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miffy495

Super Paper Mario (A happy thread. For Loonyboi)

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So earlier this week to celebrate the fact that I've finally cleared the credit card balance from the Christmas and post-Christmas birthday rush (seriously, I don't think there's a single member of my family that does not have a birthday from December through February...) I went out and bought Super Paper Mario. Granted, it's not The Thousand Year Door or the brilliant N64 original, but damn if this doesn't make the Wii worth playing again after a couple of months of nothing but VC titles. If nothing else, I've put almost 15 hours into it over the last three days and am about to face the final boss, so that's gotta say something for the quality.

First off, the graphics, as always for this series, are perfect. Not stunning so much as charming. I honestly wish they'd keep this look for any Mario game that does not demand full 3D. If the DS hardware can handle upgraded N64 graphics, why not a new Paper Mario for it? Partners in Time was great, but isometric stuff always throws me a bit. Next RPG in paper style please, Ninty.

Next, the gameplay is very fun. The 3D is a bit underused, honestly. The 2D look is brilliant whereas the 3D never really seems to have much going on when it isn't essential for a puzzle. Still, some of the stuff is ingenius, so I'm impressed enough with the success of the experiment. More use of 3D in the next would be nice, or at least spruce it up a bit. The pixls are good to have around and add quite a bit to the gameplay. Navigating through them in the menu is far less cumbersome than I imagined when I heard that you'd have to go into a menu screen to switch between them. Tippi, your always-there pixl, is like Navi but without the annoying speech samples. Floats around behind you and if you point the Wiimote at the screen she'll tell you about whatever you're pointing at just like Navi would with Z targeting. The only problem is that you have the option to play as Peach, Bowser, or Luigi as well. This is a great option, but the only impetus to use them except in very specific circumstances is that you really want to. I played through almost everything with Mario, only using Peach when I needed to float, Bowser when I needed fire, etc. It felt like a waste having all these characters and no reason to use anyone but Mario.

Oh well, that's it for me. Really dug this game and will probably have the final boss beaten in a couple of hours. Anyone else given it a shot yet?

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Partners in Time was great, but isometric stuff always throws me a bit. Next RPG in paper style please, Ninty.

Shut up! Shut your mouth!

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Sorry, I love the hand-drawn, and I couldn't be happier with PiT. Fantastic game, it really was. I just happen to also really like the Paper Mario style and think that it helps to define the RPG iterations of the franchise. Consistency would be nice is all, and the PM art is really the closest that I've seen to the M&L:SS and PiT art done in 3D.

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...And finished. Not bad. End time was 16:45-ish, for those that that's a factor to. Although about an hour of that was me leaving it paused while walking my dog or other such things. True to it's RPG heritage, the boss fight had many stages and took fucking forever, but what the final boss turned out to be made it worth it.

Giant dark magic robot Luigi. Fuck yes.

If you dug the Paper Mario games in the past or are out for a twist on platforming, give it a look. Very much enjoyable. Still pretty funny too, although lacking any standout funny stuff like the hypnotized Hammer Bros speaking in 1337 in PiT. No outburst of laughter here, more a series of good chuckles.

Well, OK. There was that "I AM ERROR" reference. That was pretty good.

That'll wrap it up. Hooray (as always) for Intelligent Systems!

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I'm just through the first level, but it's pretty awesome. My only complaint so far is the fucking story being too fucking long for anyone to actually play the fucking game. Fuck. Hopefully it'll lessen as the game goes on.

I really love the whole switching-to-3D gimmick. As a long-time advocate of 3D, I enjoy the deconstruction of the image and the post-modern references to gaming (Somewhere, in another dimension, someone knows what I mean by "press A"). I was gonna start a thread on it myself, but wanted to play more of the game and damn Miffy beat me to it!

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I found the gaming references to get quite tiresome towards the end. Early on they were worth a chuckle but by the time you get to the bits where you're jumping back and forth between afterlife dimensions and people are always talking about their "game being over" or "running out of lives" it goes from cute to annoying.

And what's wrong with a long story? The almost 16 hours of playtime seemed to fit quite nicely and while there is a lot of dialogue, it's localized well and doesn't get too sacharine until just before the credits role when everyone is learning something.

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And what's wrong with a long story? The almost 16 hours of playtime seemed to fit quite nicely and while there is a lot of dialogue, it's localized well and doesn't get too sacharine until just before the credits role when everyone is learning something.

Like I said, it might get better later in the game—need to play more. But at the beginning, you have to press through dialogue for 45 minutes before you can actually play. The two people I was with found it quite annoying as well.

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I decided to be snarky and refuse to save the world three times in a row. The game then showed me the game over screen, and I had to replay the entire intro over again. :tdown:

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Heh. I learned my lesson when I was snarky ONCE in Golden Sun on GBA and had to press A for 45 minutes AGAIN. Compared to that game, SPM has a fast-paced intro!

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Heh, I agreed to team up with a villain at one point right at the end of the game. I had to confirm it about 5 times, with Tippi finally saying "If you say yes again, there's nothing more I can do for you." I said yes. Game over. Had to replay the entire fucking boss fight that led up to that conversation. I don't think I'll be snarky anymore.

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Finally beat Super Paper Mario. It felt a lot less charming than the other ones. There were so many parts that just dragged on and on: (MINOR SPOILERS)

Let's force the player to run on a treadmill for five continuous minutes, then on a hamster wheel for five more minutes! Let's make the player manually type in "please" five times in a row, then write down a 30-character code, then laboriously input it in by hitting blocks one at a time. Let's put the player in an arena fight, where each fight, against a single easily beaten normal enemy, takes place in an entirely new room. Then, let's make the player walk across an entirely barren landscape for a bit. Fun. :finger:

I do have to commend Nintendo for trying to shake things up (MAJOR SPOILERS)

Bowser and Peach get married? Mario gets sent to hell? Peach gets kidnapped by a nerd? Luigi turns evil?

but it just felt really grating after a while. The combat or exploration didn't feel as tight as a standard Mario platformer, or as interesting as the constant on-guard feeling of the past RPG Marios. The bosses were more long than difficult, and I never really felt in danger of dying. Granted, I can still have fun with easy games (Minish Cap), but it felt like a constant grind here. None of the abilities ever really developed to a level where the puzzles or exploration became much more interesting than, say, the colored key system of Doom.

All said, I was enjoying myself near the end, but most of the game just felt tedious.

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