Game #1060: Super Paper Mario

 The one that divided the fanbase...

 Ah, Paper Mario 64 was something special, it was one of the last games my parents purchased for my Nintendo 64, and I had followed news, on videogame magazines, since it was first revealed as Mario RPG 2, only for it to arrive YEARS later at the tail-end of the Nintendo 64's lifespan. I'm skipping over the second game, for now, as Super Paper Mario was less of a time-investment, considering... this was the game that took the series out of the RPG genre forever.. at least as of 2021.

 Super Paper Mario is a narrative-focused platformer with RPG elements. The game is very linear in nature, while you could backtrack to previous chapter areas, if you wanted to, it's more often than not a waste of time. There's a single town in the entire game, Flipside, or two, if you count Flopside its mirror counterpart. While you do obtain experience points, which are called just Points in this game, every level up nets you a pre-selected stat increase, either in Health or Strength. Turn-based combat is a thing of the past, now you simply find an enemy and stomp it to kill it.

 This game's gimmick is the third dimension, really. Early in the game, Mario meets a 'Pixxi', a pixelated being that grants him the ability to explore the world in 3-D by pressing the A button. There are many puzzles that cleverly use this mechanic, and every single room and zone in the game can be flipped into 3-D, which was pretty neat, although most of the time it serves no real purpose. As you play through the game you'll obtain more Pixxies that grant Mario, and his friends, more abilities: Turn Mario or his pals flat, shrinking in size, a Bomb, a Hammer, the ability to ground pound, etc. If anything, I feel like most mechanics are very underutilized, you'll have to use your new pixxi a few times throughout the chapter and then their necessity will become pretty sparse. This might be for the better, having to pause to change pixxies on the menu screen can be a bit annoying.

 This holds true for Mario's pals too. You'll eventually unlock Peach, who can glide, Bowser, who has double attack damage and spits fire, and, lastly, Luigi, who has a super jump and you get so close to the end of the game you'll barely use him. Heck, most of the time you don't even have to swap characters to proceed, not that it matters, since you'll be playing as Mario most of the time since he is the only one who can flip the environment into the third dimension, which is a bit lame. And yes, character abilities are barely required to proceed, so the other characters are woefully underutilized, although, considering you have to go into the pause menu to swap characters, maybe it's a blessing.

 As interesting as the flip mechanic is, it's governed by a flip gauge. If it does all the way down... you lose a hit point and it refills itself. It's so dumb. It's an annoying limit, often times you won't have time to interact with everything you wanted, so now you have to flip back into 2-D and... waste time as the gauge slowly refills itself. Either that or just take lose the life point. Why? No, really, who thought this was a good idea?

 Poor design choices like show their rear end every now and then throughout the rest of the game. They put humor at the forefront of the game, so sometimes chapters have dull or annoying moments for the sake of a joke. The Heaven chapter has you feeding fruit to Princess Peach in order to wake her up, different fruits have different effects on her, often humorous, but you have to explore a boring, vertical level, looking for doors to get fruit, that occupy space on your inventory so you might not be able to carry every type of fruit, provided you find them, on your first go. So you'll climb a bit of the level, get some fruit, try it on Peach, none of them wake her up, so now you have to climb again while searching for doors. And after you wake her up, you continue your climb, get to the top and... find out you need to feed this other character one of the fruits, so hopefully you remember which fruit made Peach giant and where you found it, 'cause you gotta go down again. If anything, most of the levels are hits, but when they miss the mark, the miss hard.

 This game has received high praise for its dark story, for a Mario game, and while it does have a few dark moments.... it's nothing too dark. The plot wasn't very interesting either, although I liked some of the enemies and situations. Some of them. A few of them.

 Having played only the first game in the series I was still disappointed in losing the RPG mechanics, that said, I still liked the game for what it was and I think the simplified and streamlined gameplay still worked pretty decently. My chief complaints fall in the way of poorly implemented mechanics, like the flip gauge or having so much down time due to having to go through menus, and then wait a few seconds, whenever you change characters or pixxies. Some of the level gimmicks sometimes fall into the annoying territory which certainly hurt my overall opinion of the game, as I was enjoying my time at first, but then came across a few levels that just left a bitter taste in my mouth. Still, overall, it's still a decent game, but one that could've been so much more. 

 6.5