Mario and Luigi Paper Jam

[kingddd]

Well, Paper Jam is, I think, the hardest M&L game (not counting DT hard mode).

His attacks are indeed hard to dodge. If you have enough expert points, I would recommend buying the 1Up glove (or whatever it's called in english).

Its effect is very powerful, at the beginning of the character's turn he uses automatically a 1Up mushroom on a fallen ally. That way, you can basically only heal Luigi and let him regenerate the Marios.

Frankly, without it I would have never been able to beat the final boss on my first try as I did, I would probably have needed to grind a bit.

Only the Bosses are harder in this title imo. But the difficulty is compensated for the emergency defense mechanic which makes a lot of things much easier since it's better to take 8 damage than 30 hp damage if you failed a counterattack or dodge when you activate it.

[kingddd]

Alright so I finally beaten the game and here are my overall impressions of Mario and Luigi Paper Jam.

For the TLDR:

Pros:

- Some nice little mechanics to the battle system were added

- Emergency Defense is a great addition to compensate the high damage the enemies do

- There is a run button to make traveling faster

- No mandatory Gyro Controls for Bro Attacks (Although I never had a problem before)

- Tutorials are skippable

Cons:

- The manadatory toad minigames

- The overworld design is dull

- Enemies are not very unique

- Story and writing in general has not much going for it

- Papercraft Bosses were meh and not very spectacular to see

Back at E3 2015, when I saw the trailers that they were going to be making a crossover of two of my most favourite Mario RPG series all packed into one, I was stoked and I could not wait to see what neat things they could do for this crossover. Unfortunately, due to the designs and the way the developers had developed with this title, it is only one of the more disappointing Mario and Luigi titles I have played so far.

First of all the battle mechanics have been improved significantly with some nice changes here and there. The emergency defense is a great addition to help compensate the high damage output from enemies. It is very helpful if you never experienced fighting a specific enemy before as sometimes it is difficult to figure out their tells without ever battling them. All bro attacks and trio attacks (which are Paper Mario's special moves) require button inputs and no gyro controls which was a common complaint in the previous title. Personally I never had a problem with the gyro in Dream Team but it is nice to have button inputs on the special moves. There have been some nerfs and changes I don't agree on. Bomb Derby has been nerfed significantly and it is already difficult to pull off if you don't have the timing and rhythm going for it. Mario's Bros Shell attack timing window was made significantly lower. All of Luigi's Bro Attacks I feel are all too easy to pull off while Mario's Bro Attacks are much more difficult.

The Bosses are definitely a step up from Dream Team in terms of difficulty. They definitely do more damage than they did previously. Even if I suit up with bean stat buffs, they can still do almost 30 to 40% of your hp. So first time players may struggle as some of the tells can be a bit daunting or off for some people.

In terms of outside mechanics, the tutorials are skippable and thank goodness. It was a huge problem in Dream Team and previous titles but now they just give you the special attacks and just say here you go have fun including the minigames as most of them are pretty braindead easy to figure out. Bean finding is easy as ever although I really wished they introduce some of the overworld map mechanics a bit earlier.

The Papercraft bosses replaced the giant touch based mingame that BiS and Dream Team had. These are kind of meh and it made me wishes these bosses were actual gameplay bosses and not minigame bosses. They also still don't give you any EXP.

The overall world design however is very bland. There really isn't much to explore in terms of find hidden goodies or occassional hidden items. The puzzles in the levels are also uninteresting. Granted most of the previous M&L were just switch to this mode and do this but they all offered unique puzzle designs to compensate the neat physical platforming puzzle elements into this system. This title however the navigation and puzzle solving are pretty much in yoru face and there isn't much going for it. The backgrounds are dull and the paper aesthetics don't really add much layer to the unique look of the mushroom kingdom. They were definitely playing it safe here and overall, I feel it hurt the uniqueness of the Mario and Luigi design since all previous 4 titles offered a sense of discovery despite them taking place in the Mushroom Kingdom. It wasn't very memorable in general.

The Story and writing is also a step back. Despite Paper Mario and the Mario and Luigi series having great humourous writing and unique dialogues, this one didn't really do much in terms of creating an exciting setting. Starlow is chatty and at times I kind of wished they stopped using her so much. The Koopalings didn't offer much personality to make them standout other than design. It feels like the Deadly Six from Sonic Lost World all over again except the Koopalings are even more bland. The 2 Bowsers while are great also offered a scene where they have some plans but that was never explained and it kind of created a plothole. I really didn't enjoy the writing in this title to the point where I actually fastforward 95% of the text and I could still pick up what they were saying. The only writing part I did enjoy was the Peaches since Paper Peach still retained her sassiness and occasional humour. I wasn't expecting a good story mind you but the writing is what made Mario RPG series a lot of fun to read but here I don't think I remembered anything other than Luigi being the usual goofy notice me sempai.

Now comes my biggest problem with this game. The mandatory minigames. For once I agreed with IGN. The number of them in the beginning of the game is ridiculous. There have been too many moments where I was having a lot of fun with the combat for one hour and then all of a sudden I had to stop what I am doing and do these required mandatory minigames of finding Paper Toads or rescue toads in general and these are the absolute worst part of the game. It doesn't even help that these Toads are running away from Mario of all things. Why are they running away from Mario and even Paper Mario for that matter?! It was obvious that these were made in order to pad out the game since it is pretty much a 20 hour game. (I logged at 21 hours) These mandatory minigames can take from 15 to 30 mins depending if you can find them or not. They aren't hard but they're tedious and overall should have been toned down in the beginning of the game. At the 2nd half of the game, most of them are optional except for the 2nd revisit of a certain area and that specific minigame is the absolute worst of them all. I honestly could not believe what I was playing. Not to mention the amount of CLEARED AND HEY ALL OF A SUDDEN MINIGAME moments I was getting made me feel downright dumb from the prompts and feedbacks the game was giving me. They were very abundant and they didn't stop until after the 1st half but they still popped up occassionally in the 2nd half. Sure Mario and Luigi had minigames but majority of them were optional. It doesn't even help that the final Paper Mario special trio attack is locked behind all these minigames and it's not even a good special attack either.

The OST was kind of bland. I don't think I remembered any of the tracks which is kind of sad because I love Yoko Shimomura's works but the only songs I remember were the battle and boss themes.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this title. For a crossover of a game while is 80% Mario and Luigi and 20% Paper Mario, this was a step back in the evolution of the Mario and Luigi series as a whole and imo had a lot of wasted potential. There is very little references to previous Mario and Luigi or Paper Mario and sticks with a very safe formula. It definitely has that New Super Mario Bros vibe to it and many of the risk things they did with previous titles is nowhere to be found in this game. I really wanted to like this title and while I love the gameplay changes the rest of the package was a huge step back. If I were to rank the Mario and Luigi series, as a whole, SS > BiS > Dream Team > Paper Jam > PiT. Would I recommend this game? I would sort of but it's not really a game that is on my list as a must own if you have a 3DS. I personally think you can pass on this title.

Yes I am aware of the design decisions they made as I read the interview here

https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHk3QkSgUA

but the game just didn't give me the excitement that other previous Mario and Luigi titles did.

[Anacybele]

Starlow is female? I could never tell that thing's gender. It was just never stated in the game as far as I could tell. Maybe I wasn't paying attention.

The story did seem a step backward from previous M&L games as well as Paper Mario games. But I still thought it was okay.

[kingddd]

Starlow is female? I could never tell that thing's gender. It was just never stated in the game as far as I could tell. Maybe I wasn't paying attention.

You would have known if you played Bowser's Inside Story and even Dream Term. Her official art shows eyelashes. She says that's, "Not how you treat a lady." in BiS and gets offended by a NPC that called her naked in Dream Team. Not to mention all her other localized names are all feminine.

Edited February 15, 2016 by kingddd

[Anacybele]

I see. I only played a little of Bowser's Inside Story and didn't play Dream Team at all...

[Knife]

Thanks for the input guys, looks like I'll hold off on buying this for now.

[Yoshi2398]

one problem i had was the lack of interesting locations like in other M+L games and paper mario games instead we just got the generic mario regulars like the dessert,mountain etc.