Let's just get some important facts on the game before we begin.
How it happened?
The game was supposed to be released as a Gamecube game, but as the Gamecube was getting discontinued, they moved silently the project to the wii which should have been simple enough because both hardware are very similar. The effect of this is actually obvious: there's a ton of assets that comes from TTYD. Textures, SFX, heck even the font is really the same. The only changes I saw is a higher resolution because the wii had more capabilities than TTYD.
And what this does is the game feels very paper Mario because you have a very similar style than TTYD which was already loved by a lot. In fact, this is why I was blown away by people saying it;s not a paper mario game where freaking everything felt like it was one. if there would be anything that doesn't feel Paper Mario, it would be Sticker star and likely cs, but spm? no.
This is how I will segue with he flipping mechanics right away because It;s the core part of the review.
The game is Paper Mario
I need to explain first what is the difference between changing an implementation of an idea and changing the idea itself. If you change the idea itself when the game is made, you basically remove the idea from the game and it will clearly feel something else entirely. If it was in a series, then the game will feel different from what you would be used to. To me, it's fine to do this IF THE IDEA ISN'T FROM THE SERIES CORE! For example, you wouldn’t remove platofrming in a main mario game series, it makes no sense, the series will become totally different if you do this.
Changing the implementation of an idea is however very different. You keep the idea, btu you renew it. For example, if i would compare the battle system of Zelda oracle of ages (the better one
) to the one of Ocarina of time, it will be a bit hard because they both have similar ideas in the battle system, but they both try to achieve slightly different goals with them. the fact still remains there is real time battle and they both feel similar in that regard so it;s fine to draw that similarity to say that the series is consistent to try to renew itself.
This is where I come to Super Paper Mario. Even if it;s hard to tell what genre the game is (more on that later), nothing was removed from the series and everything was just reimplemented.
Even the RPG part of the game it;s still there, so much that I can't call the game a platformer.
See, if I assume the game is JUST a platformer, I basically miss too much stuff in the game. The levels aren;t just going from platform to platform to reach a goal, that would have been platforming. It has an EXP system forcing you to kill some enemies, you can battles that are real time so you have much more options than a paltofrmer would, you have puzzles with the flipping, you have a way to feel your progression constantly with the void, there;s a dialogs and story behind it etc.....
it's not possible for me to say it;s just a paltformer. If I do so, I miss way too much to say it coversd the entire game. In fact, I can;t say it;s an rpg either because then I miss a part of the foundation of the game.....
The reasons this happens is because both part are bridged together in imo very clever ways. The score ssytem (platformer) is used as your EXP (RPG). The flipping allows to pass from a classical mario level (platformer) to more of a puzzle oriented and figuring out where you should go (I found this similar to RPG dungeon where you try to know where to go instead of the way being obvious). You can use temporary power ups (platformer) as items to heal you or attack enemies more easily (RPG, this is usually how items works).
In fact, if you think about it, there is more RPG only part then there is for platofrmoing. The Pixl are RPG only, they are only used for abilities and utilities that you keep permanently. The HP system is RPG only, the levels system is RPG only and so on and so forth.
So what the freak is wrong with the flipping mechanics? I loved it because it gave a new perspective on levels that seemed very simple. It just added a lot more to what could have been a simple paltformer and actually, this is what the game was trying to do in the first place and the flipping does it well.
So, when I come back to the question is this game a Paper Mario game, I don;t get why so much people tend to say no while the reality is the game is clearly one, but implemented differently.
you can;t say Ocarina of time isn;t a zelda game because it;s different from a 2d zelda, that makes no sense. So why would spm not be Paper Mario while all it is doing is taking the same ideas and implement them differently?
Now you know why I sort of despise the spm hate, that really is the main argument against it and I saw absolutely no problem.
However, this is not me telling the game is perfect, oh no it;s not
The game does have flaws, don't fret, it's not bad.
I am going to address a very obvious thing I noticed with spm: it's not consistently good unlike pm64 and TTYD. In these 2 games, I never felt at one point the game was bad enough for me to remember it, even the TTYD general white hunt, that was fine AFTER it was done and the game had been so good before, I quickly got over it (it's still the worst part of TTYD however, what I am saying is this is still an OKAY part). The game felt awesome from the beginning to the end.
Spm however......this is more fluctuating. There's parts that can be so good you would maybe think it's better than the best of TTYD, but on other parts.....it would suck. The Pixl are the best example. Their dialogs when you meet them is hilarious, i loved the boomer one asking you random questions for the point of....absolutely nothing
The problem is after that, they never talk afterwards except Tippi (more on that later) and all they do is they do their utilities part and it's done. This is quite a downgrade going from TTYD where you had full character development and around 4 maximum moves per partners, they all had their identity and they had an impressive amount of dialogs especially goombella. Here is the catch though, I felt some Pixl dialgs were better than Goombella. You see the point I am trying to make here?
Spm has aspects that are imo the best in the entire series, but has other aspects that could be improved a lot. Here's an attempt for me to give an exhaustive list to what can be improved with spm:
- Tattles sucks in spm, they are mostly Goombella without any humor to it, it;s bland and I don;t like them.
- As a price to use the real time battle system, the game has less strategy options, it's annoying for me who research deep battles system, but I still had my stylish and it still made me happy so i roved on
- You don;t have much equipment, I don;t feel you would need to considering the game, but it coudl ahve at least given a downgraded version of the badges
- Bosses, they are not bosses, they are joke. Seriously, you go from TTYD which has a tons of strategy and the bosses are kinda long because you think about them and what you should do while spm it's more a matter of literally jumping around. Even the final boss is way too easy.
These are the main complains I had with spm. This is also why I am never going to say that spm is as polished as TTYD and TTYD was insanely polished so not that i can expect that to ever happen to be honest, but you get the idea: the game has flaws and they do matter when you play the game. However,. none of them makes the game bad. I just explained that it;s hard to me to say this isn;'t a paper amrio game and then I just explained that the game does some aspects the best in the entire series so to me, it;s fair to say that the game is good overall.
But what are those aspects?
From good to super underrated
There is a reason I respect people saying that spm is their favorite Paper Mario game: there's a lot of reasons to like spm because first: spm is implementing the Paper Mario series differently and second, it does stuff in the series that only this game does. The graphics for instance has the classic paper Mario style, but it has a cubic design and cubes being a very simple shape, it just feels right for the simplicity of the Paper Mario artstyle. Instead of seeing lines, you mostly see cubes and I found that very interesting as a huge fan of that srtstyle. you still have the colors and clear outlines, but it doesn;t feel the exact same as TTYD and I liked that.
The music is actually the exact same style as TTYD, but imo, improved. You have more random SFX in the tracks, they feel a bit more varied and they feel VERY vivid. The ost is imo on par with he TTYD one, it;s really keeping the retro 8bit style that makes them so simple to hear. There's even an 8bit remix version of the miniboss theme in the game that I absolutely LOVE.
The VERY core and main thing this game has that I agree entirely on why the game got so much praised is the text and plot. That deserve its own section
The humor
It is imo by far the best writing in the entire series and on its own a very huge interest to play the game. It;s basically the humor style is like TTYD on drugs and the main plot is.....nothing like TTYD lol. The humor is HILARIOUS and honestly, I never laugh as much as when I was playing this game. It keeps the same style from TTYD: very silly logic presented in a very serious way, except a lot deeper The enemies card descriptions are ALWAYS funny to read, the comical jokes are abundant and there is 2 points in particular when I laugh so mcuh I took a 10-15 minutes break because I couldn’t contain it.
Fracktail and Francis. Let;s keep the best for the end so let me first describe Fracktail.
He basically goes berserk and the error he is outputting if you love computers like me.....god this was so funny. I never expected in a Paper Mario game to hear computers and Windows references, seriously that threw me off. When it killed me was the ctrl alt delete: I was dead laughing at how much he just doesn't give a thing about the fourth wall. Just that part, exceeded anything I got from TTYD.
But the huge thing and imo the best part of the entire game is 3-4. This is when I realised how underrated this awesome game is. Holy god, Francis is too funny. I had spent some time on the internet enough before so that I could understand why, but the gist of it is that A LOT of people will relate to him and this is why it;s so funny because it's the most absurd typical internet troll personality I ever seen. If you had played TTYD before spm, this is a huge bonus because he has a ton of TTYD references. Everything him and his robots says is just too funny and it;s about picky fanboy criticism, only wanting nerd and hot babe in, being a jerk to others online and just being a huge fanboy. Actually, I love so much Paper Mario that I am not going to lie, I related to him on a lot of point which is why it;s so hilarious
But the peak of all this was the swoon.exe scene.......I am dead, I need a break this was way too mcuh for me to handle. I even had to pick the most ridiculous choices because it was jsut too much and then when Peach broke the fourth wall by wondering who was picking these answers.......god it killed me right there.
I even heard the next E3 when Paper Jam was announced that one of the Treehouse guy said "Super Paper Mario is one of my favorite game I ever worked on, I loved writing that game." tbh, it feels that the writter did had fun because when you read the text in this game, you have to feel happy.
But this is not the only reason the writing has been so praised....
The plot
No question; it is the deepest plot in the series. And also, the most well engineered one.
First, let's bring up the deepness of the writing. The text has a lot more literal devices for any Paper Mario game and that adds a huge meaning to the text which is actually very simple to read (which respects my philosophy of being a simple package with complex meaning). Just to give you an idea, it is a common euphemism in the series to represent the idea of dead as "having your game over". It's a funny one, but deep in meaning. TTYD had only used this euphemism ONCE and it was after you beat hooktail, koops says that he thought his dad game was over. In spm however, that one is VERY present like at least 20 times it;s been used. And for good reasons to, the game has a lot of references to quite dark theme such as dead, but the way the game brings them up is VERY implied and almost never explicit.
But the best part about the plot is how engineered it is. it;s a very teased plot and the 2 main person involved are Tiippi which helps you every time and the one who you THINK is the main villain. The main theme of the plot is how love persists through times and obstacles which as funny as it sounds it was done in TTYD with the TEC plot (the whole idea of being glitched to learn love is the biggest part). Except that spm brings it several steps further and the best example is the memory text.
After each ch, you have text written white on a pitch black screen and you just see that. Then there is one of the 4 versions of memory music playing depending on which ch you just finished. These text are the core of the plot so they really want you pay attention to them. And the music here plays a huge role because the first one sound like happy little memories, but then it gets darker and darker and around the end, you understands that what actually happened is that both Tippi and Bleck loved eachother, but they couldn't get even close so both party felt locked to accept it and one of them, to go insane. The plot itself is fine, but the way it is presented is what makes it so good. There is a point to every way to put sentences and this is why that when i got to the end of it.....I swear I shed some tears. You jsut feel like you want to know so bad what happens next and when the music "bounding through time" happened, I just....i can;t describe it, but that music hit me like a truck. It's basically a very deep explanation of how love can persist through dark times, I really loved to play a game where the main plot had that idea in mind.
this is why a lot of people like myself loves spm: you will not get this in TTYD and pm64. the best you will get in TTYD is a partial plot that is quite deep on its own with the TEC story, but not even close to spm which is super deep and has the entire game driving it. In fact, this is imo the reason this game is so distinctive as a Paper Mario game and why it just deserves a lot more attention then it got.
Final words: why hating this game?
Honestly, I was more mind blown by realising the game is good then the game itself. Because i just couldn’t get most complains this game had and the only one I agreed with were imo way too exaggerated by most people.
Let me make this clear: if you expected a game better than TTYD in terms of how polished it was, imo, you're doing it wrong. it;s insane how good TTYD got, so much that I don;t even think that trying to improve it would yield much points. sure, you could make TTYD better it;s not perfect (it;s close though), but the question is would that be worth to have IS take the effort to do this? Why would you do TTYD 2.0 where you pretty much nailed so good what you would try to do with the series? To me, spm was a very clever idea that I ended up loving a lot more than the idea of risking redundancy. The series had the need to try to renew itself and this is what spm was trying to do and imo, it did it well. It did it so well I wouldn’t even be mad if they do a seqeul to it because it is true spm can be improved that's for sure and it would clearly be worth making a game for that.
And then, what I really get mad at is when people uses spm as an argument to say that ss is not good. Imo, both game aren't even comparable to why they have flaws. Spm is mostly hated because it wasn't TTYD and SS is mostly hated because of the game itself, this is really not the same thing at all. In fact, SS was supposed to be a back to root game, but that got shifted away by Nintendo and Myamoto so honestly what the freak does spm has to do with this?
Spm to me is a sad story of how people can love too much a game to the point of only wanting that game and only that. Most complains I heard about spm is about TTYD so honestly, i never got that hate and this is why I quite despise it today. Spm to me is one of the game that could have lead the series in better direction and most hated it because it was trying to not be TTYD which imo is just dumb.
Heck to tell the truth, I would have accepted anything that wasn't SS when they announced cs, I would have even accepted a somehow flawed rpg with good ideas inside because I would at least know they are TRYING to fix what happened with SS. TTYD being exploited to a insane amount, it;s only fair that you would try to go elsewhere without breaking the series consistency. SS however broke even the series core genre. if anything, SS is a better example of how unfair the spm hate was and people should learn from it.
This concludes my review. I realised that I don;t need to go into much details than that because I talked about everything and the details only adds to what I told
