Paper Mario - Real Person Reviews
2Written review: http://hubworldhq.com/2016/03/31/paper-mario/
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Paper Mario is a role-playing game for the Nintendo 64. You’ll notice this is a rarity as the N64 has very few RPGs. The basic plot is that Bowser has stolen a magical item, the Star Rod, which grants wishes. He uses it to make himself invincible and kidnaps Princess Peach. Mario is unable to stop him, and Bowser takes the princess, along with her entire castle, and brings them up to float in space. Mario must set out on a journey to rescue the stars of Star Haven and become powerful enough to save Peach and defeat Bowser. Typical Mario stuff. The thing that makes this game interesting, as an RPG, is that it keeps you involved. You have encounters with enemies, but you will see them on the overworld. If you attack them there, you will get a free hit in battle, and vice versa. To fight, you can use your standard jumping, or attack with a hammer. You can also get more abilities from the stars you rescue, known as focus abilities, or special abilities from your current ally. Focus abilities use up your focus meter, which slowly regenerates during battle. Special abilities use up flower points, which are essentially the same as magic points from other games. Mario can use abilities that require using these flower points as well, but they must be available from the current badges you have equipped. From the badges you can also get stat boosts, passive abilities, and other perks. Each badge requires badge points to equip, so your combination of badges cannot exceed your badge points. You can also carry items along with you for attacking and defending yourself. Upon defeating enemies you will receive star points, which act like experience points from other games. Every 100 star points makes you level up, allowing you to choose to upgrade either your hit points, your flower points, or your badge points. All of this gives you tons of customization options.
To avoid the common issue of grinding, as you level up you will receive less and less star points from weaker foes, eventually gaining none at all on the weaker ones. This is to keep the difficulty curve moving and to emphasize smart planning over level grinding. They’ve also taken care to make sure you stay involved in the battles. When you select a move to use, there’s always some action you need to do to execute the move or to give it more strength. It may be timing a button press, doing a motion in rhythm, or hitting a sequence of commands. All types of things pop up here to keep you from picking the strongest move every time and just watching it blankly. You have to stay active in every part of the battles, which makes them more intense. Perhaps you have a move that’s very effective, but you don’t want to risk it because you’re bad at the button command, so you pick a weaker move you can more effectively execute. It’s an interesting twist reflecting your own personal skills. All of the mechanics and characters are introduced slowly, giving you time to learn and adjust while keeping a good pace of freedom and progress. Your allies all have interesting abilities inside and outside of battle, so you’ll need them for the overworld as well. Make sure you take advantage of their strengths.
When it comes down to it, Paper Mario is a game that has such good pace, involvement, attention to detail, polish, and charm that it’s hard not to fall in love with it. I feel bad that I never got to play it before. It was well worth the 40 dollars I paid to get it. Paper Mario is a brilliantly designed game that is now one of my favorite RPGs, not to mention one of my favorite Mario games, of all time.
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