Okay so, Paper Jam is a pretty mixed bag, so it might take a while to get into. It's a game I did finish, but one I regret purchasing heavily.
For some perspective on my views though, I think Dream Team is some of the best in the series in regards to combat and overworld, but it completely ruins a lot of that by having forced tutorials rammed into your face for the entire duration of the game, and not even short ones, they are really long and time consuming even for really basic concepts. So while I think Dream Team is really good in many ways, it has like, one big stinking issue that kinda ruins replaying it and have ruined playing it the first time for my partner.
Paper Jam though? Is an entirely different beast. It cuts back on the tutorializing a little bit over Dream Team, which is very good. It retains the same quality in the combat though, it has really good combat for the duration of the game. The problem and elephant in the room though, is that everything else about the game just fucking stinks.
I assume it was corporate nintendo pushing it, but the entire game's world design and aesthetic choices are on brand New Super Mario Brothers stuff, including what enemy designs are allowed to show up, and the bad guys around is just bowser, bowser jr, and the koopa kids. Now, I don't *mind* those characters, but there is no substance to anything in the narrative in this one, and especially considering the landscape of the mario brand as a whole it just kinda sucks that they forced this aesthetic.
Now, if it was only the aesthetic and story being mediocre and the combat being good, it might be bearable. But the overworld navigation, exploration, and just what you do most of the time outside of battles.... kinda sucks too? It's the most "minigame-y" of the entire series in that regard, and the narrative justification and reasoning for most of it in-game just kinda sucks too? Some of the stuff is legit that you're playing hide and seek with toads. Oh yeah, and because of [brand] standardization, most NPCs around are just going to be generic toads too.
So to me Paper Jam is a very flawed game with only one redeeming quality: the very good combat gameplay. If you think that's enough to carry the entire game for you, then go ahead, otherwise I recommend against the title.
Also, on a personal note, I feel that stories in RPGs can be pretty important, Nintendo realized this when they made SMRPG, so instead of going with a generic "peach gets kidnapped, you have to save her plot", they completely subverted that in literally every way by the midpoint of the game when bowser joins your party. So it's kind of a shame to me that we have fallen this far when it comes to narrative ideas. I can't even say that the game does anything interesting with the premise or delivers it well, it's just there. It's kinda sad when you have the concept of "Paper Mario world mashed up with the Mario & Luigi world", and this is the mediocre mess that it turned up. There is so many interesting and cool ideas that they could have explored, but they just didn't, it's all surface level, you have two copies of the same villain and nothing interesting is done with that, it plays out exactly as you'd expect it to.
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