

There are some kinda cool moments here and there, like I really like the boss fight against Fracktail, but the gameplay just mostly stays at a flat-level like that for me if that makes sense.

And that kinda describes the gameplay in Super Paper Mario in general for the most part for me: not amazing, certainly not terrible, but just kinda alright. But that raises the question, of why is it like that to begin with? I'm nonetheless not sure I would call it bad, but it is unnecessary in that kind of way.Īnd then you also have stuff like the shmup-like-section in Chapter 4, which is like another example of what I'm talking about: I wouldn't say it's bad, but it's not a particularly great shump-like-section either.
Super paper mario pit of 100 trials stuck password#
And I know you can skip most of that, by just getting Slim ASAP and knowing the password to her vault. But it never particularly excels at it either.Īnd while I don't think any of it is is bad, lots of it is definitely is tedious and unnecessary. It's definitely well-made, it knows what it's trying to do, and doesn't really fail at it. Like, for the most part, I definitely wouldn't call it bad or anything. I love the humor.īut the gameplay is mostly. L, and really, of all the Mario RPGs, both Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario alike this game might have some of my favorite writing for Luigi period. Like, I love how Bowser is written in this game. Like, I love the characters, I love the story, I love the humor, all of that. And that's because what I love about it is the writing. What with Origami King being announced, I've actually been thinking about the Paper Mario games a lot, including Super Paper Mario.īut thinking about it, it's nonetheless a game that I would never really want to replay. That the narrative manages to hold the game together is actually an accomplishment in its own right.

Even as a kid, the presentation always felt kinda off to me, unlike the first two it never quite felt like I was playing something that was an extension of Mario's world it felt like I was playing something that just happened to have Mario in it.Ī lot of the game feels like it was almost rushed, back when it was aiming the Gamecube it seemed to have a pretty short development time which might explain a lot of the assets coming across as budget. L and Francis introduced in this game still feels so odd to me when the game in general has an air of malaise to it. There's some good drama, but it reaches melodrama points which feel at odds with the visual identity and the characters.

The game has its share of highlights and I don't regret playing it but it's the one Paper Mario game I find myself not caring to revisit the most because of how shallow its game play is, how it's the most visually stripped game in the series, and how despite having a really good general story, the tone of it is just kinda all over the place. SPM's gameplay is indefensible Cave Story came out three years earlier and pulled off the "combat platformer with an emphasis on story and characters" far better than SPM did. However, the recurring miniboss squad is quite fun, and a lot of people love how Super Paper Mario takes the Mario RPG standard "parody of JRPGs" plot design and changes it to a fairly straightforward JRPG plot, right down to chosen heroes, prophecies, and reality-destroying melodramatic villains.Īnd plot's about as far as one can defend the game on, since the platforming gameplay manages to be less innovative than the main series. SPM, on the other hand, has pretty garbage stories in the individual chapters, with the only standout oneshot characters being Francis and (if you like cheap melodrama) Squirps and Luvbi. The overarching story in PM64/TTYD isn't all that interesting Bowser has some great comic writing and the X-Nauts strike a decent balance between comic relief and a genuine threat, but most of the good writing and storytelling in the first two games comes from the individual stories within each chapter The most fascinating thing about SPM comes from how its strongest parts are the inverse of its predecessors
