{"id":20659,"date":"2020-11-27T00:01:41","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T00:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=20659"},"modified":"2020-10-29T01:02:46","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T01:02:46","slug":"cary-ranks-the-paper-mario-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/27\/cary-ranks-the-paper-mario-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Cary Ranks the Paper Mario Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Of all of Nintendo\u2019s game series, the Paper Mario titles have probably had the most ups and downs.\u00a0 On one hand, you have what many consider to be one of the best RPGs ever made!\u00a0 And on the other end, you have what others, including myself, believe to be one of Nintendo\u2019s worst games!\u00a0 Ouch!\u00a0 The newest game in the series, Paper Mario: The Origami King, came out earlier this year, so I thought it might be fun to rank them.<\/p>\n

With the exception of one game on here, I decided to limit the list to just Paper Mario games only, just to keep it focused.\u00a0 So the other Mario RPG games aren\u2019t on here.\u00a0 But if I did put them on this list, just know that most of them would rank around the middle, with a few being ranked very high, like Mario & Luigi: Bowser\u2019s Inside Story and the original Super Mario RPG.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll try to keep this blog spoiler free, but a minor spoiler may seep in here and there, so you\u2019ve been warned.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to do the ranking list from worst to best.\u00a0 OK let\u2019s begin!<\/p>\n

Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I consider this to be one of Nintendo\u2019s worst games ever made.\u00a0 Right up there with Donkey Kong: Barrel Blast and Star Fox Zero.\u00a0 I was really excited for this game, too!\u00a0 It was the first Paper Mario on a handheld and I loved the other Paper Mario games that came out before it.\u00a0 The problem with this game is they ditched getting experience points after battles.\u00a0 You also must use stickers to perform attacks, so a lot of not-fun item management is involved.\u00a0 So you\u2019re basically just battling to get more stickers so you can battle again and the cycle repeats itself.\u00a0 Gets very tedious quickly.\u00a0 Most people just tried to avoid enemies, which isn\u2019t good in an RPG where battles are the meat of the gameplay.\u00a0 Also, there were no vast areas to explore, just stages on a world map.\u00a0 I thought that would be a good idea for a handheld, but it really isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Also, aside from the beginning premise, the game has no story.\u00a0 For me, gameplay is more important than story, but it was sorely missed here and the gameplay wasn\u2019t fun either.\u00a0 Needless to say, I never beat this one.<\/p>\n

Paper Mario: Color Splash (Wii U)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Color Splash is only MARGINALLY better than Sticker Star.\u00a0 It certainly looks nicer, being on a HD system.\u00a0 There\u2019s more areas to explore, too, and a bit more story.\u00a0 I also liked how you fought the Koopa Kids as bosses.\u00a0 A lot of people don\u2019t like the Koopa Kids, but I\u2019m a fan. \u00a0You still don\u2019t get experience points, but there is a little bit more of a reason to battle as it fills up your colors, which you use to color the world.\u00a0 You use consumable cards to attack, but now you have to add color to them as well.\u00a0 So it really just adds more steps to the already tedious battle system.\u00a0 I played this one a little more than Sticker Star, but I still got tired of it rather quickly and never beat it either.<\/p>\n

Paper Mario: The Origami King (Switch)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the newest game in the series, and came out earlier this year.\u00a0 I\u2019m still playing it off and on, it\u2019s just hard to stay focused on it when I have so many other games to review.\u00a0 It\u2019s VASTLY better than the first two games on this list, but it\u2019s still not there yet.\u00a0 I\u2019m still playing it way longer than I did the other two games on this list, so I\u2019m still liking it a lot better, but there have been a couple of times I\u2019ve considered stopping.\u00a0 Battles still get a bit tedious at times and I tend to avoid them.\u00a0 You still don\u2019t get experience, just coins and confetti for progressing and buying more items.\u00a0 So I really only battle when I need to.\u00a0 They changed the battles so that they take place on a circle, and when you fight regular enemies you must arrange the enemies on the circle so they are in a line.\u00a0 But in boss battles, they change it up so you must arrange the circles to create paths for Mario to reach the boss in the center to attack.\u00a0 I appreciate them trying something different, but it can still be tedious at times.\u00a0 I liked how they added a Toad audience in bleachers to help you in battle, and the more Toads you find hidden in the world, the bigger audience you have.\u00a0 But using the audience in battle isn\u2019t as fun here as it was in The Thousand Year Door.\u00a0 The worlds are fun to explore so far, though.\u00a0 Some you just walk around, but others you must drive a shoe around a vast desert looking for ruins, or you steer a boat on a sea searching for uncharted islands and sunken treasure, similar to Wind Waker.\u00a0 We\u2019ll just see if I play it all the way to the end.<\/p>\n

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (3DS)<\/strong><\/p>\n

OK this isn\u2019t really a Paper Mario game, just a crossover with the Mario & Luigi series.\u00a0 But it\u2019s my list and I\u2019m putting it on here because I want to. \u00a0It\u2019s really just a Mario & Luigi game with some Paper Mario rules in battle thrown in.\u00a0 There are also paper structures that act as obstacles and 3-D papercraft battles that everyone seemed to hate but I didn\u2019t think they were THAT bad.\u00a0 At least they were different from the giant battles in the two M&L games before it.\u00a0 I\u2019d say this game is decidedly average, but I still finished it so I must\u2019ve found it somewhat entertaining.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even finish the Mario & Luigi game that came before it: Dream Team.\u00a0 That one just dragged on for too long and I didn\u2019t like how boss battles took a whole entire lunch hour to beat.\u00a0 I liked some of the story bits in Paper Jam, too, like how they explained the Paper Mario world was just a pop-up book in the regular Mario world.\u00a0 And how Bowser Jr. and his paper self became best buds when they met.\u00a0 Really made the character more likable, and normally I can\u2019t stand Bowser Jr.<\/p>\n

Super Paper Mario (Wii)<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lot of people rag on this game, but I really liked it.\u00a0 Sure it\u2019s not perfect, but I liked how they combined 2-D Mario platforming with RPG elements.\u00a0 And yeah you can \u2018break\u2019 the game and make it super easy.\u00a0 Like I remember beating the last boss with only two stomps by playing as Bowser and giving him strength buffs.\u00a0 But the game was still fun.\u00a0 Only thing I didn\u2019t like about it was the gimmicky Wii controls they tacked on (it was originally going to be a GameCube title).\u00a0 But switching between 2-D and 3-D to solve puzzles was fun, and it was neat to have other playable characters besides Mario as well.<\/p>\n

Paper Mario (N64)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was actually the second Mario RPG ever made.\u00a0 In fact, for a while it was called Super Mario RPG 2.\u00a0 While I still adore Square\u2019s take on Mario\u2019s RPG endeavors, I think the first Paper Mario really nailed down the Mario theme better than Square did.\u00a0 Square\u2019s game felt a little like Final Fantasy Mario, but then, that\u2019s almost to be expected.\u00a0 Anyway, it was really cool to see Mario in a pop up paper style.\u00a0 I think the only other game that has been able to pull off that paper style well is the PlayStation game Tearaway.\u00a0 And the action timed battles were even more fun, too!\u00a0 Definitely one of the best RPGs on the N64.\u00a0 Although it didn\u2019t have much to compete with.<\/p>\n

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (GameCube)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would say this is the GameCube\u2019s best RPG.\u00a0 Even better than Tales of Symphonia.\u00a0 I\u2019d also say it\u2019s the best Mario RPG game period.\u00a0 They took what was great about the first Paper Mario and just improved upon it.\u00a0 The battles were still kind of the same, but still fun.\u00a0 I liked how they added an audience who would give you extra points if you performed well while in battle.\u00a0 And later on in the game, one of the final bosses would eat the audience of Toads and spit them back out at you as an attack!\u00a0 But the best part of the game was the writing.\u00a0 To this day it\u2019s one of the best scripts in a video game.\u00a0 There\u2019s one part where you\u2019re in a spooky forest and these crows in trees are talking to each other, and it\u2019s just golden.\u00a0 I know that game developers oftentimes don\u2019t want to make the same game twice, and that\u2019s why each Paper Mario game is different.\u00a0 But I still wish they\u2019d go back to the formula found in this game because it worked so well.\u00a0 No more gimmicky fiddly battle rules or watered down interactions with characters.\u00a0 If Nintendo released an HD remake of this game on Switch, I\u2019d be very tempted to buy it.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s how I\u2019d rank the Paper Mario games.\u00a0 Let me know what you think of my list, and tell me how you\u2019d rank them!\u00a0 Later!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all of Nintendo\u2019s game series, the Paper Mario titles have probably had the most ups and downs.\u00a0 On one hand, you have what many consider to be one of the best RPGs ever made!\u00a0 And on the other end, you have what others, including myself, believe to be one of Nintendo\u2019s worst games!\u00a0 Ouch!\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20659"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20661,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20659\/revisions\/20661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}