Please tell to me if you find any reference to the older PM games, especially SPM. I'm kinda losing my hype for this game the more i see of it. :/
tbh, idk why you would, I am more hype as it goes.
And here's the thing: the character Paper Mario has representation of I would say most of the core aspects of the games, it's just not obvious. For example, on the video I posted last time, notice what he does just after punching the goombas......he spins and if you check his pose, it is the exact same animation as pm64 spinning.
Then you have gameplay mechanics that originated from his series like heal block, paper mode (TTYD), air plane mode (TTYD) and now it is expanded.
So, if none of what I said for you is "a good refference", then I will say that I came to the realisation that this game doesn.'t need any to be good. Did you watched the JP trailer? this trailer is where to me it became so obvious tthe game. The basic point is I always seen this game as a straight m&l tittle that is also serving as a transitional tittle for the Paper Mario series. By this I mean comming from the mess that was SS (whcih I know we both agreed was a mess) to....revive his series into the right direction. It doesn't mean it has to be fully there, what it woudl mean is basically trying to pseudo fix the issues caused by SS, it's just the first step imo.
And again, everything I saw SS related which even if there's a lot, in the context of the game, they actually are neatly implemeneted and even better, they do make the game better.
But the reason why I do question your worry right now is how much we know about how the character Paper Mario is portrayed here. it might be honestly the best representation of him which sincerly, is a good thing for the series in the future.
So, I don't see this game as a Paper Mario "tribute", I see it more as a way to start fixing the most annoying issuws of SS before actually trying to continue his series. Reminder that this not being a Paper Mario game means that his series still isn't resumed, but that game makes it very likely to be and as I see more of paper jam, I become more positive about the Paper Mario series.
TL;DR: imo, I wouldn't buy th egame expecting to have a tribute of Paper Mario, but I would buy it to see expansion to the character and probably his series in the future.
And I suggest you consider the following: having SS assets makes the dev much easier as they would only edit the already done assets so it woudl sound to me that it's a good compromise between having to do effort to redo everything than to simply reuse what has been done, but without rushing like SS did......