Ok, I decided to take a break whiel my 3ds charges because my wire just sucks so I have to let it charge while not moving.
But I got far enough to tell my first impressions.
First, there's absolutely no pacing issues so far. I honestly might have not reached a part where it's a problem but I clocked like......around maybe 10 hours so far and really the toad missions are NOT bothering, they are honestly a bit fun and seems well spaced throughout the game. I honestly expected a lot worse so far.
Now, the dialogs are actually quite good, imo, a bit better than DT
As for the combat, I was hoping that Paper Mario would bring more strategy options in a execution catered system being the m&l one, it actually did to my pleasure. DT felt more like you jump or hammer or bros attack and you have 2 turns for that.....not really a lot of options like the most of the battles was actually trying to dodge the attacks and it just is a bit annoying to me because I like having strat options. This game has more because the Paper Mario turn is actually a bit more complex.
How his turn has is he is the only one that can have the copy block and that is a double edged sword when you use it. You do get basic attacks that hit harder, but this honestly despite being a protection, it's really not designed to be a defensive option because you can loose them very fast and that starts to get your attack a bit mroe annoying to do so wasting the entire turn for the block is actually sometime, a risky decision. The other thing that makes his turn complex is that he is the only one that can use the trio and the trio.....they hit hard so really, you don;t want to have him fainted. But the best thing that makes his turn so good is how the attacks varies with copies. If you have full copy, a jump begins to be times 6 given you get an excellent and same for the hammer, except the hammer has a wonderful features that if it has multiple enemies, it will spread the copies that attack who so that it will try to attack everyone. So the copy is really really important to have which makes his turn though to decide.
This is a really nice addition because NOW it feels much more balanced between strategy and execution. It still is catered towards execution because this is m&l, but it's imo a lot better since it''s not JUST execution. Oh and not to mention how satisfying it feels to have the 6 jumps......it gets easy after you get the hang of it, but it just feels like you did a good power bounce in TTYD and the timing actually is a bit tight so it;s not like sticker star where you could blink your eyes ten times lol
As for the maps, they are....m&l, but I have to emntion how I live the details they put in the paper themed environement, it;s basically like SS which is really a good thing here because I believe I said this in my SS review, but I felt the SS paper style and how they were doing he hammer interaction was brilliant and it's cool for the series. The fact it's there int hat game is fun
Music however, this is getting weird, it;s still clearly not better than DT imo, but it's much better than I expected and I did heard a sneak peak of eveyr music beforehand. The reason is mostly context, there's places that the music fits intentionally in a very awkward way for example, the sad music, is uterly overkill and it;s clear it's intentionally made to be overkill. I don;t see this much often, and it;s really fun for the game to do that on little stuff.
Now.....where it gets very funky on my impressions and I honestly still have to figure out how to explain it is it's very weird how it flows. It feels......very fast and......rather unpredictable, but to the point where everything jsut kinda happen. Like in DT and superstar saga, what i was noticing is the plot was so central to the game, it drove how it flows. What I mean by this is that the game had context that drove where you go and what you would do, sure there';s plot twist, but there;s a context before that. In PJ however, I do not feel the plot is driving the game, i feel the game is being driven on its own and the plot jsut kinda happens as it goes. it's really weird because I know m&l has a lot of stuff going on the plot so much that it is defining how you progress, but PJ what I think happens is there;s one VERY simple plot that gets dragged on very weirdly. Everything just happens as it goes so it's literally impossible to predict what is going to happen next, but this also means that there's less depth involved with your progression which might be bad.
Like I said, I need a better way to describe this, but I jsut had thsi feeling that for an m&l game, the flow was unusual.
The humour though is really good so far, don;t get me wrong, but it's just a tad too close to the classic mario plot maybe. Though, the fact they can make a really good humor with that plot is actually impressive, but the point is it's really not DT plot here.....
To sum it up, so far, it;s better than I actually expected because the combat balance is better and to be frank, despite feeling weird, I start to liek the idea that everything happens as it goes because I just like to be surprised here.
I am about to go to the woods area