Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam

This game is so freaking awesome. I've already beaten the final boss and it was EPIC!

I was a bit over levelled for some of the boss fights, as Mario, Luigi and Paper Mario were level 40 when facing against the final boss when he was only level 38.

But that phase 2 music though... Wow, just... Wow. So epic and awesome! A masterpiece that has actually taken the number 1 spot from In the Final which reigned supreme for a couple of years!
 
Ok, an interesting interview came out:

http://nintendoeverything.com/mario-luigi-paper-jam-devs-on-bringing-in-paper-mario-dash-mechanic-more/

It was pretty much AlphaDream who wanted to have Paper Mario in the game.
 
Chiaki Nanami said:
I've played this game some more, and I think I've properly localised my main issue of this game. It's just good. It's that. Just good. It only meets up to my expectations that I can expect from a Mario series RPG. That's all it does. Superstar Saga managed to exceed my expectations. So did Bowser's Inside Story by virtue of making Bowser a protagonist. This game? This game just meets my expectations. The environments change predictably. The forest doesn't have poisonous water, which is actually the first thing that surprises me. The minigames are there. They're definitely there and they're enjoyable to play. There's nothing groundbreaking about it — they're just there. The only deviation from the norm in this series is how Paper Mario fights in battles, but even that feels like battling in the Dream world as Mario in Dream Team Bros. at times. Luckily this game isn't Bowser's Inside Story 2 like Dream Team Bros., however.
Click to expand...
This sums up my problem with the Mario games recently, and why I haven't really bought many of them. I've been asking around if this game is good, and people say yes, but no one seemed to be going crazy over it. Nintendo knows perfectly well how to make a good game, but they've stopped putting effort into making, well, great games. I can't get worked up about a game that's just going to be another "good" game and one I'll forget about quickly.
 
Nabber said:
Chiaki Nanami said:
I've played this game some more, and I think I've properly localised my main issue of this game. It's just good. It's that. Just good. It only meets up to my expectations that I can expect from a Mario series RPG. That's all it does. Superstar Saga managed to exceed my expectations. So did Bowser's Inside Story by virtue of making Bowser a protagonist. This game? This game just meets my expectations. The environments change predictably. The forest doesn't have poisonous water, which is actually the first thing that surprises me. The minigames are there. They're definitely there and they're enjoyable to play. There's nothing groundbreaking about it — they're just there. The only deviation from the norm in this series is how Paper Mario fights in battles, but even that feels like battling in the Dream world as Mario in Dream Team Bros. at times. Luckily this game isn't Bowser's Inside Story 2 like Dream Team Bros., however.
Click to expand...
This sums up my problem with the Mario games recently, and why I haven't really bought many of them. I've been asking around if this game is good, and people say yes, but no one seemed to be going crazy over it. Nintendo knows perfectly well how to make a good game, but they've stopped putting effort into making, well, great games. I can't get worked up about a game that's just going to be another "good" game and one I'll forget about quickly.
Click to expand...
Well, I don't know about you, but I didn't have particularly high expectations for this game until maybe when it was revealed that the Koopalings talk in this game, because the early marketing material showed the very same characters without particular characters from both series, the very same settings, mini-games based only about finding the very same Paper Toads and, of course, the two Bowsers as main villains kidnapping the two Peaches. Plus some paper universe elements in the Mario & Luigi world, but I don't think this late aspect was really fleshed out.
After all, this is a Mario RPG that doesn't introduce new characters to the franchise and whose settings are essentially the same seen in many other Super Mario games. It's already incredible that this is a good game.
 
I don't hold the rpgs in super high regard so the game is fine to me.
 
Nabber said:
Chiaki Nanami said:
I've played this game some more, and I think I've properly localised my main issue of this game. It's just good. It's that. Just good. It only meets up to my expectations that I can expect from a Mario series RPG. That's all it does. Superstar Saga managed to exceed my expectations. So did Bowser's Inside Story by virtue of making Bowser a protagonist. This game? This game just meets my expectations. The environments change predictably. The forest doesn't have poisonous water, which is actually the first thing that surprises me. The minigames are there. They're definitely there and they're enjoyable to play. There's nothing groundbreaking about it — they're just there. The only deviation from the norm in this series is how Paper Mario fights in battles, but even that feels like battling in the Dream world as Mario in Dream Team Bros. at times. Luckily this game isn't Bowser's Inside Story 2 like Dream Team Bros., however.
Click to expand...
This sums up my problem with the Mario games recently, and why I haven't really bought many of them. I've been asking around if this game is good, and people say yes, but no one seemed to be going crazy over it. Nintendo knows perfectly well how to make a good game, but they've stopped putting effort into making, well, great games. I can't get worked up about a game that's just going to be another "good" game and one I'll forget about quickly.
Click to expand...
That's an issue with Mario games in general: they're just way too safe. Or, they turn out to have half-baked crap or disappointing rosters. I don't know if this is supposed to be a result of Nintendo's struggles nowadays, but we really need to see a return to form, not this "okay" stuff.
 
I figured out how to get the Wellington Boots in Paper Jam:

00040-400x430.png


Just one catch. It's ridiculously complicated, and mostly luck based. As I mention here:

https://gamingreinvented.com/news/nintendo3dsnews/the-quest-to-get-wellington-boots-in-mario-luigi-paper-jam/

The answer? Counter a certain attack by Shiny Paper Broozers in Neo Bowser Castle, which might have about a 1% chance of dropping the item. How anyone was meant to figure this out is just beyond me...
 
Dr. Mario said:
That's an issue with Mario games in general: they're just way too safe. Or, they turn out to have half-baked crap or disappointing rosters. I don't know if this is supposed to be a result of Nintendo's struggles nowadays, but we really need to see a return to form, not this "okay" stuff.
Click to expand...
But where would be returning to? This is something I've seen a lot with Sonic fans ("sonic adventure (2) was the last good sonic game" etc, etc), but a lot of people tend to only remember the good moments while overlooking the whole lots of bad (i.e. SA and SA2 are clunky, glitchy messes). There are very few games in the Mario series that I'd praise to no end: Super Mario Galaxy easily has some of the most amazing moments in any Mario game, but the Prankster Comets are a lazy attempt at padding and there's a lot of repetition in its missions; Superstar Saga is easily one of my favorite games, with amazing visuals and music, but its combat is too simplistic and its plot is nonsense; I can easily see what Super Mario 64 did right in its art direction, creative levels, and general sense of adventure, but it's repetitive beyond belief and its controls suck; and so on and so forth. I wouldn't call these games bad by any stretch of the imagination (except maybe SM64, it did not age well), but the old games aren't holy grails and I always get frustrated whenever someone calls them that. Personally, Super Mario 3D World is easily a return to form, with a fantastic art direction, a memorable soundtrack, new and interesting power-ups, new and unique levels that still feel like a part of the series, a lot of stage mechanics that do their best to experiment, and more, but it still suffers from the repetition that plagues a lot of the series. I'm not going to say that there's never been any iterative games recently, such as New Super Mario Bros. and New Super Mario Bros. 2, but isn't that exactly what Nintendo did with Super Mario Bros. and The Lost Levels over twenty years ago? My main point is that if you keep trying to romanticize the past and complaining about how the new games never live up to the nostalgia, you'll never get what you want.
 
Well, the characters were better in the older games. Why not return to adding new characters, places, storylines and ideas while keeping the design lessons learned from newer games in mind?

There's no reason Super Mario 3D World style level design has to be used in mostly soulless games.