Paper Mario

Story:
Okay, Peach is kidnapped by Bowser and taken thousands of feet into the sky… Along with the entire castle! Because the King of Koopas has stolen
the Star Rod, a mystical weapon that grants wishes, from the Star Haven and imprisoned the 7 Star Spirits, he has become invincible, and easily defeated
Mario in their opening duel. Now, a humbled and weakened Mario must travel all across the Mushroom Kingdom to save the 7 Star Spirits, defeat Bowser, and
rescue Princess Peach and her castle, with only 8 partners to help him out.

Gameplay (10/10):

The overworld gaming is something akin to the Banjo adventures. Tons of secrets, side-quests, and items to collect, all over the game.  The actual battles are fast-paced and exciting, unlike many traditional RPGs, in which the battles are the main focus of the game, too! Shortly after the
Prologue, you receive the Lucky Star. With this, you can preform Action Commands. Like in Super Mario RPG, the attacks, when timed correctly do
double the damage (usually). But unlike SMRPG, the HPs for all characters in this game are low, as the highest is 99, and damages rarely surface above 5 or 10
for each attack until late in the game, where Bowser can do like 40.
This is better in some aspects, but if you’re not good at timing things, this game will be hard. Also, there are effects such as poison, shock, sleep, ect,
but they are poorly implemented, and will merely annoy you at one point in the game, and that is those d**n purple koopas in the sewers. But what Paper Mario
does perfectly is the fact that the adventuring is balanced perfectly with the battles. I would have loved to see NPC areas and enemy areas mixed, but that
was most likely a limitation of the N64 programming itself.
Onto the items, that is almost a game unto itself. Once you give the cookbook to Tayce T. in Toad Town, you are able to combine two items to see if they can
create an all-new food. Since many items are rare, or found in one area, to complete this quest (Food mixing is actually a quest to complete =O), you’ll have
to trek through basically the entire Mushroom Kingdom (well, the part of it you can travel in)!
This game follows also in Supe rMario 64′s footsteps and has puzzles. LOTS of puzzles. Some of them are quite easy, like in Shy Guy’s Toybox, but by Bowser’s
Castle, you’ll see some of the weirdest and most fun ones in nearly any MArio game, period. The entire first 1/4 of the 7th world is centered completely on
solving a murder mystery in town, too.
Because this is an Intelligent Systems game, you will see the best writing and character designs this side of Batman: the Animated Series. In this game,
due to time constraints, the translation isn’t nearly as funny as the sequel’s, but you will see tons of good laughs throughout your travels.

Overall: Perfect? Quite Possibly. I see almost no flaws in the gameplay whatsoever.

Graphics (10/10):

Paper Mario was criticized before it came out by fans of Super Mario RPG, because of its drastic change from pre-rendered awesomeness to 2D designs
that were cartoony. but looking back, you’ll automatically see the fact that this new style of design was much better than the crude 3D models of the N64
era. Intelligent Systems was actually able to put character and animation into their designs. the huge array of enemy types was even better in the fact it
only had a few recolor enemies, something hardcore RPG fans were not used to seeing. I think Paper Mario has the best 2D graphics on the system, if not THE
best.

Sound (10/10):

It made me torrent the soundtrack. Seriously, it’s good. The sound effects are also great, because of their over-the-top cartooniness. Especially
those badges that makes stupid sounds when you use the hammer =P Anyway, Mario is also silent for the only time in 3D Mario history, and I like it better
that way, at least for Paper Mario. It took me a while to get used to Mario’s voice being in future titles in this series.

Challenge (10/10):

Completely epic boss fights. The puzzles were already hard, and then you get hit by something epic like Huff N. Puff. You actually have to *gasp*
strategize with your badges and items! Unthinkable in an RPG! =P

Frustration (5/10):

Oh yeah. Speaking of those boss fights, uhh… get ready to die a few times. But besides them, you don’t really get pushed around all too much. The Lavalava
Island Volcano is pretty hard if your level isn’t high enough, but not too hard.

(Frustration is not counted past the score of 4)

Replayablity(10/10):

You have to try and get every badge, every cooking combo, every sidequest done, all star pieces, everything. It takes hundreds of millions of years to do
this, usually, but it it SO worth it. Going through the game again is always fun (except the prologue), too.

Value:

It’s for 10 bucks on Virtual Console. So in Cruis’n USA. Go figure. =P

(Value is not counted in final score)

Final Score:

54/54. 100% 10/10.

Is this the best Mario game of all time? Perhaps. In my opinion.. Well, you’ll have to see, in an upcoming About Me article on the Backblog. But this game
is perfect in almost every way. I have thought for a long time that you could never ever improve this games’ formula in any way. If you do not buy this
game immeadiately, you are slowly rotting away, missing out on a game like this.

Thanks for reading my review. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for the next reviews I do, PM me at nintendo City, or comment on an article
at the Backblog, at http://ncbblog.wordpress.com/ . It’s off for me to do… something else. Oh yeah, read my comic The Mushroom Kingdom at
http://tmk.smackjeeves.com/ , it is what inspired me to write so many of these dang Mario reviews. =P
Ciao!