{"id":539,"date":"2016-01-30T15:24:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T20:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/stories\/?p=539"},"modified":"2022-07-17T18:34:10","modified_gmt":"2022-07-17T22:34:10","slug":"paper-mario-1q2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/2016\/01\/30\/paper-mario-1q2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Paper Mario \u2014 1Q2016<\/span> issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

A ser\u00advice\u00adable tale on paper<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The moment you know Mario has gone on too many adven\u00adtures is when you know you\u2019ve played way too much Mario. Paper Mario, the sequel to the hard-to-top Super Mario RPG<\/span>, is when I knew I\u2019d played way too much Mario and seemed to expect way too much from a Mario game. The joke, how\u00adev\u00ader, was on me as I real\u00adized that an in-depth and long adven\u00adture await\u00aded, and a sto\u00adry was to be told here that need\u00aded to be told after the high\u00adlight of RPG<\/span>.<\/span>
\nPaper Mario starts out much like any oth\u00ader Mario game: The princess has been kid\u00adnapped and Mario needs to save her. How\u00adev\u00ader, there\u2019s a twist in the danse macabre that is Mario and Bowser\u2019s eter\u00adnal strug\u00adgle over Peach. Bows\u00ader has man\u00adaged to get his hands on the Star Rod, impris\u00adons most of the wish-grant\u00adi\u00adng com\u00admu\u00adni\u00adty and has lit\u00ader\u00adal\u00adly abscond\u00aded with Peach and her court into the sky. This is the point at which you should be say\u00ading, \u201cReal\u00adly Bows\u00ader? You just helped save your uni\u00adverse in RPG<\/span> and you\u2019re back to cre\u00adat\u00ading prob\u00adlems again?\u201d But, nev\u00ader\u00adthe\u00adless, the sto\u00adry must go on and Paper Mario fills that void nice\u00adly with an engag\u00ading tale of team\u00adwork and cama\u00adraderie. I was most impressed with the depth of the char\u00adac\u00adters and the deft way Intel\u00adli\u00adgent Sys\u00adtems fleshed out the world of Mario and some of his nev\u00ader-before-seen allies who come from all walks of the Mario life. <\/span>
\nAnoth\u00ader impres\u00adsive part of the tale is the tongue-in-cheek humor sprin\u00adkled lib\u00ader\u00adal\u00adly through\u00adout. Paper Mario isn\u2019t afraid to be self-ref\u00ader\u00aden\u00adtial or pinch off oth\u00ader games when it calls for shak\u00ading up the rou\u00adtine \u201cMario saves Peach\u201d bit. <\/span>
\nSpoil\u00aders ahead: There is a sec\u00adtion that calls for a cer\u00adtain princess to become a vir\u00adtu\u00adal Sol\u00adid Snake-like char\u00adac\u00adter and it imme\u00addi\u00adate\u00adly calls forth images of Met\u00adal Gear Sol\u00adid. That kind of bor\u00adrow\u00ading is the kind of thing that\u2019s allowed and plays well with\u00adin the con\u00adtext that Mario is the king of all that he sur\u00adveys and even in his spin\u00adoff titles, he can still run with the best of the best, pay homage and still come out smelling like roses.<\/span>
\nIn his sec\u00adond RPG<\/span> out\u00ading, Mario still plays just as well as his first attempt in the role-play\u00ading sphere. Paper looks like and plays out like a sto\u00adry\u00adbook, which is fresh and invit\u00ading to old diehards like myself. The mechan\u00adics are sim\u00adple to learn and are lay\u00adered enough that an expe\u00adri\u00adenced RPGer can jump right in and under\u00adstand what\u2019s going on with\u00adout much explanation. <\/span>
\nIf you played the first game, con\u00adcepts such as timed defense, timed offense and first hits will make sense. It\u2019s that kind of ref\u00ader\u00adenc\u00ading that makes the game a suc\u00adcess: It\u2019s easy to pick up and play, regard\u00adless of your lev\u00adel of <\/span>famil\u00adiar\u00adi\u00adty with the series\u2019 system.<\/span>
\nMy main gripe, though, is that the game feels sprawl\u00ading and slight\u00adly dis\u00adjoint\u00aded at times. That\u2019s a great prob\u00adlem to have actu\u00adal\u00adly, but there are times when back\u00adtrack\u00ading and the seem\u00ading\u00adly end\u00adless sid\u00ade\u00adquests tend to dis\u00adtract from the main goal. Still, I\u2019d rather have that prob\u00adlem than be bored with noth\u00ading to sup\u00adport the main story. <\/span>
\nAlso, as a rather nit\u00adpicky side gripe, the final boss fight is one of the most aggra\u00advat\u00ading fights I have ever experienced. <\/span>
\nI was eas\u00adi\u00adly in that bat\u00adtle for half an hour sole\u00adly because of the boss\u2019 abil\u00adi\u00adty to heal, not because I was doing any\u00adthing par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar\u00adly wrong. If, at the end of the bat\u00adtle, I say, \u201cI will nev\u00ader fight this end bat\u00adtle again,\u201d there is a prob\u00adlem there. <\/span>
\nIt was as if it was pro\u00adtract\u00aded and drawn out for the sake of being a hard boss battle. <\/span>
\nMy issues aside, though, I had an engag\u00ading and mem\u00ado\u00adrable time play\u00ading through and I couldn\u2019t wait to work through a new chap\u00adter in the saga that was Paper Mario. This is a tale you lit\u00ader\u00adal\u00adly can\u2019t put down.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A ser\u00advice\u00adable tale on paper The moment you know Mario has gone on too many adven\u00adtures is when you know you\u2019ve played way too much Mario. Paper Mario, the sequel to the hard-to-top Super Mario RPG<\/span>, is when I knew I\u2019d \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,279,58,60,63,82,83,88,102,103],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrograde","tag-1q2016","tag-lyndsey","tag-lyndsey-hicks","tag-mario","tag-mario-mania","tag-nintendo","tag-nintendo-64","tag-paper-mario","tag-retrograde","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":626,"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaminginsurrection.com\/reviews\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}