Some games, while great, often get bashing that they don't deserve, or they're simply overlooked by too many people. We call these underrated games. Super Paper Mario is synonymous with that term. You're obviously a Mario fan, so you've probably heard a lot of bad "rap" about this game. I tell you, people criticize games for the silliest reasons. The game's bad because it's an action RPG? Because its characters consist of geometric shapes? Please. Let me tell you, Tourists, if I were to make a list of the most underrated games I've played, Super Paper Mario would get a nice little spot in the top ten.
Sorry about the
ranting, but part of the reason I'm writing this Review is to rant about
the game getting undeserved hate. Let's get to the general idea; Super
Paper Mario is an action RPG for the Wii, released in 2007. As the next
installment of the very popular Paper Mario series, Intelligent Systems
decided to take a more innovative path with this one. Instead of being
a traditional RPG, they've added a Mario touch: sidescrolling and real-time
battles. This may seem unappealing, but don't be fooled; this is by far
the best RPG on the Wii and one of the best games on the system in general.
STORY - 9.8 out of 10
Like the first two Paper Mario games, Super Paper Mario starts with Mario and Luigi at their house. Quite a peaceful day, it seems, until a panicky Toad comes to the house, saying that Peach has been kidnapped. It's like second nature for the Mario Bros. to go after Bowser when trouble is afoot, and they do just that. Upon confronting Bowser at his castle, though, they discover that Bowser was PLANNING to kidnap Peach, but had not yet launched his attack. Soon after that, a vampire-esque figure appears out of thin air. This is the tortured soul known as Count Bleck. He reveals that he is the one who kidnapped Peach. When Mario tries attacking the Count, it is useless, as he is protected by a strange barrier. In response, he opens up a small black hole that batters and hurts Mario, leaving him unconscious on the castle floor. Afterward Count Bleck opens up a bigger black hole, sucking in Luigi, Bowser, and all his minions. Mario is left alone in the castle.
Peach regains consciousness, only to find that she is at an altar, with herself and Bowser in wedding garb. Count Bleck seems to have forced a marriage upon the two in order to usher some sort of evil plan; Bowser is more than willing to cooperate. Peach disapproves of this wedding and refuses to marry Bowser, but Bleck's assistant, Nastasia, is able to brainwash Peach into saying yes. As told in a grimoire called the Dark Prognosticus, the Chaos Heart appears on the altar as a result of Bowser and Peach's marriage. Luigi, who was in the audience mainly made up of Bowser's minions, finally regains his senses and realizes what is going on. Contradictory to Luigi's cowardly personality, he tries to destroy the Chaos Heart and protect Peach, but to no avail. Count Bleck successfully flees with the Heart.
Meanwhile, Mario is awakened by a small, butterfly-like creature named Tippi. Tippi teleports Mario to a dimension called Flipside, where he is greeted by a sage named Merlon. Looking up at the sky, Mario notices a tiny black hole. This is the Void - the result of Count Bleck evoking the Chaos Heart. This apocalyptic phenomenon will slowly decay all dimensions. It can be stopped if the one who wields the Chaos Heart - in this case Count Bleck - is defeated, but Mario needs the eight Pure Hearts, as the Count is rendered invincible by the Chaos Heart, and the Pure Hearts will likely be able to shatter the barrier. Merlon is able to give Mario the first of the Pure Hearts which, when inserted in to the nearby Heart Pillar, reveals a door to another dimension. There is where the next Pure Heart lies.
As the plot proceeds,
Super Paper Mario becomes a bit of a love story. I actually enjoy love
stories a lot, so this appealed to me. Even for those non-romantics, this
is still an amazing, if sometimes sloppily told, story; such a great story,
in fact, that the huge amount of text in the game can be forgiven. This
is one of my favorite storylines in any video game, even competing with
heavyweights like Mother 3.
GAMEPLAY - 8.9 out of 10
This is no longer a traditional RPG. To add more of a Mario touch, Super Paper Mario is now a sidescrolling action RPG. While the onscreen action resembles that of a classic Mario platformer, the gameplay remains strictly like an action RPG. That means there are real-time battles as opposed to turn-based ones. I don't know why everyone was so devastated when Intelligent Systems selected this battle system, as it actually works out quite nicely. Obviously, Mario's primary offense is jumping on his foes. When he does so, he does a certain number of damage to them depending on his level. Mario also gets other forms of offense from faeries called Pixls, which serve as the game's partners. Not only that, but there are more playable characters that you will obtain throughout the game. While it's not as solid as Paper Mario's battle system or as deep as Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door's, it's still highly functional and pretty fun.
Then we have dimension flipping, the main selling point of the game. Early in the game, Mario has the ability to flip between dimensions using the A button. So once you do this, you can explore the same area you're standing in - now in 3D. This is used to unveil secret objects or passageways. It's a really unique concept and you must commend Nintendo for coming up with it, but its execution isn't too great. Whereas the 2D world is excellently designed and full of life, the 3D world feels awkward and somewhat dry. That's not to say the 3D world is bad, but it surely could have been better. I also must say that flipping is rather overused throughout the game, and since Mario is the only one of the playable character who has access to the flip, it sometimes gets annoying having to always switch to him.
A problem that
the Paper Mario series seems to be getting itself deeper in is repetitive
level design. Paper Mario did not suffer this problem, but Paper Mario:
The Thousand-Year Door had too many levels involving going back and forth
and so on, and Super Paper Mario continues that trend. But it's not so
much the "back and forth" aspect that it repeats, it's simply the... somewhat
bland levels. I've noticed an awful lot of areas that are just stretches
of land with enemies scattered about, with a warp pipe here and there.
When you flip, you won't find much else, either. Some of the level designs
are cool, but it seems Intelligent Systems is kind of getting lazy with
their levels. I was also disappointed by the fact that they couldn't integrate
FP or Badges into the game. Ah well, maybe in the sequel.
GRAPHICS - 7.5 out of 10
This game was originally being developed for the GameCube, so... I guess they didn't have time to upgrade the graphics too much. Most of the classic characters take the visual scheme of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. These characters include Mario, Bowser, Luigi, Peach, the Koopa Troop, Goombas, and most of the "recycled" enemies in the game. But mostly, the game has a bizarre graphical gimmick that involves the characters and environments being formed from various geometric shapes. This gives the game a really cool and unique look, although some parts of these graphics are a bit odd-looking. Some of the characters have limbs that are represented only by thin, black lines. It looks a bit corny, and it looks especially strange in a certain area with a pitch-black background.
Seeing as most
of the game is 2D, the graphics aren't overly impressive, but they're not
bad. Again, I really like how they handled the graphical style of the game.
It's just one of the things that makes Super Paper Mario the most creative
Mario RPG to date.
MUSIC - 9.4 out of 10
Paper Mario music only gets better over time, and Super Paper Mario's soundtrack trounces its predecessors. Its quality isn't the highest as far as Wii games go, but I've never cared about sound quality as long as the music is actually good. Super Paper Mario is oozing with great songs. Take for example the exotic music that plays in Sammer's Kingdom; it's one of my favorite video game songs ever! I can think of, oh, maybe one or two songs that I like better than it, but Sammer's Kingdom is very high up there. Also a very impressive song is the ever-popular "Champion of Destruction", which plays during some scenes that focus on Count Bleck. It's emotional, and at the same time manages to be kind of catchy. Love it. I also found the theme of the boss "O'Chunks" to be a very unique piece, and it's extremely fitting for the battle, perfectly fitting the action.
One thing I noticed
that made a lot of the songs great was the game's excellent instrumentation.
Super Paper Mario makes perfect use of many cute-sounding instruments that
are a joy to hear. This makes for one of my favorite video game soundtracks
that I've heard! Oh, and did I mention this game has a sound test? It's
a feature that many RPGs sadly lack, but it's worked its way in to Super
Paper Mario. It isn't that good of a sound test - you have to pay 10 coins
per song, and you can't even pick which song plays - but at least it's
there, right?
LENGTH & DIFFICULTY - 6 out of 10
This is kinda the part where real-time battles take their toll. We'll get to that later, though, because I want to cover the length first. Like the other two Paper Marios, Super Paper Mario is divided into eight eventful chapters. However, since this game is so much faster-paced, the chapters seem to be shorter than usual. Chapter 1, for example, you can just breeze through. Chapter 6 is also extremely short, although it really only exists for storyline purposes. Indeed, you can go through most chapters pretty quickly, although the game will still last for a good four or five days, not counting sidequests.
Difficulty...
this is where the game stumbles even moreso. Let's talk about these real-time
battles. Sure, they're more convenient than turn-based, but they also seem
to make the game easier. An example is Chapter 7's boss, who has gained
infamy amongst the Super Paper Mario community for being extremely easy.
Had the game been turn-based, this boss would've posed a challenge. As
is, though, it can be defeated within seconds. I have nothing against real-time
battles, I love them, but still. How Intelligent Systems handled them seemed
to really take a toll on the difficulty.
REPLAY VALUE - 9.6 out of 10
Now this is one incredible postgame. Just like in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, after beating the final boss, you don't just restart at the last save point. The game recognizes that you've beaten Bleck and you're the hero who saved the world, and there are a bunch of optional challenges waiting for you. The Pit of 100 Trials makes a return in this game; and this time, it's actually fun. In the Thousand-Year Door, this was a very repetitive and dull dungeon that consisted of doing the same thing over and over and over in order to get a mediocre reward. Real-time battles really improve the Pit of 100 Trials. See, each floor is like a mini-maze that contains some enemies. One of these enemies holds the Pit Key, which allows you to proceed deeper in to the dungeon. I love how they handled this dungeon, and it even has a very convenient little... thing at the end. There's also a second, more challenging dungeon, but I'll leave you to salvage its treasures on your own. There's another challenge in the game that's quite similar to these dungeons, but it's pretty spoiler-y.
Now, let's talk about the more basic sidequests, shall we? Some fun little collectibles in this game, Catch Cards, serve as a collecting sidequests. You see, first you have to find or purchase an empty Catch Card. Then you'll have to find an enemy that you want to trap inside it. You can then use the Catch Card to try to capture them. Although it doesn't always work, you’ll have a higher success rate if the enemy is weakened. If you successfully capture their soul in the card, henceforth your attack power against that particular enemy will be doubled. It's not the best reward, but it's still fun to try to collect all 255 Catch Cards. There are also Catch Cards for NPCs, but since the heroes wouldn't dare trap them in a card, you'll have to find their hidden Catch Cards somewhere in the world. This concept reminded me a lot of Pokemon, and although I'm not a fan of that series, I still found this to be a nice little time waster.
Ah, I can't believe
I forgot to mention Maps. In a certain town in the game, there's a Map
salesman who... sells maps. I'm not kidding. You can buy one from him,
and the Map will show a location with an "X" over a spot that has treasure
hidden in it. If you want to claim these treasures, you'll have to hike
to that spot and use the skills of a certain Pixl in order to get it. Usually
these treasures will be Catch Cards or rare items. There are 48 Maps in
the game, and I found this to be one of the most entertaining sidequests
that it has to offer.
OVERALL - 92 out of 100
This really can't be emphasized enough; Super Paper Mario is a wonderful, underrated game that any Mario fan owes it to themselves to play. Just because it's not an RPG doesn't mean it's a bad game. It's just as good as The Thousand-Year Door (Uh, now is as good a time as any to say this, but disregard my TT-YD fanboyisms in my previous submissions. It is not the best game ever.) if not a little better, and it's almost as great as the original Paper Mario. And this is coming from an RPG addict. I really didn't care that it was a bit more of a platformer. As long as it's fun, does it really matter which genre it is? No, and I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who feels the same way.
Despite all my praise, Super Paper Mario really seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it game. The game just doesn't seem to fit some peoples' fancies. Because of this, it's kind of hard for me to tell whether you'll like it or not. Either way, don't keep your expectations for this game TOO high, because if you do... well, you'll either be fully satisfied or bitterly disappointed. Better safe than sorry, though. I've noticed some people dislike this game just because it doesn't play like any other Paper Mario game. Don't look at Super Paper Mario as the next installment in the super-popular RPG series, look at it as a completely new and original Mario game. If you do this, I can guarantee you'll have at LEAST a pretty good time with this game.
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