Welp,
aldelaro5
is going to lose it. XD
Not necessarily in a good way, come to think of it, but hey, he was sad we might not get a new PM game in the Direct, so the tag stands.
I wasn't sad, I was just being careful
Also, I appreciate the tag and I am not salty so I can calmy talk
.......however
I will not hide it, I have a huge disappointment and it goes as far as to say I am in disbelief.
So, first, please make sure you want to read my opinion on color splash before you read further, it will turn into a rant and will go very very VERY far into how I will consider the series from now on so, let's be honest, don;t read if you don;t care because it';s very long.
If you do, then I appreciate it
So, everyone knows in this thread that I had legit faith in nintendo about the Paper Mario series. I found that the issue SS had was mainly communication related and I found that even the dev studio wanted to do something that would have been imo a good direction. This is not something that I felt happened only to SS another good example i coudl give is metroid Other M.
This is the kind of issue that Nintnedo coudl try to fix.
And I felt they did. Since the WiiU release, they have been improving, they imo still have a long way to go, but they really got far into that territory. It jsut felt nintendo was fixing itself and I already saw releases where it was clear they were jsut doing that.
So when it came to Paper Mario after SS, I was still optimistic. I was even more after Paper Jam, here I could justify why they went with stickerish stuff, they had to use SS for data being the most logical conclusion because even the dev stated that they used SS for data accessibility.
But after Paper Jam, if I was going to see a new game, of course I have different expectation. If it's a WiiU game, it would have to be done from scratch meaning a completely new conceptualisation of a game meaning they pretty much have no reasons to reuse SS if pretty much most people just found it wrong. They would try something at least different or at least imo the best decision, get it back to root.
So, when I started to see the trailer for the very first time even with huge distraction in my networking class (interrupting my work flow even) with one earpods in my ear (just in case) all of these condition combined that lead me to watch this......
I cannot say I am hopeful anymore
Then after finally getting through my impatience to watch the vod again, I coudln;t help it. The only good thing it did is it just reminded me there;s a lot of unknown, however, reminder that the existence of the game was backed by emily who claimed it was being localised and James who just said a game from IS was in dev for around 3 years by the time this game gets released.
It is enough done to assume it will not drastically changes from now on, only gets more precise in informations we know about what we got so far.
So I will describe finally what I found wrong in that minute teaser......prepare, there's a lot:
- Stickerish battle system. The only thing that changes is replace stickers with cards. They work at least in a very similar way, found on the overworld and ou do attack with it. Specail cards = things. The stage location is like SS (which I just miss crazy stuff like TTYD or heck, even the pm64 one.....). This means that you will likely get the same problem SS had which is you basically loose the sense of true progression feeling of the battles and instead, they don't feel even worth to do them. I saw overworld drops, cards and coins. I checked stats and with the exception of the color quantity, it;s SS with only coins and HP, no EXP stats spotted of course. Basically, I can;t believe they came back to it.
- Stickerish overall feeling (get ready for me to use this word a lot btw), basically, a lot feels stickerish. Some are fine like the overworld interaction, that was fin, but they kept a lot of imo wrong stuff. That bucket is basically a replacement for kersti (we don't know that, but can we just assume it's likely consider what I even said above?) which.....to summarise my opinion of kersti, I hated her with passion. Even stuff like abundance of paper toads, no original enemies saw so far and even down to the lack of fluid looking character animation! I can;t believe this, you might have think SS was limitations, but the WiiU is an hd console that can run freaking ssbU at 60fps and I already talked about why I think it;s very important for the paper artstyle to look fluid, it;s paper after all, it naturally should be fluid. There;s other minoir stuff like the textbox (thank god they kept hey gorgeous), but most of the stuff I noticed were the one I learned to hate from SS. Got disappointed right there.
- Character animations, this is not stickerish.......but I can;t believe they managed to do worse. White outlines and this isn't paper jam so clearly feels way too odd, they don;t need them pls. The depth effect....feels odd and the worst: I get a feeling they are more cardboards (basically, it's like it;s too stiff and it just doesn;t look to be a folable material). what concerns me here is the other Paper Mario game I described like this was.....pm64. Which is imo still a flaw about it, BUT, I also said this is likely because the n64 was a limited system so they couldn't have complex animation. Reminder, the wiiU can run SSBU at 1080p.......i can't explain this one. Paper Mario is traditionally and even PAPER JAM did this, but the paper characters should feel like they could fold easily, it adds a lot of quirk to them and especially for Paper Mario which I learned to love....even in SS. I can;t believe they seemingly removed that part too, it;s a big reason I liked the series actually.
- .....no I am not putting this one in a bullet list, this deserve its own paragraph.
The artstyle.
I absolutely hate it. This is actually imo the most concerning thing I have about this game. I LOOOOOOOOOVED Paper Mario artstyle, clearly one of the biggest if not the biggest reason I loved the series. The Pm64 one, sure it felt rudimentary, but it still felt vivid and bright (play this game on a CRT btw, it;s really bright). The TTYD one was imo the best one, the spm one was very similar to it and the SS one......actually, wasn;t 100% bad.
Hear me out, I didn't liked the SS artstyle, but that;s IN GENERAL. I really liked the world 5 one, I quite liked the world 4 and 1. World 2 was.....meh and world 3 is.....I don;t want to even bring it up because I am going to do a lot of angry emotes that you guys won;t enjoy to read (aka, I think it's the worst design of the entire series). It's mostly because I disliked the diversity and the fact it jsut felt a bit basic and not mind bloeing that I didn;t liked it.
But this one is a major problem. It's not world 3, granted, but it still does what is imo the polar opposite of Paper Mario artstyle. Instead of feeling vivid and bright, it feels.....dark, bland and.....dull. Now, you might argue that they wanted this because the color wasn't there, however, there's just way too many ways for me to refute this. One, the characters feels the same, that isn't part of the environment so what i see is consistency and not intentional blandness. Second, it just generally feels unappealing, i dont; even feel I want to play this game by looking at at and frankly......even SS I might have that feeling it looked somehow appealing. Third, like I said on world 3, there's much better way to represent sadness or dark theme while still being vivid and bright, TTYD ch4, pm64 ch8, Spm ch7, I could go on and on about how the series really did a consistent job at doing this except SS world 3 of course.
So assuming we saw first levels and the hub.....this is so far shaping to be imo the worst Paper Mario artstyle of the entire series and it might get worse than world 3.
And actually, even the logo! I checked the logo and I noticed first the stickish things on the word color....which is not a good idea imo, but the word Paper Mario......it feels washed out like either it was heavily compressed, or it just isn't even vivid, even the SS one felt vivid.
I think the even fact I am finding more good about SS is definitely wrong now.
Guys, i had faith in Nintendo. I really believed they could understands what most fans and at this point, might say the freaking internet wanted and finally step up their game to just get what was the wrong direction SS took.
I even went as far to say that the series is dead in my famous SS review (right at the end if you want proof, I said it). Now that this happened......well I think unless they REALLY blow my mind (and I mean, SERIOUSLY blow my mind, maybe to unrealistic levels).......
.....
Well, I feel it's shaping that the series is dead to me.
It had chances after SS to revive greatly, but.....it just flopped most of these chances to me....
So, what does it mean for me and the game?
I will still follow it prerelease, of course you bet, I am an obsessed Paper Mario fanboy after all and it's free and actually refreshing to talk (because it;s new, I have a lot to day and of course you read it.....right?)
But will I buy it?
Well, currently it;s 100% no because I said I need a concrete year month and day release date.
But I don't think it's likely I buy it at all. Just saying that I bought full price 40$ SS completely aware that I will hate it JUST for the sake to review it and to grasp what was wrong with it. If this game brings stickerish mechanics to it again, then in all, there's no point for me to buy it.....even worse, consider just the artstyle, this is a very hard argument for me to think otherwise. Again, unless they ridiculously mind blow me, this likely won;t change. The game might be like 75% finished because of the localisation rumor and imo.....it felt in the trailer.
What will I do if I consider the series dead even after we know everything?
Well by not buying the game, I will probably watch let\s plays of it because might as well not pay if I don;t intend to buy it (and actually do a second hand review instead of first hand). But in long term.......well guys, let;s be real, TTYD could just live by itself and i would still love that game. There's no way my paper Mario passion will die here, let's be real, that game will never change that. What it will however is i will not be looking forward to the series successions anymore. This is what i believe would be the biggest change and actually......
I don't do this under normal circumstances, but let's assume ssb5 was announced.
I don't think I am even sure if I would want to support Paper Mario for it. Real, that character wouldn’t have changed in ways that I wouldn't like so I am not sure if I am still going to do this. I am not the type of person that will push first 3 games against this, no, let;s be real, if Nintnedo wanted for twice in 4 years to have SS, IT IS going to be it if he was in ssb.
Basically, the entire point of this post is I feel the series and the character lost his appeal. I don't recognise the elements that made me gush on this series now, I just.....don't like where it;s going, at all.
keep in mind, again, this is not a salty post, this is an explanation of my disappointment and my disbelief. It was a shock sure, but I just will move on with it, nothing prevents me from loving the first 3 games, if I feel that's what the series should have statued then I';ll be dedicated to think like this.
I appreciate that you took the time to read this post because not gonna lie.....it feels good to write your thoughts
