake). But now after playing it for the second time in the lead-up to The Thousand-Year Door’s remake, I disappointingly realized that this game wasn’t all that I remembered it to be, not that the game is by any means bad, but I suppose that over time my opinion on the game became more and more altered by memory, and not by my actual experience. I think that the original Paper Mario has two minor flaws that make it not stack up (in my opinion) to the other top-tier Mario RPGs, and that’s originality and gameplay. Now what the hell do I mean? Well, let’s compare Paper Mario to its predecessor and its successor, Super Mario RPG and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. With Mario RPG, you had so many brand new concepts and ideas introduced, like the main villain group being a bunch of villains, you get introduced to the concept of stars granting wishes (a concept re-used for this game) alongside Geno as a party member, brand new species like the frogs, the cloud people like Mallow, and fun original characters like Croco, Valentina, Booster, the Axem Rangers, etc. The Mushroom Kingdom was expanded upon in ways never quite seen before or after in this game, with the closest to it being Superstar Saga and The Thousand-Year Door, but with those games, you’re in entirely new kingdoms or areas of the Mushroom Kingdom that are original to that game, so of course everything will be entirely original. Superstar Saga and its location, the Beanbean Kingdom, makes way for so much originality and fun with the Beanish people, and all of the characters, species, and locales that that brings along. Whereas in Paper Mario, we mainly see locations that we’ve already seen before in Mario and Yoshi’s 2D outings, mainly Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Island. To be honest, I thought that the mice and penguin species from this game that would later appear in TTYD were original to the Paper Mario series, but I later came to learn that they originated from Yoshi’s Island. The only real original species here are the Clubbas, Ruff Puffs, the Bub-ulbs, and other flowers from Flower Fields, and I suppose the Star people. Now while this game lacks in original species and characters, it definitely expands upon everything that had previously been established in the Mario world. Here we have villages of Goombas, Koopa Troopas, Boos, etc; all of them being unrelated to Bowser and are just friendly little guys just chilling out and living their best lives. THIS is my favorite aspect of Paper Mario’s world. By having these species that have been viewed up until this game as enemies as just regular friendly NPCs, we open up the possibilities in this world and it allows the overall Paper Mario world to feel lived in and alive. Prior to this, and even in Mario RPG, all we really had were the Toads, so to have this introduce so many more friendly peoples was awesome. Now moving on to gameplay. Paper Mario’s gameplay is really solid, although it takes a minute to really get going. Only after finishing the Prologue and making it through Shooting Star Summit does Mario finally receive the ability to input Action Commands. Every Mario RPG has Action Commands, and this game’s version of them is honestly really creative. Instead of what Super Mario RPG did where every attack and ability has a certain window where pressing the button increases its damage or effect, this game has different inputs for many of its moves, whether it be holding down a button or holding back the stick for a few seconds until the time is just right, flicking back the stick or pushing the A button to fill up a meter, filling up a meter without making it go to the edge, pressing a certain button combination, aiming with the stick, or doing the same old “press the A button right before you land the hit” from Mario RPG, and the same goes for when Mario is attacked by an enemy. Now while his system is a true evolution of what came before in Super Mario RPG, I can’t help but appreciate what Mario RPG did just a little more due to that game’s battles being so much more quicker, allowing the satisfying feel and mowing down enemies to be delivered to the player in a much quicker manner, whereas here in Paper Mario you spend several seconds repeating the same button tricks over and over again, and in my eyes it lot a lot more repetitive than say the battles in Mario RPG or Superstar Saga. Typically in RPGs I like to fight every enemy in the room that I’m currently in before moving on to the next, and in this game, that ended up with me typically always being at least one level higher than I probably should’ve been at any given point, that ended up with a lot of battles that ended with very little EXP (Star Points) being rewarded to me, which was just a little bummer. While I think that the EXP system in this game works really well, I just wish that they were a little more balanced with how many Star Points you earn after each battle, because the amount of dopamine I was receiving after defeating a fairly tough regular enemy to only receive one Star Point was not it. Okay, moving on from all of that nitpicking, I already KNOW that Thousand-Year Door improves upon all of this stuff EXPONENTIALLY, and that’s why it remains the GOAT. There’s just a lot of smaller things to improve on here, like a more solid and connected story, more humor, better dialog (what is here is great, but could be improved upon), more polished gameplay and gameplay systems, and more original concepts. Even the Badge and Flower systems, which are incredibly cool and great ideas and concepts, were underutilized because of how little the upgrades are when going from one level to the other, and how spaced apart the level-ups are. I just wanted to mow down enemies with my partner’s special moves but I would always run out of FP so fast, and only having 10 inventory slots didn’t allow for a lot of FP restoring items; and I constantly found myself needing more BP, but when I finally had a sufficient amount, there just weren’t that many badges that I wanted to equip, as most of them were just quality of life upgrades like being able to infinitely switch our your partners without it wasting a turn, or being able to always see your enemy’s health, etc. Damn I have a lot of nitpicks for this game. I haven’t even talked about the soundtrack or graphics. This game’s soundtrack, while not as memorable as other RPGs in the franchise, is still really cute, charming, and lovable. Standouts like Goomba Village, Jr. Troopa, Jr. Troopa Battle, Nice to Meet You, Koopa Bros. Keep Cool, Mario Bros’ Home, Koopa Village, Attack of the Koopa Bros., Dry Dry Outpost, Ghost Gulping (the goat), Keeping Pace, Welcome to Yoshi’s Village (which was so good that they made an even BETTER remix of the track in Partners in Time), Petunia Under Attack (the goat 2, shit sounds like something from The Legendary Starfy), Huffin’ and Puffin’, Crystal Palace Crawl, and the BEST track in the game: King of the Koopas; are all either absolute head-bangers or such relaxing tunes that are the perfect tracks to throw on in the background while chilling out. Moving onto the graphics, this game’s sprite work is honestly top notch. The character designs and overall art style here is just so adorable and truly filled to the brim with charm. It allows every character to have their own unique look that is just so memorable and will never leave your mind. UGH, this game looks so good man. Even the 3D polygonal environments with the storybook aesthetic just looks so good man. OVERALL, Paper Mario 64 is still a really fun RPG that I would genuinely recommend to anybody, especially anyone who loves Mario. The game is still filled with so much charm, characters like Goombario, Kooper, Sushie, Jr. Troopa, the Koopa Bros., and more will stick in your mind forever. The soundtrack is great, the world is fun to explore, and things could only go up from here. That’s honestly why I still think that this game deserved a remake more than Thousand-Year Door, as I just KNOW that a remake would evolve this game into the masterpiece that it deserves to be, but that reality just wasn’t bound to happen. Check this game out! Especially since it and Superstar Saga are on the NSO Expansion Pass!