I recently finished the new Paper Mario on 3DS, and I want to know what other people thought. I'll start with my own experience
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It started off with a carnival, a so-called "Sticker Fest" that Mario never bothered to attend any other year. Spoiler Alert: Bowser does something to screw it up and now you have to collect 6 things.
So already the game seems to follow a familiar formula that, if I wasn't comfortable with, I would not have bought the game. But it wasn't until I stepped into the middle of the obligatory "toad town" that spirits started to die. It wasn't the atmosphere. It wasn't the color scheme. It wasn't the dialogue. It was the music.
http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUpbaJePhLo&feature=channel&list=UL
JAZZ @_@
Sorry I just don't like jazz and it has no place in Paper Mario because the music is supposed to be all techno and stuff and the instrumentation kind of ruins the atmosphere of a story-book-themed game where everything is 2-dimensional and atrificial and then the music sounds like it should be in a jazz club with people wearing berets and dancing awkwardly while sipping that new thing called "tea" that everyone is raging about and the saxaphone which is an instrument which doesn't sound good in any scenario except an instance in which you're making a joke about porn.
Anyway that grievous injury little nitpick aside, I made my way to world one das---.... World 1-1? Okay homogenization of mario games aside.... I played through the first 4 levels and I was beginning to lose all hope in the game. That is, until I got to the boss fortress. After an hour or two of playing, it finally felt like.. well... PAPER MARIO! The music was right, the atmosphere was right, the puzzles and aesthetics were right, and I was quite pleased. And I soon found out that the boss theme would be perfect for Paper Mario as well. I was gleeful when I heard this tune:
http-~~-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct867ctsSp4&feature=channel&list=UL
I know, I know there's still some saxaphone in there but STILL... it felt like a Paper Mario boss battle theme and I was very happy.
The game only shaped up from there. It was a bad case of the first-two-hours-of-the-game-suck cough Kingdom Hearts 2 cough and it was shaping up fairly nicely. It was different, and I didn't like the differences, but I can't bash on them for EVERY new thing they did, can I? I.. guess I could but that'd make me a hell of an asshole. So, on that note, and the boss theme note, let's talk about some GOOD things about this game!:
Turn-based battles, yeah!
Bosses with lots of health and awesome music, YEAH!
Innovative battle system that doesn't totally ruin the structure of the battle system. Woohoo!
Some really fun levels that deviate from the normal level formula and drop you into bizarre situations!
Lots of hidden items and areas!
The game doesn't hold your hand like some games Skyward Sword, I'm looking at you Fi. My health is low? So I should get health to make it high? THANKS BUDDY.
A certain boss that does a certain thing to your inventory that makes the boss battle hilarious and also somewhat urgent
Boss that dances to his own battle music. YES. I can feel that Cooper vibe a-comin'. Bad juju and all that...
Still plenty of funny dialogue, including multitudes of sticker AND paper puns, sometimes in the same sentence... It's a flat-out sticky situatio- oh god..
Creative puzzles that challenge your brain, and perception of reality, because, you know, the human brain isn't used to thinking of the entire world as a bunch of stickers on cardboard so.. yeah.
During battle, enemies change shape in paper-tastic ways, from being pointed paper cones to being crumpled under the weight of your hammer and missing a turn.
Resident Evil 4-style inventory management. Oh yeah, here's a really nice weapon. By the way it takes up 9 times the space of your other ones.
Worlds don't have to be done in order. Yes! I for one got very bored of the desert and made my way to the forest, and it was wonderful.
Stickers being one-use-only make you think twice about what you do in battle, instead of the normal Paper Mario routine of hammer hammer hammer..
It goes without saying that there are a lot of things this game has that are worth commending, so it's not that this game is terrible, it's just also missing a LOT of what could have made it better:
Partners
Items
Badges
Exp and leveling up
Open world, instead of basically being Paper Mario World
More interesting characters
Original characters (I know they were forbidden to do so by Miyamoto, which infuriates me)
More strategic options in battle, like skipping a turn, defending, or even having an attack that doesn't consume a sticker instead of either wasting a sticker or running away
A run-away system that doesn't just "decide" before hand if it wants you to run away or not
Bosses that aren't impossible without using an item they're weak to
Bowser, one of the funniest Paper Mario characters, has no lines at all. None. he roars a few times, that's about it.
Peach, a previously useful and important character, is chained up the whole game, akin to the less original Mario titles
Antagonists are given no backstory or elaboration past the beginning cutscene
Original locations, instead of the standard New Super Mario Bros order of business
Puzzles that aren't wild goose chases for one item that you don't even know where to find or what it is
To go with the previous one, a hint system that actually helps you. Not "This forest is pretty big Mario"
I'm going to stop there for now. I could go on too long and seem like I'm impossible to please. It's not that I was expecting this game to live up to the standard of the first two I was just praying like a man looking death in the face it's that they took out the most important parts of the game that would have made it excellent. More backstory on the antagonists, original characters and locations, fleshed-out backstory, partners with distinct personalities... It's just a shame that these things were omitted and it makes the game not memorable or outstanding in any way.
So that's my take on the game after beating it. How does everyone else feel about this game?