How would you rank all the retro and non-retro Mario RPGs? I mean SM RPG, Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi, etc.
I liked all 3 I mentioned above, though I never beat them. They have fun gameplay unlike most console RPGs, but sadly the world / story / characters aren't exactly great in any of them. Well, it's Mario for you, so that's to be expected. M&L is good too but has repulsive art style.
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Paper Mario/Paper Mario 2 > Mario & Luigi > Mario RPG
Just can't decide if I like PM1 or 2 more. 1 seems more down to earth but 2 actually uses the paper gimmick for gameplay which is something 1 squandered. Mario RPG is good but all the Square weirdness is a bit too unfitting for me
>but 2 actually uses the paper gimmick for gameplay which is something 1 squandered
Is this true? What's the point of the paper look if you don't also use it for gameplay segments? lol This alone makes TTYD better
Never played the first
Just to look nice.
The jap title of Paper Mario 1 was just Mario Story, it was never meant to be about being made of paper or whatever. The way it looked was just a nice artstyle.
The later PM games leaned into the paper stuff WAY too hard and they mostly sucked as a result, so how much the paper stuff is used is definitely not a benchmark for quality.
>What's the point of the paper look if you don't also use it for gameplay segments?
It's just a game with sprites in polygon environments. The "paper" aspect is merely justification for the look.
It is at this point in our story that along comes a spider. He is a man seemingly without a conscience; for whom the ends always justify the means and it is he who suggests that their target should not be an enemy of the country but rather the country itself.
Normally when people point to Miyamoto being at fault for anything wrong they're using him as boogeyman because he's the only name they know, but in the case of Paper Mario his hands aren't clean.
Remember that he almost cancelled TTYD until he saw how many characters they could have on screen at once during the big crowd scenes like the skeletons in hooktail castle or the crowd of fans in glitzville. Guy needs to stay the frick away from RPGs.
The paper gimmick should be used loosely and then only ironically (as in dramatic. Definition number 2). It was a mistake for TTYD to make it self-aware.
In TTYD's case at least it's treated as some really weird curse/blessing. Anytime someone sees him use one of those powers their mind just breaks for a moment because they can't even process what's going on. You wouldn't imagine the world and characters of TTYD to be literally made of paper in-universe, at least not without the context of playing the most recent games.
That said, I have seen people be put off from the game just from knowing those abilities are in it.
Mario RPG > Paper Mario TYD > Paper Mario (Haven't played any others)
In a lot of ways, Paper Mario 1 is the better game. TYD features a lot of tedious backtracking and there are certain chapters that dip in quality. But the atmosphere, music, characters and humour absolutely blow the original out of the water for me. Paper Mario 1 feels slightly too babyish at times.
Mario RPG is the king and the Square influence, weird OC characters, pacing and music really make it something special. There are just so many strange things and endearing things about it. Like Booster, who is basically just re-skinned Wario. Interesting that Square's frame of reference for Mario's world at that time was primarily SMB1, SMB3 and SMW and they really didn't care too much to adhere to that. They just made up their own little world with strange characters and filled it with Mario enemies and friends. It's wonderful and the Switch remake is quite good too.
Need to play Superstar Saga one day.
Paper Mario 1 = TTYD > Superstar Saga = RPG
The PMs are neck and neck for the usual reasons people point out. Both are two of my favorite games, admittedly nostalgia is mostly responsible for that but they stuck with me far more than most games I played as a kid and that’s worth something. Occasionally do challenge runs and hardmode hacks and I still haven’t found a JRPG with a battle system as good as the ones in these games.
RPG and Superstar are both solid fun times. RPG feels more grand in scale and tone but M&L is a much more unique game, literally nothing plays like it except its sequels (and none of them managed to be as good in my opinion). I prefer the story and setting of RPG but M&L having an open world to its second half is really cool. Battle systems are both fun but hard to compare to each other.
I always really respected how different each Mario RPG was, when I was a kid I was obsessed with these games. Going back to them they do feel pretty childish which is expected, they were for kids, but I have a big softspot for all of them and despite each game taking place somewhere different I really liked the strange but surprisingly cohesive world they carved out when I was a kid. I suppose I still do.
why do you put PM1 at the top? I just started it, like it so far but not having extra damage by timing button press like in SMRPG was a bit of a bummer. still great though
Once you get out of the prologue you get taught how to use action commands. Not having them in the prologue is pretty lame I’ll admit.
I love the visuals of the game, the general pacing is really solid, and the tone and scale become really good as you progress. Also has the most realized form of the mushroom kingdom, no other game makes the mushroom kingdom feel as real and establishes it as a setting so effectively.
And a lot of nostalgia, like I said.
>timing button press like in SMRPG was a bit of a bummer.
That shit is clunky af
>I just started it, like it so far but not having extra damage by timing button press like in SMRPG was a bit of a bummer
Anon. Paper Mario has timed hits for extra damage, what're you on about?
It takes until you complete the prologue. Anon just hasn't got to that part
1. Paper Mario
2. TTYD
3. Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga
4. SMRPG
PM and TTYD are equal to me because they both do something better than the other. TTYD has better combat, PM has better level design and atmosphere.
Idk, i like them all but for me i guess nostalgia wins out so 1 smrpg, 2 ttyd, 3 pm and 4 ss. I was still following the paper mario series but after sticker star i just gave up, never tried color splash or origami king.
>ELDER GOD TIER
Superstar Saga (GBA)
There's absolutely no contest. Fun, fast-paced combat (unlike later M&L games where you do a 5 minute minigame per special), lots of legitimate exploration and secrets to find as you get more traversal abilities, laugh out loud funny with some of the best slapstick sprite animation ever, no autistic backtracking or padding, perfect length, and difficulty that's just right.
>God tier
Paper Mario (N64)
>High tier
TTYD
Super Mario RPG
>Good tier
Bowser's Inside Story
>Decent tier
Super Paper Mario
>Redundant / forgettable tier
Everything not mentioned
>ABSOLUTE GARBAGE TIER
Sticker Star
It amazes me how hard every M&L sequel fumbled.
>They have fun gameplay unlike most console RPGs
It amazes me how often people say that an RPG where you never have to fricking think about your actions are better just because you have to do a timed button press. Fricking jangling keys monkey brained bullshit
Challenge runs really bring out how great the battle system is, outside of timed button bullshit. Having exact control over your stats every time you level up makes them really easy to do, the game is practically built for it. Do a 10hp run or a BP only run and you'll have to really strategize.
I'd read about these runs and when I tried it myself and I was really underwhelmed.
Even if you do everything you reasonably can to make the game hard for yourself, including the badge that makes you take double damage, the game is still super duper fricking easy.
I don't need every RPG to be a brutal challenge but even in boss fights I felt like I was going to doze off, both in PM and TTYD.
The only times I felt challenged was when I did something waaay before I was supposed to. And even then it wasn't a "how am I going to overcome this mighty foe", it was "hmm, this is a little tricky".
They're worth playing for the atmosphere and writing but the difficulty is totally flaccid, even by the standard of kids games.
That's why I said "fun" anon.
>TOP TIER
Paper Mario & TTYD (It's a tie)
Super Mario RPG
>Good Tier
Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga
Mario and Luigi ran out of steam before the first game even ended. It's not deep enough for how long and repetitive it is and it seems like each game after is twice as long and boring. The franchise killed that company after all. No one liked those games and didn't even buy the remakes when they released them.
Mario RPG is just too shallow and easy, but it moves at such a brisk pace and doesn't overstay it's welcome.
Paper Mario is top notch because every turn in battle requires SOME thought as to not waste time. That's fun and engaging.
The Paper Mario games after Super Paper Mario are not rpgs and really don't even fit under any genre because they have no substance or challenge or story or characters.
I'm not sure how you went so quickly from "M&L is good" to "nobody liked M&L and they even killed the company." People definitely liked M&L, and the original SSS and BIS sold very well and were met with positive reviews. The remakes likely sold poorly in large part due to being 3DS releases after the console was effectively dead, with BIS releasing bafflingly late, bordering on mid-2010s Let's Sing Wii games or that PS2 soccer game late.
The only games people ever talk about are Superstar Saga and BiS. All the others got average 8/10 Nintendo reviews but weren't hits or had any kind of lasting impact. The whole reason they had to remake SS and BiS are because those were the only ones in the series that had any kind of reputation to begin with.
Dream Team sold better than Super Star Saga, and before the remakes all entries were at least million sellers. This narrative that people didn't actually like the series is complete nonsense.
Paper Jam was when the series started to decline. I think one of the reasons was just how quickly they pumped it out, only 2 years after with a very similar artstyle
It was just an extremely bland game all around.
People talk about the Mario RPGs being charming and funny and having some gameplay elements you don't see in most RPGs, and that's all true. But RPGs are ultimately about a sense of immersion into a world, and you used to hear comments about how surprised people were a Mario RPG could even work with Mario world being as weird as it is. But the early RPGs made their settings feel like lived in worlds, creating a very unique setting out of the fragments of a world you see in the platformers, kart racers, etc.
By the time Paper Jam came out the weird blandness that had been creeping into the series for a decade was in full effect. Maybe blandness isn't the right word, that was there but it wasn't everything. That weird fake plastic feeling, the feeling that people criticized the NSMB games for. The setting doesn't feel alive or real, there's zero sense of immersion and almost an aversion to it. Which could be fine if the game was fun enough, but it doubled down on basically every problem people had been citing with the series.
Apparently the game's story got scrapped late into development, it was originally going to be a lot wilder with some PM exclusive characters showing up but someone decided it was getting too complicated and to scrap it, so you spend the game saving toads from koopalings instead.
M&L lost its grip on setting right after Superstar Saga, really. By Bowser's Inside Story it was reduced to a few token backdrops scattered between Peach and Bowser's respective castles. Dream Team's was pretty bad, too. It almost felt like a parody of an M&L game with how myopically it hyperfocused on a single theme to base everyone and everything in the game on (sleep instead of beans), the art style had turned plastic like you said, and everything just felt too one-note.
I liked the Mario & Luigi games up until Dream Team. I only played it once years ago and I'm not sure I even finished it because I got tired of all the endless tutorials. I also found it less appealing and far more boring than the previous games.
I didn't finish the game either. The tutorials sucked and I hated how much of the game they tried to make into a 2D plaatformer, it doesn't work at all with how M&L games control, it just turns the game into a slow paced slog across copy/pasted level designs.
They also completely wasted the concept of going into dreams. You just fall asleep in different places and dream about those places you just were. We could've had Mario Psychonauts RPG but the game is just bland.
You can't say "Mario" in any context without "bland" coming into play very shortly. They're bread and butter. Given that the original Super Mario game was a surreal wonderland, that's really grim. Something went horribly wrong over there.
I wouldn't consider most /vr/ Mario content bland. I think they had a pretty decent creative streak for a good few years.
That's true, I just mean what happened to it since the Wii U era or so, but it's tainted the entire brand for online discussion unless you're talking specifically about an older game by itself. There's a list of buzzwords that are guaranteed to show up, even though the problem has been gradually going away since the Switch.
Oh, in that case yeah.
I still think of wii u games as really new stuff, but the system came out in 2012. The series was sterile for most of the last decade, so it’s not surprising what you described is the current state of things.
Switch has backtracked on it a little but that’s almost entirely due to Odyssey. Wonder a tiny bit too but people really really overstate it, the game isn’t some big shake up for the series. I guess there was also the new strikers game but nobody even remembers it now.
It’s still worse for the RPGs than any other part of the series though, since they rely more on story and world building.
Great:
SMRPG
Good:
PM64
TTYD
Not even worth comparing:
the other shit after, who gives a frick. M+L was always some holdover shit for something with real substance, and it never came. Instead they kept churning out the same boring shit. Nobody quotes mario and luigi games unless it's a shrieking zoomer begging for fawful to be in smash
>but sadly the world / story / characters aren't exactly great in any of them.
Weird take. Sorry you can't get into the best aspects of RPGs for these.
>Paper Mario 64
>Actual exploration and environment puzzles through the whole game
>Badges reward exploration and aren't overpowered
>Paper Mario TTYD
>Exploration and puzzles only exist in Hooktail Castle and then the game becomes walking in a linear path listening to funny dialog
>Badge duplicates easily farmable letting you have a broken set up early on that lets you cheese the rest of the game.
I don't know why TTYD is the more popular game. I like the Stylish system but that's about it.
>Badge duplicates easily farmable letting you have a broken set up early on that lets you cheese the rest of the game.
There are plenty of valid criticisms of TTYD but I've never agreed with this being one of them. Sure danger Mario builds exist but almost no first time player is going to go through the game and decide to make that kind of build.
It also necessitates grinding minigames for tokens to trade for the badges. You're only going to play with that sort of build if you specifically set out to do so. It also means you can't afford to get hit more than once or twice per battle, so while it's easy to sweep it's also easy to lose fast.
>1. Mario RPG
>2. Everything else
I played over an hour of Paper Mario, TTYD, and Superstar Saga and I couldn’t keep interest in any of them. Even though I owned all of them at one point or another. Playing Super Mario RPG at launch ruined the others for me, I just can’t get into any of them
I rate paper mario highest because it feels the most like what a mario "world" should be
I always liked that all the Mario "species" had their own villages, good npc and enemy versions. It made the world feel very lived in
They all suck.
You suck.
Yeah that's true, I would maintain that Paper Jam was still by far the worst about it though.
Like in Bowser's Inside Story, the world may not feel all that organic but at least you have some weird vistas like the beach with giant teeth sticking out of the sand. Paper Jam is just...nothing.
Partners in Time ditching the overworld for a level select hub was lame but the world felt like a world, at least.
It's really cool that Superstar Saga's second half is open world and nonlinear. Was always disappointed the rest of the series didn't keep doing that, or even better, releasing a game that was like that from the start. If the nes dragon quest games could do it there's no reason the M&L series couldn't have.
Meant for
Are there other RPGs with worlds that feel a bit like the better-handled worlds in these games, and/or with proudly evil monsters forced to join the party like Bowser in some of them?