03/22/09 -
I know Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door was released 5 years ago, isn't the first or the last in the series and isn't even on the latest console, but I just played it recently and this game is incredible. It is such a unique, engaging experience that I'm going to say this might be the best RPG ever created. I'll try to back this claim with same game design principles.
A game can't be the best without changing the status quo, and Paper Mario delivers on innovation. The paper thin characters create an interesting visual style, but more importantly open up new game play mechanics. Mario can folder into a paper airplane or paper boat, shimmy through cracks in the background, and curl into a tube to roll into holes, all of which unlock new areas to explore and make revisiting old areas in new ways fun. Technically, all of these mechanics could be achieved in other ways, like having a character crawl through a tunnel instead of rolling into a tube to do the same, using a zip-line instead of a paper airplane, and scuba gear to navigate water instead of a paper boat. But, what the paper mechanics do is open the imagination and challenge the typical ways of thinking about navigating a world.
Too many games these days leave too little to the imagination with their realistic graphics and detail-oriented styles, but Paper Mario's simplistic art, diverse characters and imaginative abilities create an environment where your mind can wonder about this strange world and leaves room to fill in the gaps. When games hand you every detail you could ever ask for, you accept that there isn't anything other than what's right there on the screen, especially when an expectation of realism is created. What's so great about retro games with short or non-existent plots and limited graphical capabilities and is that they appeal to your childlike imagination and focus on solid game play. Paper Mario stays true to its retro origins by doing just that.
Paper Mario's battle system is also very innovative. In a lot of RPG's you are whisked away from the world to a separate battle screen, only to see the same environment you left replicated except with a bigger clearing to fight in. This separation seems to be done mostly out of necessity, to remove obstacles from view and have more room for your party and enemy group to stand. However, in Paper Mario they used this separation to add fun game play mechanics and style so that you actually
want to go to a separate screen. Battles take place on a stage in front of an audience as if your fight is a performance, with a few painted cardboard background props as the only resemblance to the outer world. This isn't just an artistic choice either, as everything around the stage is a part of the battle. Most notably is the audience, which can throw hammers at the player if they're not a big fan, or beneficial mushrooms if they like you. This happens randomly, and you can even hop out into the crowd to knock out the hammer thrower or accidentally knock out Toad trying to toss you some help. Pleasing the crowd with special moves and good timing fills your Star Power, which you can use to unleash the most powerful moves in the game. Leveling up and doing well in battle will gain more audience members which fills Star Power more quickly, and doing poorly will lose audience interest. On top of that random events will sometimes occur like a smoke effect that cause attacks to miss and light fixture malfunctions that cause a little damage. You can also knock the props over with ground pound abilities and cause them to fall on your enemies or even your party.
Battles are turn based like most standard RPG's, which typically involves carefully thinking and choosing the right options instead of quick button presses. This can be a lot of fun familiarizing yourself with all the skills, items, enemy attributes, etc. However, the problem many RPG's face is that eventually you learn the strategies and the choices become more obvious, making the game play very dull and repetitive. Usually the spells are huge and awesome to see, but you get used to the effects after a while and eventually your eyes gloss over as you wait for the character to execute his turn. If the point of games is to feel connected to the characters and the conflicts they face, then this is where many RPG's fail. Paper Mario solves this problem extremely well with unique twitch-based mechanics. Each character's ability and every enemy's attack has a certain animation duration, and pressing a button at a key moment during that animation can mitigate or block an attack, increase the damage you inflict, give you extra free chances to hit or boost Star Power with Stylish moves. Each ability has different controls: from fast button tapping, to holding and releasing the control stick at the right time; from pressing different buttons in the correct order to timing multiple button presses at varied intervals. Also, the attack and defend amounts don't involve any randomness, so they are completely static and the only variation comes from player's power-up choices and timed button presses, which creates an outcome the player can feel was a direct result of their skillful choices and actions instead of the luck of the draw. With all the depth of the different abilities and items, learning what enemies are weak and strong against and other elements typical of RPG's combined with the broad scope of quick, correctly timed button pressing, you end up with a battle system that keeps you very engaged all the way through the game right through to the very end.
Another excellent feature of Paper Mario is that enemies are visible in the outer world, and you can avoid them, strike them with different learned abilities for an advantage in the battle, get struck first and end up at a disadvantage, or even kill enemies without ever leaving the outer world (with a special badge). This adds more twitch-based elements to the game, and also makes the transition from the outer world to the battle screen very intuitive. You can hit outer world enemies with your hammer if you've got good timing or jump and even spin jump on them, but if they are spiky or fiery jumping on them will hurt you. Some enemies are harder to avoid than others too, making the experience of avoiding enemies challenging at times. When you're trying to solve a puzzle or figure out where to go in a room, it’s nice to be able to avoid or clear all the enemies in the room and not worry about random battles still surprising/frustrating you like in other RPG's.
On top of all these great features is the fact that Paper Mario is very easy to play and accessible to many different people. The interface is very easy to use, as everything is only a few clicks away. You can only bring one comrade into battle with Mario which streamlines things a bit, and there's no complicated switching of equipment. Almost all damage amounts are single digits, making the math very easy to calculate in your head. This fact reminds me of how much less I enjoyed the "Here and Now" edition of Monopoly where the smallest bill is like 10,000 dollars, or the World of Warcraft expansions where everyone's HP is now in the tens of thousands. Having a ton of zeroes in every number only feels epic for a little while, but then you realize that everything has just scaled up with the amount you're dealing with and you're left constantly moving decimals in your head and wishing you didn't have to. Keeping the numbers smalls allows you to focus on the game play instead of number crunching. Along this same line of though, most abilities are more functional than numeric, you can physically do different things instead of just adding a number to the amount of damage you do. Upgraded equipment in the game works the same way, granting new abilities and also simply replacing your old equipment instead of having to compare equipment stats side by side and having to decide which is better. Although admittedly it is harder for the game designer to come up with quite as many interesting and unique functional abilities, I find them to be far more enjoyable than statistical upgrades, which is one reason I loved the Zelda series so much and where I think Paper Mario excels.
Even though the game is easy to get into, there's still plenty of depth for the hardcore players. The badge system is mostly optional, but allows you to customize your abilities and bonuses. There are a lot of hidden treasures with items and badges that the average player might miss but the completionist is sure to seek out. There is one secret character you get to join your party that will help you find and collect all the star pieces which are even more hidden throughout the world, which are used to buy more badges. When you level up you can choose badge points instead of the standard health or flower power upgrades, and this will allow you to wear more badges at once. There are plenty of badges you can collect and they give more depth to the game without being overly complex. There is also the Trouble Center which is a hub of all optional side quests you can take, as well as a 100 level pit with no save locations and a boss at the end which is a bit repetitive but a fun and interesting challenge to undertake if you've beaten the main storyline and want to keep going.
To round out the great game play, you also get excellent variety of levels and a decent, funny story to go along with it. Each level has a very unique theme, from a black and white forest to a boxing-ring tournament in the sky to a shadowy village. I think the cartoonish style allows for more varied designs which might feel like inconsistency in a realistic style game. Another great thing is that the level designs feel expansive and dangerous at first, but are actually quite compact in size and you feel like it's a small world after all with the way you can easily get to any of the levels once you've unlocked all the abilities later in the game. This makes revisiting levels fun and enjoyable, though there are times when you'll be running back and forth a little bit too much toward the end of the game (an easy trick for developers to provide more content without putting in a lot more effort, but one that tends to detract from the fun factor). The dialog drags on a little too long at times, especially in the beginning of the game, but the plot never takes itself too seriously, with some great comedic moments including Mario saying "Oh yeah!" at some pretty awkward moments. There just isn't enough good comedy in RPG's without being downright corny, so Paper Mario is very welcoming in this respect.
Overall, I rate Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door as the best RPG I've ever played in terms of solid strategic and action-oriented game play. If you're not a fan of action elements within an RPG and want deeper storylines and more realistic situations, then you'll probably quote one of the Final Fantasy games as the best RPG, but in my opinion the addition of the action elements more than makes up for the lowered emphasis on story, especially since in many cases that emphasis just reveals the flaws in said story. I never find myself worrying about plot holes or poor moments in story development in Paper Mario because I'm too busy laughing and having a great time playing the game. It is now my yardstick by which all RPG gameplay is measured.
Written by Steve |
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