Super Paper Mario - Flipping Between Flaws and Greatness
Whenever I review a game, I like to list its pros and cons in order to expand on them, which aspects are good and which are bad. But what if the pros and cons of a game were the same aspects? Like, a certain aspect being part of the pros AND the cons at the same time? What if EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of a game shared that trait? Sounds unlikely, right? Well, that’s exactly how I feel about a game I replayed recently after almost 14 years since I first beat it: Super Paper Mario.
I have quite the funny history with this game, because when it originally released, I loathed it, as someone whose favorite games were the first two Paper Mario games. I didn’t want to play it and would always complain about it, even though I was just a young wee lad. After a year or two with a Wii in my possession, I decided to finally give it a shot and I... kinda liked it? Didn’t find it anything special, but I didn’t hate it either.
Fast forward to some years later, Paper Mario became a shell of its former self, thanks to a mandate that stripped off all the creativity of the series and transformed it into bland action-adventure games with some tacked on underdeveloped RPG elements. No more original characters and unique settings allowed, only Toads and the Mushroom Kingdom. I’m mostly referring to Sticker Star and Color Splash, because Origami King isn’t a bad game, despite also being a victim of the mandate (check out my 2023 retrospective where I talk about it).
After those games, I started viewing Super Paper Mario in a much better light, since it still has its own identity while also having a bit of the flair from the first two games, despite drastically changing the gameplay when compared to those outings. However, that “view” was only when looking back to the game without having replayed it. I only beat it once in 2011 or so and that was it. That is until some weeks ago, when I REALLY felt like replaying this game, so I found a cheap copy online, dusted off my Wii U which hadn’t seen the light of day in years, and went back to the bizarre world of Super Paper Mario.
(This review will contain spoilers, so be warned if you haven’t played it yet! Also all the pictures taken from a TV screen are from my recent playthrough.)
The biggest point of contention for most people is the combat. The idea is fun in concept: a platformer with RPG elements. It's satisfying to jump around dealing numbered damage to everything in your path. The most brilliant thing about it might be how they transformed the usually pointless score tally into the level up system, because defeating enemies gives you points that add up to your score, which makes you level up by increasing your HP or attack power once you reach a certain score threshold. You can earn more points by chaining bounces on several enemies and pulling off Stylish moves by shaking the Wii Remote, which can be hard but adds to the satisfaction of this “battle system”, if you can even call it that.
But like I said before, the pros of this game are also its cons, and the combat fits that criteria by the simple fact that it's absurdly easy. You jump a few times on an enemy and BAM, they're gone. This even applies to the boss fights, who can be cheesed in countless ways and offer no real challenge, EVEN THE FINAL BOSS! The boss fights rarely ever try something interesting, none of them incorporate the 3D switching mechanic into their fights and most of them don't even require you to use any of the partner abilities, and the ones that do boil down to simply spamming a single move. It's the definition of mindless, there is no need to create a strategy for any encounters, other than bringing healing items.
Something that might as well be considered a hidden mechanic are the attack items, due to how RARELY you're incentivized to use them, since it's so easy to just bruteforce your way through. I bring them up because they feature exclusive action commands that are fairly similar to the ones from the previous two games, like pressing buttons when some icons light up, timing button presses with a cursor, circling an icon with the pointer, among others, and they're real fun to use! I wish these were incorporated in something more prominent in the game, like some boss encounters, which would've direly benefited from it.
So half of the gameplay loop is the combat and the other half is exploring the areas and solving puzzles to progress, mainly using the biggest selling point of the game: the ability to switch the perspective from 2D to 3D. It's cool. It's really cool. Even now as an adult I still can't grasp how that even works, can't wrap my head around what kind of programming witchcraft the devs had to make for that to function.
But despite being fun to see the world through that new perspective, that mechanic is the solution to 90% of the game’s puzzles and roadblocks. You flip and find the right path or the required macguffin. Since the game is so over-reliant on that mechanic, you're not incentivized to use Peach, Bowser, or Luigi frequently since they don't have the ability to flip. If you like using them, too bad, because you'll have to keep constantly switching over to Mario. The partners’ abilities are also heavily underutilized, usually only required for the chapters they’re found on. Sometimes when the game is feeling TRULY lazy it simply requires you to point the Wii Remote to the screen to find a hidden door. Not rewarding in the slightest.
People love to dog on TTYD for its constant backtracking, but this game is also an offender when it comes to that. The most egregious example is chapter 7, with two big instances of that: the fetch quest for the hags in the Underwhere, and then the fruit hunt in the Overthere.
It's easy to get stuck in the latter if you don't explore the area properly, which is rather confusing to navigate, since it's pretty easy to overlook one of the paths leading to a fruit tree due to how expansive and vertically oriented the area is. After giving the fruit to Peach, a cloud later on asks for ANOTHER fruit, one I hadn't come across, so I would’ve had to explore the whole area again to find it, but since I had already beaten the game before I just said “fuck it” and looked up the location of the fruit.
No, actually, the most egregious example is in chapter 5, but that one is so obnoxiously ridiculous I find it funny. While exploring that area you come across some roadblocks that require you to come back to the starting area to talk to an NPC that’ll give you some instructions. The second time you come back (from a considerable distance btw), the NPC will make you type “please” not once, not twice, but FIVE TIMES in order to tell you how to progress!
That alone would already be hilarious, but then he tells you the order in which you gotta hit some blocks for a pipe to show up and it's an absurd sequence with over 20 steps! Mind you, this game was released back when phones with cameras weren't common yet, so you had to write all that down on a paper, because it is literally impossible to memorize lmao
Now something people often praise regarding this game is the artstyle, and it is undoubtedly one of the most unique Mario games when it comes to that. Everything is geometrical and abstract, be it the levels or the characters, all formed by angular lines and varied shapes. It's an aesthetic that gives this game its own identity, something that became increasingly rare in the Mario series in the years following the release of this game. It is pretty charming and I commend it for trying something completely unconventional for the series, but I'd be lying if I said I love this visual style.
Again, while it's great that they weren't restrained by what's considered conventional by Mario standards, I'd say this game goes a bit TOO far in that regard, especially the character designs. Most of the original characters don't feel like they fit in the Mario universe, it gives me this vibe of a fangame made by a kid that wanted to see their OCs interacting with Mario characters. And I say “a kid” specifically because the designs are so simplistic to the point I find some of them ugly.
If that stylistic choice was uniform through the whole game it wouldn't stick out that much, but considering the main characters and a bunch of enemies retain their look from previous games it ends up with a mismatch of styles that don't mesh well with each other. I feel TTYD did a better job introducing brand new designs that feel at home in a Mario game.
But of course, I’d rather have a slew of bizarre looking original characters than a bunch of copypasted Toads like it ended up happening in the future. That also makes them memorable, along with several of them having an endearing personality, mainly the main cast of baddies. It’s hard to dislike O’Chunks, Mimi, Dimentio and Count Bleck...says Count Bleck!
However, the same care wasn’t put into this game’s partners, the Pixls. While they all have their own personality which you get to see through their dialogue when you find them, those are literally the only instances you’ll see each of them say something. The partners from the previous two games would react to several events, have tons of dialogue throughout the adventure, and even interesting backstories for some of them, so the Pixls having none of that is a huge downgrade.
The variety of locales you journey through is another of Super Paper Mario’s strongest assets. From retro grasslands to outer space, from a nerd fortress to a mansion with slave workers, from a monochromatic castle to heaven and hell themselves... You never know what awaits you, and even during a replay it’s still a blast to see the creativity on display in each of these areas.
But I feel the structure of the game clashes with the exploration of these areas, interrupting the flow by segmenting them into subchapters instead of seamlessly weaving them together, making them feel more like disconnected levels in a platformer game than well fleshed out interconnected worlds of an RPG.
The worst instance of that is during chapter 6, when the area is about to be consumed by the Void, you gotta rush to find the king, but then you find the Star Block that ends the subchapter, completely halting the urgency of the moment. The story blurbs between each subchapter are neat, the way they’re written makes me picture those scenes in my head perfectly, but I’d trade them any day for an uninterrupted exploration flow for each area.
And finally, THE main aspect that makes people remember this game fondly: the story. ‘Till this day you’ll see tons of peeps mentioning how great the story was for a Mario game, always bringing it up when talking about how the Paper Mario games that came after it dumbed everything down, featuring barebones plots with no stakes or character development, which is true (with the exception of, again, The Origami King).
I doubt a new Mario fan would believe me if I told him we once had a Mario game whose main plot was a love story of a heartbroken man who wanted to end the whole world by fulfilling a dark prophecy because his loved one was taken away from him and (presumably) killed by his tribe since their love was forbidden, but that is Super Paper Mario.
While most of the game is the standard cheery Mario fare and that backstory is just the driving force to make you visit zany places, the fact it exists is highly commendable, because they didn’t hold back just because it was a Mario game, they didn’t care if it’d feel unfitting. If you explore its world thoroughly by observing landmarks and talking to certain NPCs, you’ll learn more about its surprisingly rich lore. Its main plot gives this game a gloomy vibe in certain moments that makes it feel completely unique among the vast library of Mario games.
The big looming void in the background of each area is something that heightens the somewhat bleak atmosphere of the game, since the goal of your journey is to stop it from destroying the world by consuming everything, but that ends up happening with an area in chapter 6, which leaves it completely empty, colorless, devoid of life, accompanied by a haunting tune that is genuinely spine-chilling. That’s the most memorable moment of the game for me ever since I first played it, it’s one that every now and then throughout the years I’d remember just because of how impactful it is.
It’s also worth praising how they created a story that lets you play as the four main Mario characters, being Mario, Luigi, Bowser, and Peach. Their personalities really get to shine in this game (well, except for Mario’s), with the great chemistry they have with each other and how they react to its events. Luigi in particular is given a lot of love, having even a substantial tenure as a villain, the mysterious Mr. L!
One of my favorite parts is during the final chapter in which each subchapter ends with a 1-on-1 battle between one of the party members and one of Count Bleck’s henchmen, because of the neat interactions they have and how both parties seemingly suffer an unfortunate fate, making you progress with less and less party members until you reach the last subchapter as Mario alone.
Unfortunately, I’d say the story is a bit of an acquired taste. Given how disconnected it is with the Mario universe, it feels like a fanfic that has nothing to do with Mario, but for some reason features him and his gang. Nowadays I can appreciate the introspective story blurbs about Blumiere and Timpani between each chapter, but as a pre-teen I couldn’t give two fucks about it. It’s a novelty, basically. An experiment that went against many conventions of the Mario series, something that weirded me out back when the game first came out, but that now I admire... for the most part.
Before we wrap up, I’d be remiss to not talk about the music. I gotta be honest and say I always found this game’s soundtrack weak when compared to the previous two, would rarely ever listen to it aside from a few songs, like the ever-so-popular The Ultimate Show and the one I always liked the most, Gloam Valley. But I found it weak because I simply refused to listen to it, because after replaying the game now I realized it’s FAR from weak! The variety of places you visit in the game is also reflected on how diverse its music is, but with an overlying identity that makes all songs feel distinctly “Super Paper Mario”.
As for the cons of this game’s soundtrack...
...wait, there’s nothing negative to say about it? All songs are great and catchy and fit the mood of wherever they play? HOORAY, WE FINALLY FOUND AN ASPECT OF THIS GAME THAT’S COMPLETELY FLAWLESS!!! DJ, blast the Lineland Road song on the speakers to celebrate this feat!
Super Paper Mario is a game unlike any other in the Mario franchise. There was no game like it before it was released, and there has been no game like it since its release. It’s one incredibly tough game to evaluate, because it’s flawed to the core, but that’s by virtue of its own ambition, because the game isn’t afraid AT ALL of treading new grounds, which makes me admire it deeply. It’s a journey with many ups and downs, but the downs are never bad enough to sour the ride, so it was a pleasant experience from beginning to end to revisit this game again after many years.