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All I want from Paper Mario is a weird cartoon landscape where mushrooms have a midlife crisis I want some weird adventure stuff, even the trolling bits. ESPECIALLY the trolling bits. Wanna proceed through 100 speechbubbles of a dude apologizing. Wanna be thrown into debtor prison for breaking some stupid vase. Wanna go through 20+ slow battles, including totally unscripted outside ring drama, and learn about the struggles and dreams of a third-rate koopa wrestler, only to see them swallowed up in a conspiracy. Wanna go to mario afterlife and bargain with the queen of the underworld for a 1-up. The games aren't really THAT special, gameplay-wise, they're just very competent and cute-looking, but they do some unexpected, subversive and pretty dang creative stuff, of the sorts which I feel is rarely seen in rpgs Totally makes up for the horrible backtracking, and makes up SOMEWHAT for the pretty busted and sparse-looking gimmick of SPM. But, oh well. Never liked how the games started wildly experimenting with game mechanics, while the settings and levels turned much safer/conventional/boring. Feels like the games intentionally regressed in that regard. Perhaps TTYD/SPM just got too tongue-in-cheek/self-aware to pull the big sales. 
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Jul 11, 2020 01:04
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 03:23 |
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Learning that about trademarks and whatnot at Nintendo really loving sucks, because it directly targets one of the most beloved thing about Paper Mario characters: sidestories, weird designs, tons of descriptions about irrelevant, charming little details. They took out most of that. They feel like fundamentally different games that cannot possibly do better at being TTYD than TTYD, because they straight-up discarded the most distinct storytelling device. The rest of Color Splash or Sticker Star just isn't nearly good enough to make up for that intentional omission, and much more generic overall (despite the battle system experiments). I have little hope in Origami King. Youtube it is
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Jul 16, 2020 23:27
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Amppelix posted:Yeah "the story follows a structure" is the weirdest criticism I've seen yet. No poo poo it does. The specifics are different every time so what's the problem? Maybe they mean that the story doesn't do any of the more unusual setups? Like the detective wrestling saga, or the part where the boss steals your body after what seems to be the final fight, or the time where a world is destroyed mid-chapter in SPM. Not that this is necessarily better, but repeating the basic structure without any surprises seems like playing it safe. Didn't play OK though, so no idea if that's true.
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Jul 18, 2020 19:12
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BurgerQuest posted:Lol holy poo poo, what happened with TTYD? I see it going for $250-$350AUD on ebay here. Maybe I should sell my copy... Nintendo will never re-release TTYD, or go back to that style of overworld/NPC designs TTYD already broke the fanbase irrevocably. They just cannot risk newer generations being seduced by the possibility of character designs diverging from Nintendo standard, or the ability to have a goomba talk smack about a random NPC's love life I have a copy, but my Gamecube's been broken forever. Maybe I should sell, too - emulator's the way to go anyway
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Jul 21, 2020 12:41
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This may be weird, but I think the whole character design thing is pretty much what I miss the most. It's the one thing that's straight-up worse, and the developers seem to be unable to go back for whatever reason. And it's not just generic toads... - The majority of NPCs is not allowed to have names - No little background stories (Tattle, etc.), just a one-off gag and away they go - No Paper Mario re-designs: Pokeys now have the "current" look, so do Koopas, they even changed Yoshis... And I LIKED those alternative takes / Yoshi Island designs - PM original characters are memory-holed (Kammy Koopa...) Obviously, you're gonna stick with generic designs if you scatter hundreds of toads in the landscape as hidden collectibles. But beyond that, it just straight up hurts the game if it denies character to most NPCs, and even those who go further rarely have actual names. Even early in Sticker Star, it feels like some iron-clad restrictions are imposed on them, and the developers try to give their forced-to-be-generic NPCs as much character as they can: look at that! This toad has a bend in their paper! This one is a little creased! Please free us I can see why Nintendo would impose such restrictions in general, but it genuinely hurts the Paper Mario series, and it's absolutely baffling why you'd do that to a series with Tattle
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Jul 25, 2020 09:44
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ImpAtom posted:Each thing in the museum has a blurb which is basically the same as Tattle Those are pretty great. I don't know those in OK, but I do remember the Thing museum in SS. That is some of the funniest writing in SS - it contributes to my opinion that the Things are absolutely hilarious in concept, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of them. I love how they're fundamentally alien to the Paper Mario world - everybody treats them with awe, fear and an absolute lack of understanding. Eldritch abominations PM style. (Of course, gameplay-wise, they are pretty lame/overpowered/part of bafflingly horrible puzzle concepts. Whatever. They're hilarious.) Not quite the same as Tattle, though. The special thing is that you can use it on NPCs, which gives more insight into some ridiculously unimportant facet of their lives. It's charming, it makes the world feel alive, it provides a good bit of meta commentary. I genuinely think it's one of the most important features of "old style" Paper Mario, and naturally, a general ban on individuals makes this less appealing. (Of course, TTYD kinda went further with it, given the TTYD residents are usually a bit more extravagant than PM64...) In short: to me, it's obvious that the developers clearly still got it. They can write funny stuff. They're just doomed to stay in the shadow of TTYD with these inane restrictions (with some breakout individuals like Bobby! I'm sure the developers got a very stern meeting with Nintendo for that one). Kinda strange when the big villain goes "Toads are all the same, they suck" and, well, he has a point. By now, their insistence on these things feels like either corporate suffocation, the world's saddest in-joke, or one higher-up who feels increasingly miffed that people do not appreciate toadification* and doubles down in retaliation. *Not just for toads, everybody gets reduced to their generic versions, losing individuality and whatnot... Morbi posted:To be honest, the existence of Kammy Koopa when Kamek was already a semi-established character with the exact same position and personality always struck me as kind of weird and redundant. Fair enough. I just like Kammy Koopa a lot. She's got great evil grandma energy, and is pretty drat hilarious in TTYD.
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Jul 26, 2020 15:17
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Super Paper Mario is another weird case. It's got a ton of elements from TTYD/PM64 that people loved (humour, Tattle, lots of NPCs with weird mini stories, Bowser bowserin' it up, Pit of 100 Trials...), but it has one fundamental problem. It looks like garbage. You either get a lifeless 2D game with empty corridors, or a hard to navigate 3D area that you cannot possibly navigate unless you switch back and forth between perspectives like a madman. Most new characters are just boring random boxes without much charm thrown together, with some exceptions that are genuinely clever (Count Bleck is great, Mimi is absolutely AMAZING, and so on...). It's frustrating to play and, honestly, I did not enjoy it beyond the initial novelty. Additionally, it was broken as gently caress and in terms of level design probably the worst of all the PM games. Really funny, though. I liked even the trolling aspects of the story, that stuff was great. But I can see why developers might've taken it as a sign that PM needs a radical change. After that, Sticker Star and so on obviously put much more effort into level design, and it shows. Honestly, level design is LEAGUES above anything TTYD ever did (so... much... backtracking). It feels like SS, CS and OK are shying away from the more narration-heavy, classic JRPG style that several TTYD chapters had; there's a lot more outright action and going through levels - which means narration and world details are, obviously, much less pronounced. It's nice to have proper action adventure in actual environments for once, complete with QTEs and action set pieces, after the endless level tubes of TTYD, but on the other hand, it seems like the developers aren't interested in something like Act 3 or Act 6 of TTYD.
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Jul 27, 2020 16:27
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SS, CS and OK feel like one dude's dream project, and with each iteration, they're forced to rework more aspects from the first attempt that people hated, while they desperately try to keep as much from that original dream project as possible for no reason except they liked it Pro: aside from some hit-and-miss concepts, I think it's fair to call Origami King genuinely good overall Con: they need to fire that guy I'll give it two more games until characters turn into individuals again
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Aug 6, 2020 18:55
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 03:23 |
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Araxxor posted:Interviews basically stated the lack of individual characteristics is due to a mandate from Nintendo, not Kensuke Tanabe’s fault. Dude said it was a difficult challenge the team was forced to work with. Sounds like a poo poo mandate then I'm not seriously advocating anyone should be fired for the crime of toadification, especially not someone on the level of Kensuke Tanabe. I'm sure restraints can lead to all sorts of interesting results, but banning individuals aside from the known big names seems just plain awful. Especially since it runs counter to what the games were doing with NPCs before: bizarre sidestories with updated dialogues, tattle, etc. I suppose there just is no upside to this, especially in a text-heavy game, where most of the characters can only do short gags before they vanish. I just miss that. Then again, these last three games have definitely turned away from classic RPG mechanics; it's basically an adventure game with more frequent action setpieces now. Kinda makes me wish they'd remove the RPG remains completely. No anemic QTEs and gimmicks, just battle everyone in realtime, like you do in OK already several times. Turn the game into a moderately action-y dungeon explorer game. Might be worth it, considering how many action setpieces we got already.
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Aug 7, 2020 14:38
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