Unpopular opinions about the Mario series

ThatGuy62 said:
the gimmick where Bowser's trapped in the gamepad and he steals half the ministars of whoever's unlucky enough to free him
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It's something I dislike about Mario Party 10. If he is released, Bowser puts Bowser Space in the boards, but if he remains there, Bowser Jr. puts Bowser Jr. Space on the board. For me, it is a boring thing. What's even the point of doing the Bowser trapped in the Gamepad gimmick if bad spaces are still added to the boards?

Mario Party 10 is just bad in every way and it's for me, along with Mario Party 8, one of the worst Mario Party.

As for my unpopular opinion, Mario Party 9 is underrated. It's a good Mario Party.
 
All Mario parties are bad.
 
Mòrag said:
ThatGuy62 said:
the gimmick where Bowser's trapped in the gamepad and he steals half the ministars of whoever's unlucky enough to free him
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It's something I dislike about Mario Party 10. If he is released, Bowser puts Bowser Space in the boards, but if he remains there, Bowser Jr. puts Bowser Jr. Space on the board. For me, it is a boring thing. What's even the point of doing the Bowser trapped in the Gamepad gimmick if bad spaces are still added to the boards?
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The point was that, as I mentioned, Bowser Jr. spaces are Bowser spaces-lite. Thus, by releasing Bowser, the players risk ending up with worse punishments (theoretically). This is emphasized by the Bowser Jr. spaces getting replaced by Bowser spaces when it happens.
Kinda weird it's always the same spaces though whereas the very fact that spaces get replaced would imply the possibility of different spaces getting replaced or a way to avoid the event.
 
As someone who has no issue with the idea of Bowser not only being Dream Team's final boss but him getting the better of Antasma (and actually found Antasma's surprise at the betrayal and possible sincerity in sharing the world with Bowser neat), the game needed more scenes of Antasma being honestly threatening and interacting with Bowser (like say, Bowser laughing it up when Antasma's terrorizing some tourists) to make Bowser's betrayal have more impact. And really improve Antasma as a character overall.
 
Is it bad that I thought that Mario Party 9 was pretty good? It's obviously better than Mario Party 10, and it could arguably be better than Mario Party 8.
 
MnSG said:
Is it bad that I thought that Mario Party 9 was pretty good? It's obviously better than Mario Party 10, and it could arguably be better than Mario Party 8.
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I only dislike MP9 because it changed the direction of the Mario Party games in a negative way. MP10 did nothing but continue that trend, but it wasn’t as influential as MP9. MP10, in my opinion, only slightly beats MP9 on my list.

But I will forever prefer the original Mario Party style to the new one, hence why 8 is my favorite (I’ve only played 8, 9, 10, IT, SR, and 100).
 
If you like 8 so much, I think you should try at least 6.
 
I got mine for pretty cheap from a local used game store, I think it was like fifteen bucks or so but that was a couple of years ago. Not sure why they're so ridiculously overpriced on Amazon for.
 
Another Mario and Luigi one I have is that Bowser's Inside Story is certainly the worse of the first three games. This was the one where they went overboard on gimmicks and minigames. More or less every time Bowser needs to do something, you're forced to play an minigame for nothing other than padding, and most of them were overly repeated, sometimes less than ten minutes away from each other. And then there were the giant battles, which while interesting on paper, in practice came off as glorified cutscenes that dragged on for far too long. The game's plot has random elements brought up and previous elements just kind of dropped. Finally, it introduced Starlow (more unpleasant than Stuffwell).
 
Starlow is garbage. I did welcome her at first, looking like some floating Kirby. But she quickly wore her welcome and her constant berating Luigi seriously wears on me. I know Luigi's sometimes a clumsy anxious wreck, but things like "What did you do, cry on the Shroobs?" are pretty damn harsh.

I wish I can get some quotes from her in case I overblow how she treats Luigi.
 
You don't overblow it. She's completely cruel to Luigi. I remember in Paper Jam she noticed how Luigi was worried about captured Toads and kept describing in detail the suffering they're probably going through, how desperately they need his help, further upsetting him, until finally saying "Don't worry, it's not like that at all. They want Mario's help, not yours." She doesn't deserve to be such a recurring character in the M&L series and I rarely say that about RPG characters. She and Kersti are really the only ones I'd rather never see again (except in remakes like BIS since to be fair that was her debut game so I can tolerate her there, but she was completely unnecessary in the Superstar Saga remake)
 
I think the issue with Starlow with is that Luigi doesn't make a good foil for her. Part of the reason she's better in BIS, at least in my eyes, is because she can banter with Bowser a lot. With Luigi, it feels more like she's bullying him, especially since Weege doesn't/can't argue back.

And since Fawful the Great mentioned her, here's a bit of a hot opinion: I don't really hate Kersti that much. I get what they were going for (Tsundere) and I know people hate her for being that, but since Intelligent Systems forgot to make an overall plotline to Sticker Star, they don't really do much with that angle and the one time they do outside of the beginning/ending, it backfires: In Scuttlebug Burrow, Kersti eventually starts thinking that Mario left without her and even admits that it was her fault that the Royal Stickers were lost. However, it's hard to read her dialogue and thus, when you save her, her rant comes off as extremely ungrateful. I know this because the first time I realized what she was saying was when I read a text dump.
So I wouldn't be as opposed to her showing up again as maybe a cameo and getting a bit of fleshing out/character development maybe by letting us actually visit the place the game is named after... is what I would say if I had faith in the way the current Paper Mario writers handle characters. And I do not.
 
What matters more to the verbal aggression is how Luigi reacts to it. I still remember Starlow seriously talking down on Luigi when Luigi's asleep and sleep-talking (asking?) her to touch his face because he can't communicate any other way to help Mario, as Mario does ask for Luigi's help. Starlow, conveniently forgetting WHY Luigi is sleeping, as Mario is inside his head, just responds with "First the stache, now the nose?! What're you, five years old?!", similar nastiness. Luigi can't react to that given that he's asleep, but Starlow is being unnecessarily abrasive and isn't concerned for EITHER brother.

I *think* they're trying to play it for a joke (remember the Star Gate from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time mocking Luigi as a joke that lead to Luigi crying, but the Gate was proven wrong and apologized and even called them the "best siblings ever"), but how Luigi is developed as a character, a vulnerable self-conscious type, he doesn't come off to me as a the type who'd shrug off insults. This is on top of the situation going too far with the joke, so there's a kind of unsettling feeling you get if you empathize with Luigi and you read Starlow's words. If Starlow was like that toward Mario, Mario CAN react with just an angry face and/or ignoring her. I don't know how often Luigi reacts to it, if he does at all (but even if he's oblivious, it doesn't excuse Starlow). But what you're describing above is unnecessarily cruel. This is mean-spirited emotional manipulation and I think the words are too uncomfortable to sit through. According to her article, she did apologize at some point, probably wasn't enough though.

I don't understand AlphaDream's fixation on treating Luigi crying as a joke either. When a person like Luigi cries over the Star Gate or Starlow, you're not supposed to laugh.

And I don't know if Mario ever comes to Luigi's defense. My memory's not good enough. But if he doesn't, I assume obliviousness on his part. It just doesn't seem right to depict him as a person who intentionally stands by while Starlow berates Luigi. At the Star Gate part, Mario does object. When Starlow mocked Luigi's crying from Partners in Time and said "Mario probably killed the Shroobs anyway", upsetting Luigi, Mario said, "Yeah, that's not true, Luigi did save the day (don't you downplay Luigi like that)." which leads her to apologize. Also according to the article, she's more respectful to Luigi in Paper Jam, but from the above convo, doesn't seem like it?

In Paper Jam, Starlow also thinks she's the leader of the group. Hell no.

Oh, and Starlow replaced Toadsworth for tutorial-giving. Wonderful.
 
I can't think of a more universally hated Mario character than her.
 
lost levels' addition of enemy bouncing is the single greatest advancement in the Mario series

prove me wrong.
 
I think the advent of extremely successful spinoffs (Super Mario Kart maybe starting it all?) is a more important advancement, as it allowed Mario to grow into the biggest video game franchise in the world.
 
I didn't even know Lost Levels introduced enemy bouncing.

Princess Mario said:
I think the advent of extremely successful spinoffs (Super Mario Kart maybe starting it all?) is a more important advancement, as it allowed Mario to grow into the biggest video game franchise in the world.
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Well, a popular Mario spin-off before that is Dr. Mario, but Super Mario Kart is more popular and better representation of spin-offs due to putting a cast of Mario characters into a sports/party setting. I can't say for sure if Dr. Mario is successful, but I like to think that its memorable music secured its place as a good Mario spin-off.

Thank you for reading.
 
Part of the problem with Starlow in BiS is that she obviously is supposed to serve as a voice for the player characters since the plot tries to be more complex than Superstar Saga, but in Bowser's case he already has dialogue. I don't see what stopped Kamek (assuming the magikoopa at the start and in the end credits is meant to be him) from following Bowser around serving as a sidekick.
 
Qayin said:
Part of the problem with Starlow in BiS is that she obviously is supposed to serve as a voice for the player characters since the plot tries to be more complex than Superstar Saga, but in Bowser's case he already has dialogue. I don't see what stopped Kamek (assuming the magikoopa at the start and in the end credits is meant to be him) from following Bowser around serving as a sidekick.
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Because Starlow's meant to be moreso the Bros' voice rather than just the player's, since Bowser has no idea that Mario & Luigi are in his body. Thus, whenever Mario & Luigi need Bowser to do something to get further into his body, "Chippy" talks to him. He even notes that Starlow's voice is familiar before the fight with him, if I recall correctly, but he doesn't make the connection until the end of the game.
By contrast, she's more pointless in Dream Team since Dreambert is there.
 
The whole "this random asshole is is the voice for Mario/Luigi" has got to die someday. Even if I don't live to see it. It's pointless because Mario and Luigi deserve to be more of their own characters and they already talk, but just in the Italian gibberish. There is no effort being made to make them be the player's window or whatever so the whole "have some other twat speak for them" thing subtracts from the experience.
 
Princess Mario said:
The whole "this random *bleep* is is the voice for Mario/Luigi" has got to die someday. Even if I don't live to see it. It's pointless because Mario and Luigi deserve to be more of their own characters and they already talk, but just in the Italian gibberish. There is no effort being made to make them be the player's window or whatever so the whole "have some other twat speak for them" thing subtracts from the experience.
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When I played Partners in Time, that was the first time I noticed that the Mario RPGs started to have some sort of speaker for Mario and Luigi, with Stuffwell being the team's mouthpiece. The first game Superstar Saga was the only Mario & Luigi game where the Mario brothers did the gibberish talking without a representative and it was honestly refreshing. Even Paper Mario relied on a mouthpiece character at all times.

I wonder if the developers prefer Mario (and Luigi in the M&L games) to stay mute since it might be disruptive to the immersion of the game, or it's that when the developers write about the game, they never thought of adding Mario in the scenarios, which meant that Mario is not an essential presence in the RPGs, only being added as a way to interact with the world.

Thank you for reading.
 
I think it's for "immersion" reasons, but I find it less of immersion and more of "it's tradition", especially when Mario is STILL silent when he's a nonplayable character! If it's disruptive to the immersion of the game, why even make Bowser talk when he's usable in Bowser's Inside Story? It's not jarring if the character you control talks and actually engages with the dialogue as with anyone else. It's a problem in Paper Mario, but at least Paper Mario can show some hand movement to "talk", but again, he often sits there like a wall between his partner and another character. I argue it's even less immersive when you have moments like in Superstar Baseball where the character you use engages with Mario and it's an awkward conversation that makes the character seem like it's talking to itself (and when you lose to Mario, Mario goes all "yahoo for me", which again, makes the silence worse. It's also difficult to watch players interact with Mario in Mario Golf: World Tour in Castle Club, where you're not even using Mario.

And I've seen people complain when their favorite character doesn't get to talk, like Rosalina's silence in Mario Party games or Bowser's silence in Paper Mario: Sticker Star and maybe those people can now walk in my shoes and see how that feels.

I keep ranting about it, but man, I don't think I'll stop ranting until everyone gets it. :P Mario is NOT a good example of a silent protagonist.
 
And it will keep happening, forever.
 
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