My Paper Mario ranking (fight me)

yoshibro75

yoshibro75

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Yoshibro75
(1 = best, 6 = worst)
1. Color Splash
2. Sticker Star
3. PM64
4. Super Paper
5. Origami King
6. TTYD
I don't like TTYD because of how I think it's boring and very slow, and they did the exact same battle system as its predecessor with pretty much no changes. Also half of the partners are copied over from pm64.
(This is my real opinion please don't call it bait)
 
As long as you like 'em, that's what matters! It's your opinion and I respect it.

Personally, my rankings of the games would be:
  1. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Nintendo Switch version especially)
  2. Paper Mario
  3. Paper Mario: The Origami King
  4. Super Paper Mario
  5. Paper Mario: Color Splash
  6. Paper Mario: Sticker Star
 
Here's my rankings of the Paper Mario series:
  1. Super Paper Mario
  2. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
  3. Paper Mario
  4. Paper Mario: The Origami King
  5. Paper Mario: Color Splash
  6. Paper Mario: Sticker Star
 
Mine are

1. Paper Mario 1
2. Origami King
3. Sticker Star
4. Super Paper Mario

Tbh I'm not really a Paper Mario guy in general. Even PM1 I think is just okay. TOK is about 50/50 in terms of enjoyability for me. The other two I just plain dislike. Never touched TTYD or CS.

Mario & Luigi is the superior RPG series imo :yoshi:
 
My current rankings look like this.

1. Paper Mario
2. Paper Mario: Sticker Star
3. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

from the looks of it, Color Splash and Origami King would probably rank above Thousand Year Door once I get around to playing those since Sticker Star's battle system did manage to win me over so now I'm interested in trying out Color Splash. Super Paper Mario would likely be on the bottom. I'm probably going to end up trying out Super Paper Mario but I have so much choice words for its story (a lot of bad choice words) and its gameplay after watching footage of it.

Paper Mario does have a massive nostalgia factor going into it though, but I'd say it still has its flaws, most notably the extremely slow and boring beginning and the horrendous item management system.
 
Ah glad you see how great Sticker Star is by immediately plopping you with a full on arsenal with a large variety of moves in the early game and how quickly battles are done.
 
1. Paper Mario TTYD
2/3. (really close) Super Paper Mario/The Origami King
4. Color Splash

Overall I don't really hate any Paper Mario game I've played, even Color Splash which I put in last place. I also find that each and every Paper Mario game I've played has parts that I really don't enjoy playing through.

Actually, I'm not really sure what the point is of providing my ranking here without context. I do find that I like games for different reasons than other people.
 
My ranking is

1. Super Paper Mario (i love everything about its story and characters, I eat that angst and melodrama up, I love the distinct geometrical look of the other dimensions and their characters, and the gameplay is fine. This game has the most exaggerated and forced hatebase I've ever seen)

2. TTYD (Best gameplay in the series, overall probably the best blueprint for stories & character design too, it's just immaculate. I want these characters to come back and be recurring, like more than just the ones that currently have appeared across the first 3 games)

3. PM64 (basically what I said about TTYD, this one's just lower because I think TTYD improved and refined most of the elements I value the most. Still, this is how character design should still be in the series)

(first and largest gap)

4. Origami King (lots of great ideas, you could tell they really wanted to get OG fans back on board after the criticisms for the previous two entries, but sadly the freedom to actually do so was still not there yet. The interviews for this game, and what they say about how their hand was still forced to avoid OG style character design, depress me to no end)

(second gap)

5. Color Splash (Sticker Star if it at least tried, but that's really not saying much. The story is at least less bog-standard, but you can only do so much when limited to pre-existing characters, so it still left way too much to be desired. Certain gameplay mechanics were also actually made worse than they were in Sticker Star. This game also had frustrating interviews illustrating just how strong the internal push was to avoid what makes Paper Mario great)

6. Sticker Star (how you can go from Super Paper Mario to this is something that should be scientifically studied. Like this game almost feels hand-crafted to be exactly the opposite of why I love the earlier games, and the fact that its influence stuck around for 2 more games like a stench only makes me resent it more. The interviews for how this game progressed through development genuinely make me angry, as the earliest prototypes looked promising)
 
Dell Conagher said:
Tbh I'm not really a Paper Mario guy in general. Even PM1 I think is just okay. TOK is about 50/50 in terms of enjoyability for me. The other two I just plain dislike. Never touched TTYD or CS.
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Same here. Currently not really interested in Paper Mario and don't think I ever will be (although I've been wrong about stuff like that before; I thought I would never for instance be interested in MLP but look at me; now I've been a brony for five years already), but I guess we'll see later on down the road. I might get into it after I'm finished watching full playthroughs of all the main Mario games, which I'm almost done with at the moment.

Ray Trace said:
Paper Mario does have a massive nostalgia factor going into it though, but I'd say it still has its flaws, most notably the extremely slow and boring beginning and the horrendous item management system.
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Overall good game. But it's not perfect. Then again, most things aren't. One example of this is how, for instance, there are continuity errors in almost all fictional media. But things at least don't have to be perfect to be good. (Feel like I sound like some famous philosopher or something saying that LOL).
 
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yoshibro75 said:
Same, so do I. Even in Sticker Star, world 3 is easily the worst part of the game because of all the backtracking you need to do.
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Sticker Star's issues at least don't seem to be on a fundamental level. I do genuinely think the game's battle system (which seems very solid, like even when you're backtracking, defeating weaker enemies still has always-useful coin drops for future spinner use) has potential to be great, and it can actually take advantage of a recipe/crafting system that the first three games could not.
 
Paper Mario 64 and TTYD are the only actually good games in the series. Apologies for the milquetoast opinion but if it helps strengthen my point of view in any way, I have close to no nostalgia for either game, having played TTYD for the first time about 2 years ago and the 64 game during a time in my life I'd rather not look back to.

The first game is my favorite N64 game, and I've played Ocarina of Time, Banjo & Kazooie, and Super Mario 64. Both have a battle system that actually works and weave it with the kind of action-adventure experience you don't find in other RPGs. TTYD has flaws and I would never put it above its predecessor, but its core mechanics and steady flow of unlockable powers and secrets make it worth withstanding those flaws. Future games lean too heavily on the action-adventure aspect and make superficial amends to tie certain other gameplay aspects closer to the first two as they're dragged through various new directions and restrictions that just don't fucking work.

I had my fun with Origami King, but it's mostly kinda boring. The overworld is way too big and feels like a late victim of the "let's make everything open world" trend that was starting to wane after about a decade of being employed by game devs as a silver bullet for good level design. I prefer the more compact level design of other games in the Paper Mario series, including the newer ones. anyway, what i remember most vividly from my playthrough of Origami King was the horrendous battle system. Legit has the worst final boss battle out of any Nintendo game I played.

Sticker Star is fun as a neat little portable Paper Mario experiment. When they rehashed the formula in Color Splash it quickly overstayed its welcome. Overall both kinda suck at the parts that matter most.

Last time I played Super Paper Mario, I liked it. I was also about 12 years old. So IDK. The one thing that is praised so highly for, the story, is hella not good.

inb4 "Paper Mario fans hating most games in the franchise"

I'm not a Paper Mario fan, I'm strictly a fan of the first two games in the series. I've played all of them fairly recently, though, minus SPM as I said.
 
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Koopa con Carne said:
inb4 "Paper Mario fans hating most games in the franchise"
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I hate those smug jackasses that say that "oh how can you call yourself a Paper Mario fan if you only like two games" it's just a no true scotsman fallacy dressed up.

anyway sticker star soundtrack slaps bro one of the reasons i picked it up


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I LOVE THE STICKER MUSEUM

I LOVE IT WHEN GAMES GIVE ME THINGS TO COLLECT SO I CAN DISPLAY THEM
 
Koopa con Carne said:
inb4 "Paper Mario fans hating most games in the franchise"
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No worries however you call yourself. No one hates Paper Mario games as much as Paper Mario fans, same for Mario Party fans for Mario Party games, Mario Kart fans for Mario Kart games, and so on.
 
LeftyGreenMario said:
Sounds like you're describing Sticker Star.
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Nah I'm describing Super Paper Mario.

You don't get a wall of nothing but slander gifs when looking up gifs for Sticker Star. Because its hatebase doesn't make that its entire personality. It's generally disliked because it's a flawed game, but most of us envy the people who are able to enjoy it for what it is and not be bothered by what it isn't. SPM's hatebase is far smaller but also far louder and more obnoxious, and often comes off as more personal too. I'm not referring to every single person who dislikes SPM, I'm referring to how I see opinions expressed in general, across large groups of people on the entire internet. The folks on here are generally very respectful about their opinions across the board.

Most discourse I see on Sticker Star, on average, is divided between people criticizing it for valid reasons and without taking it overboard, a small number of people who like it but acknowledge why others may not, and a group that sows discourse by claiming it's hated irrationally because nobody gave it a chance. The number of people who actually hate it irrationally to a malicious degree are very rare and generally dismissed by the rest of us.

The music is great in every game btw. No matter how much I dislike a game, I'm willing to admit that it has a banger soundtrack. I don't think someone who hates irrationally is capable of that. I just truly and genuinely believe that the creative decisions that were decided upon for Sticker Star and stuck to for the next two games are fundamentally opposed to what drew me in and made me a fan of the series.
 
Fawfulthegreat64 said:
You don't get a wall of nothing but slander gifs when looking up gifs for Sticker Star. Because its hatebase doesn't make that its entire personality. It's generally disliked because it's a flawed game, but most of us envy the people who are able to enjoy it for what it is and not be bothered by what it isn't. SPM's hatebase is far smaller but also far louder and more obnoxious, and often comes off as more personal too. I'm not referring to every single person who dislikes SPM, I'm referring to how I see opinions expressed in general, across large groups of people on the entire internet. The folks on here are generally very respectful about their opinions across the board.
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The slander gifs that you find on Twitter are all likely made by one person who is clearly trying to bait people like you for a response. Pathetic way to live life but hey. That's not representative of Super Paper Mario's critics, any more than people hating on Bioware games for customizable pronouns and I strongly recommend you pass them over without even thinking about them: Nintendo games do have a reputation of a teenage "biggest fans" who think Mario is for babies after all! But you should also be aware of that Sticker Star does have a considerable hatedom, bigger than Super Paper Mario's I'd say, there are way too many people on Metacritic giving this game a 1 or 0 out of 10 which is not a fair assessment of the game at all and are only dropped to review bomb this game because it's a change to the series they don't like. Like yeah, one review said, "this is a disgrace for the RPG genre" when Hoshi Wo Miru Hito just exists. And "I want every last copy of this game hunted down and destroyed in a huge bonfire."

Anyway

super-mario-jump-scare-rfzj44f4g8gosnfo.gif
 
Gonna rank Paper Mario games on how close they are to rudimentary preconceptions of the term "Paper Mario". What comes to mind to the layperson when they hear the phrase "Paper Mario"? Which game fits that preconception best? I'll evaluate.

  1. Paper Mario: The Origami King is a clear first due to the entire plot revolving around a villainous paper entity (origami paper), despite Bowser, a villain of Mario games, being relegated to supporting role vs the expected role of a main villain. However, what makes this game very "paper" are that the villains are also real-life objects that are related to paper. Scissors, paper's feared enemy, is one of the top ranking villains in the Origami army despite being absent for most of Paper Mario until Sticker Star. Paper Mario collects paper all over the place, a colorful cast of Mario characters that is more diverse than Sticker Star, and the Switch's advanced 2008-era technology all but ensures this game is the most "Paper" and adequately "Mario", making it the most "Paper Mario" out of the others.
  2. Paper Mario: Sticker Star is second for having the entire plot revolve around a paper-like material: stickers, with an ally made out of sticker. Things are kept in a papery-collection: a book. It also takes advantage of 3DS technology to give us more realistic cardboard cut outs of coins. The plot may be the most faithful to most people's expectations for a Mario game, being a basic kidnapping plot where Peach, Bowser, and Luigi do not speak. Scissors are in this game, but not a villain. The game's promotional material look like sticker scrapbook. Versus Origami King, this game may edge out for being more "Mario" but it doesn't star an explicitly paper-themed villain or has its plot revolve around how to abuse paper, making it less "Paper" than Origami King.
  3. Paper Mario: Color Splash mostly wins out on the presentation and the fact the plot revolves around torturing paper, but the main craft-related material (and companion for Mario) is paint/ink, which has nothing directly to do with paper. Still, Mario takes advantage of cards, which are known to be made out of a type of paper. It still retains all the materials that take advantage of Wii U technology to make it look believably paper. This game also introduces the white outlines which help keep the paper look, which Origami King maintains, but its plot point is an, ahem, sticking point that prevents it from edging out Sticker Star in terms of the "paper" department. It also has a plot that deviates slightly from the standard Mario plot, introducing Huey. It does have more "Mario" characters than Sticker Star (such as Koopalings) to make up for this, however, so this is a close match.
  4. Paper Mario started it all but players often forget they're playing a paper world sometimes due to the N64 just not rendering material as convincingly, which reviewers took note and compared this infavorably to Yoshi's Story for the convincing craft theming. Unlike the first three games, the story beats have nothing to do with Paper but it certainly is quite Mario and features Bowser as the main villain. This game gets bonus points for trying and it has the benefit of having Naohiko Aoyama, a full-blown director of the newer Paper Mario games, be part of the art direction team, and so it has the original blueprint of what makes Paper Mario, "Paper Mario".
  5. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door offers full on paper abilities to remind players that they are playing a paper game, but lacks Aoyama, so the entire paper art direction has been set back a little in favor of a more digitized looking game, from the animations and charactern design. It is still convincingly paper, but just not as much as the other four games, Additionally the game introduces a bevy of characters that wouldn't be recognized as "Mario characters" by the layperson, thus reducing its adherence to the notion that this is a "Mario" game. The plot would also not be recognized as a Mario plot, due to Bowser playing a much more subdued role and having some backstory regarding prophecies and four paper heroes.
  6. Super Paper Mario is the game that is least Paper and Mario due to the materials being mostly digital-themed rather than paper theme, lending players to forget they are playing a paper game. None of the plot actually mentions paper all that much. As for Mario, most of the cast is not existing Mario characters nor are they based off existing characters, and Mario characters do not quite drive the plot. The plot itself also involves power lust and world destruction and betrayal, themes which do not align to people's regular expectations of a Mario game. Furthermore, this game lacks Aoyama in its staff lineup. Thus, while this game still qualifies as a satisfactorily a Paper Mario game, and like with other Paper Mario games, it may move players for its heart-wrenching story beats that recall the sacrifices done in Origami King and Color Splash, this game is likely by far the least "Paper" and simply the least "Mario" of all Paper Marios.
 
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