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This game is good but I feel like it would be strictly better if the ability you get to defeat “weaker” enemies on the field was just always present as a thing. Thus, you’d still have guaranteed and “set” ring battles that intermittently occur and for the overworld “random” encounters you could either choose to enter normally to do the ring puzzle and get more coins as a reward or just defeat them on the field and keep the pacing up if you don’t feel like engaging in the battle system at the time. The lack of xp is definitely something I feel and considering I usually don’t need 400 coins or whatever as the battle reward I’d love the opportunity to do something that feels better than either avoiding enemies on the overworld or doing the 100th ring puzzle again and again. They get harder, but they never get more depth of things to do nor is there character customization so there really just needs to be less of them overall in the game given that.
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Jul 19, 2020 20:05
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Overall, I think this game is just as good as any top-tier Mario rpg. It's certainly different, and I'd think it would only be better with xp/actual depth and character customization in the battles/adding unique designs to characters, but as an overall package it's the 8 or 9 out of 10 I'd give all the best Mario rpgs. My biggest Mario rpg hot take is not only is Thousand Year Door not the zenith of Mario rpgs, but it isn't even close. I feel like fans of that game only give lip service to how bad the backtracking is but as someone who played that game for the first time a couple years ago, the non-combat gameplay in that game is absolutely abysmal. By the time I was doing Chapter 5 where I was (again!) walking left to right over and over again and fighting literally the same enemy overworld sprites that respawn as you go back and forth I seriously considered just quitting the game. No amount of unique characters can actually save that game in my view. In contrast, the non-combat gameplay of Origami King was genuinely fun for me to play through (besides Mario's walking speed being kind of slow). I would never say Thousand Year Door is better than Origami King (even though it has more interesting characters and more depth to keep battles engaging) when what you're doing outside of the battles is so actively not fun to play in one of them and generally a fun delight in the other. I would roughly put what I've played in the following tiers (haven't played dream team or paper jam): Tier One: Paper Mario, Origami King, Superstar Saga, Mario RPG (SNES) Tier Two: Thousand Year Door, Color Splash, Bowser's Inside Story Tier Three: Super Paper Mario, Partners in Time Genuinely a bad game: Sticker Star
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Jul 28, 2020 19:52
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The problem with the combat in this game is there is no depth to it at all, which is largely coming from a lack of character/party customization over it involving puzzles. As you progress through the game, the puzzles get harder in terms of the enemy layout configuration, but they never have more depth or customization to what you’re doing. Your abilities after solving the (identical puzzle type that never changes) are always static. You get upgrades to boots and hammers and items but it’s all just damage modifiers. There are no new skills ever the entire game. Someone is going to point out that the battles in jrpgs don’t change either, but what is changing is your party layouts and you get new skills etc. that cause the play of the battle to be different. The battles often become a toolbox to mess around with party and character builds. The result in terms of you deal damage to kill the enemy is the same, but the fact you do different things to reach that result absolutely matters. How many ring puzzles is “enough” at some point? I certainly felt that way after 100 of them, given they play out the same but are only different in terms of the difficulty to solve them. XP and a sense of progression matters too. I feel like the discussion of XP is often framed in terms of its necessary for battles to be engaging (the answer is no), but it should instead be framed as if it’s actually additive to a rpg game like this one to remove it (the answer is also no). In this game, after solving a puzzle I often found myself wishing I could just skip the next phase where I jump/hammer as appropriate. The battle was “won” at the puzzle portion and the later felt like a waste after a while. To some extent there was the “strategy” of using the appropriate resource, except this game has terrible feedback on whether a “shiny” or “flashy” move would do enough damage to kill whatever enemy beyond simple trial and error and guesswork. So that “strategy” aspect wasn’t fun and I would just use the strongest appropriate ability to ensure the kill and I found myself just wanting to skip all of it entirely at that point. Especially when they were 3 groups to go through.
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Jul 29, 2020 17:35
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ImpAtom posted:Okay but you are still ignoring the puzzle part. Not only do enemies have different gimmicks I beat the game and the only enemy gimmick that affected the puzzles were boos? And I guess the enemies in the final green streamer. I would’ve loved if there were more gimmicks that changed up how you solve the ring puzzles honestly. The bosses were generally very good at that aspect (along with the fact you just do it less often so it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome as quick)
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Jul 29, 2020 23:27
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ImpAtom posted:I mean that is objectively untrue. Depending on the enemies some require you to use different weapons which in turn means you need to consider different puzzle layouts to assure you can beat them in one turn. “Need” is an interesting word to use given that I literally never once considered puzzle layout by enemy type (and never game over’d through combat even once). I just solved the puzzle as needed and as I talked about in a previous post, wished the following phase could’ve been skipped if the puzzle was in fact solved. It never mattered if spiky enemies were put into a line. I guess flying enemies couldn’t be put into a square but I don’t recall that ever being considered by me as they were always already preset into clear “line” puzzle solutions anyway.
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Jul 29, 2020 23:42
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