Why I don't really like Mario RPG

Yeah, Mario RPG was the beta version

The REAL series starts with the Paper Mario games and even then sales were ok in some areas and bad in others

Nintendo finally has the formula down with Super Paper Mario. It's the only RPG'ish Mario game that sells well in all three regions

Nostalgia's one of the main reasons many people love this game. For me, I'll admit it was nostalgia also.

Now on to perspective: I first saw this game back in 1996(don't remember exactly when in there) when a couple of friends of me and my brother played this game. I thought it looked amazing, seeing how it's not everyday you see a 3D perspective game like this on the SNES. But I was watching a later boss fight, so there was plenty of action going on. I wanted it.

I honestly didn't get to play the game till around 1999, when I let my friend borrow my copy of A Link to the Past to borrow this game. I started up a new file, and I loved it since I had fallen in love with RPGs after that ten minutes I played Final Fantasy III(VI) a couple years back. Regardless that the N64 was out, I thought of these being some of the best graphics I saw, even if it was a bit tough to get used to the isometric view in control terms. I just mindlessly played this to end, and liked almost every second of this game.

If you didn't play this in the past and had played Paper Mario, then it's understandable why you somewhat can't stand the game. You got too used to the newer title that the original charm of the title doesn't quite catch you since it seems a bit outdated. Though everyone has their opinions, I like it for various reasons, with probably the main one being nostalgia.

And I would take the chocolate chip cookie, though I've already sampled the plain cookie, which tasted delicious to me. :P

I like the original best. There's just something about the Paper Mario series that turns me off, although I can't quite tell why.

I could be mistaken but I don't think SquarEnix had anything to do with the series(or any of the spin-offs) after Mario RPG. That could be part of it.

Yeah, Mario RPG was the beta version

The REAL series starts with the Paper Mario games and even then sales were ok in some areas and bad in others

Nintendo finally has the formula down with Super Paper Mario. It's the only RPG'ish Mario game that sells well in all three regions

Jaysonguy

You're probably right about the "formula" being right for Nintendo themselves (what with all the sales and money) but I personally found Super Paper Mario to be the weakest of the three Paper Mario games. I think high sales may have more to do with the fact that the Wii was already selling like hotcakes when SPM was released, and there were a lot of people waiting to get their Mario fix (with Galaxy still being months away).

The first two Paper Mario games, in my opinion, were far more enjoyable than SPM. That game felt like neither a 2D platformer nor an RPG, but somewhere in the middle which equated to a long but ultimately tedious chore.

less to do and weaker graphics. well lets see. IT WAS ON THE SNES! of course the graphics arent as good as a n64 game. it came out like at least 2-3 years before the n64 was even out. and theres less to do because it was on a snes cartridge. they can only handle so much info. but it had its own unique things to it. i mean square even put in a special final fantasy style boss fight you could unlock. back then that blew everyone's minds. paper mario is always described by nintendo as "the spiritual sequal to mario rpg". mario rpg had a lot of firsts for the mario series too. i mean paper mario was fun and all, but mario rpg was an amazing game at the timechild_of_lileth

Wrong. It was released in 1996, mere months before the N64 came out. The graphics do look really good for a SNES game, though.

[QUOTE="Jaysonguy"]

Yeah, Mario RPG was the beta version

The REAL series starts with the Paper Mario games and even then sales were ok in some areas and bad in others

Nintendo finally has the formula down with Super Paper Mario. It's the only RPG'ish Mario game that sells well in all three regions

tommy--F

You're probably right about the "formula" being right for Nintendo themselves (what with all the sales and money) but I personally found Super Paper Mario to be the weakest of the three Paper Mario games. I think high sales may have more to do with the fact that the Wii was already selling like hotcakes when SPM was released, and there were a lot of people waiting to get their Mario fix (with Galaxy still being months away).

The first two Paper Mario games, in my opinion, were far more enjoyable than SPM. That game felt like neither a 2D platformer nor an RPG, but somewhere in the middle which equated to a long but ultimately tedious chore.

[QUOTE="child_of_lileth"]less to do and weaker graphics. well lets see. IT WAS ON THE SNES! of course the graphics arent as good as a n64 game. it came out like at least 2-3 years before the n64 was even out. and theres less to do because it was on a snes cartridge. they can only handle so much info. but it had its own unique things to it. i mean square even put in a special final fantasy style boss fight you could unlock. back then that blew everyone's minds. paper mario is always described by nintendo as "the spiritual sequal to mario rpg". mario rpg had a lot of firsts for the mario series too. i mean paper mario was fun and all, but mario rpg was an amazing game at the timeSuper-Mario-Fan

Wrong. It was released in 1996, mere months before the N64 came out. The graphics do look really good for a SNES game, though.

it seemed like it was so much longer before that. lol. but i was in like 3rd grade when mario rpg came out so i didnt really remeber what year it was. i was just kinda sayin that from memory

In my opinion Super Mario RPG's better than any of the Paper Mario games and Super Paper Mario comes in second. There's absolutely nothing wrong with any of the Paper Mario games either, they're all great games. I own them all and love them. Super Mario RPG has a ton of great humor, an amazing soundtrack, the battles don't get repetative either. You may as well complain about every RPG that's ever been made, especially the Final Fantasy games because you have to fight a lot more countless battles in those games than in Super Mario RPG. There's also a ton of extra things to do in the game besides fight. If you've bothered to do any of the sidequests you'd know that you can raise a baby yoshi by feeding it cookies to earn an extremely rare item, there's hidden chests scattered throughout the world, there's a boss from Final Fantasy that you can only fight by obtaining a shiny stone, you can get 99 flower points in total, toadstool, well peach can get a lamb's lure which turns into a sheep attack, you get Mario's best weapon by obtaining the Seed and Fertilizer, oh and good luck getting the best armor in the game, the Super Suit by doing Mario's Super Jump 100 times in a row. It's almost impossible to do, if you want something challenging try doing that, I still can't do it. There's other sidequests too, those are just the one's off the top of my head. Not to mention that there's a cameo appearance from Link, and there's 2 times that you can see Samus at different points in the game. The boss battles are also great, and what makes them fantastic is music. Especially the theme that plays when you fight anyone is Smithy's gang. This is the song I'm talking about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udomr-3nBjA

To me, Super Mario RPG is the best Mario game as well as the best RPG ever made, I love it that much. It's not because of nostalgia either, it's truely a great game. Also, to Jaysonguy, a game doesn't have to sell well in all regions like you keep claiming for it to be a success. It's loved by a lot more people than you seem to think. And unless you actually work for Nintendo what gives you the right to speak for them? You keep claiming that the game didn't do well and that it's a beta version, unless you have some sort of proof you really shouldn't say anything like that at all. You annoy a lot more people than myself. And also, if it wasn't for Super Mario RPG, none of the Paper Mario games would exists because Paper Mario was origianlly called Super Mario RPG 2 and later got changed to Paper Mario. Want some proof? Here's some, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNW6X-D8Jw8

So start giving Super Mario RPG some credit because it's the game that started them all, and it's what all the Paper Mario games are based off of.

Also, to Jaysonguy, a game doesn't have to sell well in all regions like you keep claiming for it to be a success. It's loved by a lot more people than you seem to think. And unless you actually work for Nintendo what gives you the right to speak for them? You keep claiming that the game didn't do well and that it's a beta version, unless you have some sort of proof you really shouldn't say anything like that at all. You annoy a lot more people than myself. And also, if it wasn't for Super Mario RPG, none of the Paper Mario games would exists because Paper Mario was origianlly called Super Mario RPG 2 and later got changed to Paper Mario. Want some proof? Here's some, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNW6X-D8Jw8

So start giving Super Mario RPG some credit because it's the game that started them all, and it's what all the Paper Mario games are based off of.

J_Ford

No, it really IS important that games sell in all three regions

The Mario RPG was practice. The whole franchise has been specially cultivated to appeal to all three regions so they have strong sales in all three. Super Paper Mario is that game.

They don't want a Mario title to share the same sad fate at Metroid where they can never make a game that attracts all three regions

So to me, Mario RPG seems like an uglier version of paper mario. Honestly, its an RPG adventure with partners like Paper Mario is, but with less to do and weaker graphics. The fighting isn't very well organized, I mean near the end of the game you will be able to do like... 1000 damage per hit... Isn't that a little pointless? They could have made the fighting more simple without doing that. So far, about 80% of what I've done in the game was fight. It's not exactly that exciting to run into bad guys and have to wait my turn to attack, get hurt, etc. etc... It gets very repettitive doing this turn-based fighting over and over. I mean, for a SNES game it's pretty good, but since I've never played this game until I bought it a couple weeks ago, I expected a more unique game. It's also dark and depressing many times. It's a good game, I'll admit, but everyone was way too hyped about it coming to VC. Not I think that it's not that fun playing an old, bad-graphic game when there are so many recent good games that I could be using my time with. I'll give an example: Let's say a new game that is like Mario RPG (i.e. paper mario) but with better graphics and more to do is a chocolate chip cookie, and Mario RPG, having worse graphics and what not, is a plain old cookie. Would you rather have the chocolate chip cookie or the plain one? I want to hear everyone's opinions :Damirbrandon

[QUOTE="Jaysonguy"]

Yeah, Mario RPG was the beta version

The REAL series starts with the Paper Mario games and even then sales were ok in some areas and bad in others

Nintendo finally has the formula down with Super Paper Mario. It's the only RPG'ish Mario game that sells well in all three regions

tommy--F

You're probably right about the "formula" being right for Nintendo themselves (what with all the sales and money) but I personally found Super Paper Mario to be the weakest of the three Paper Mario games. I think high sales may have more to do with the fact that the Wii was already selling like hotcakes when SPM was released, and there were a lot of people waiting to get their Mario fix (with Galaxy still being months away).

The first two Paper Mario games, in my opinion, were far more enjoyable than SPM. That game felt like neither a 2D platformer nor an RPG, but somewhere in the middle which equated to a long but ultimately tedious chore.

my thoughts EXACTLY!

:D

Yeah, Mario RPG was the beta version

The REAL series starts with the Paper Mario games and even then sales were ok in some areas and bad in others

Nintendo finally has the formula down with Super Paper Mario. It's the only RPG'ish Mario game that sells well in all three regions

Jaysonguy

Problem 1: Implying that the partnership between Square and Nintendo resulted in a beta game for Nintendo's franchise would be the same as implying that Square and Enix's partnership also resulted in a beta for Square's Chrono franchise. What we need to learn is that the reason these games are different from their spiritual sequels is that Square introduced elements of different games into the design in the later stages. In other words, both games were tampered with (by Square), the sequels were not.

Problem 2:You can't blame Europe for its lack of RPG support, that lies directly on Yamaguchi's shoulders. Just like Americans have been asking where the 4 Nintendo Monolith games are, Europe was asking where 1996 went. Without those specific games, an entire audience was not established, causing them to miss out further by not playing games like Ogre Battle 64.

Problem 3: Nintendo does not have the Paper Mario formula down with SPM, it has the Super Mario formula down. Nintendo acknowledged this when advertising the game, showing to consumers that they can play a Super Mario game prior to Super Mario Galaxy. To those consumers, the word paper is the gimmick, to Paper Mario fans super was the gimmick. Wario will likely be their "proof of concept" that a pure platformer is not what will sell on the console. Even though said platformer has 20 stages and the replayability of a putting salt on a slug (Quality matters not in proof of concept). To be honest, the fact that NOA regrets not talking about Wario at E3 is likely because they lost their chance on getting another game hyped other than Wii Music.

Still SMRPG has a lot of weird things to it, things you'd need to do something out of the ordinary to find. The game can't stand without a strategy guide, and if you played it without one you likely frowned when your frog coin total was tallied. To really see everything, you need to play it a lot more than $8 merits anymore. A big plus, but also a big detterrent in modern gaming society.

[QUOTE="J_Ford"]

Also, to Jaysonguy, a game doesn't have to sell well in all regions like you keep claiming for it to be a success. It's loved by a lot more people than you seem to think. And unless you actually work for Nintendo what gives you the right to speak for them? You keep claiming that the game didn't do well and that it's a beta version, unless you have some sort of proof you really shouldn't say anything like that at all. You annoy a lot more people than myself. And also, if it wasn't for Super Mario RPG, none of the Paper Mario games would exists because Paper Mario was origianlly called Super Mario RPG 2 and later got changed to Paper Mario. Want some proof? Here's some, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNW6X-D8Jw8

So start giving Super Mario RPG some credit because it's the game that started them all, and it's what all the Paper Mario games are based off of.

Jaysonguy

No, it really IS important that games sell in all three regions

The Mario RPG was practice. The whole franchise has been specially cultivated to appeal to all three regions so they have strong sales in all three. Super Paper Mario is that game.

They don't want a Mario title to share the same sad fate at Metroid where they can never make a game that attracts all three regions

First, I said a game doesn't have to sell well in all regions like you keep claiming for it to be a success. I never said anything about the importance of it's sales. Obviously sales are important to a certain extent. Just because a game doesn't sell as well in one region compared to another, doesn't mean it wasn't a great game or a success. And Super Mario RPG was never originally released in Europe so you really can't bring that up every time. If it was released in Europe back in 1996 it's popularity would have grown a lot more.

Second, Super Mario RPG not The Mario RPG (that's not even a game) isn't practice and was never any sort of beta. It's a full game from start to finish. If you can provide some sort of proof from Nintendo or Square I'd love to see it. If you can't provide any proof to back up what you're saying than stop talking. By proof I mean actual statistics, quotes, etc from Nintendo and Square, not your biased opinion about a game you obviously hate. And now that it's been released on the VC, it's one of the most downloaded games. If it's a "beta" like you think, would people really be paying money to play it? I don't think so.

Third, you can't compare Mario titles to Metroid titles, they're completely different games aimed at completely different audiences.

And how do you know what Nintendo wants? Stop speaking for Nintendo like you own the company.

As far as I'm concerned, the SNES era was the golden age of RPGs, and SMRPG was in the top 5 with Earthbound, FF4, FF6, and Chrono Trigger. As much as I love Earthbound, Mario RPG is the one that I've returned to the most. RPGs, especially those at that time, are overwhelmingly dependent on "grinding" type of gameplay, but SMRPG tried to alleviate the related woes in several key ways. First, the battles are not random encounters, you can see your enemies on screen and try to avoid them if you like. Not that you'll have an easy go if you do, but when you're just dead sick of fighting yet ANOTHER enemy it's better than the uncertainty of battles in the old Final Fantasies. Also, the fighting is interactive. Precise button pressing was needed to get the most out of attacks and defenses, making fighting a bit more engaging. More on this a bit later.

Another plus is the surprisingly funny game script. Before Mario became a catchphrasing charicature that's been the standard since Mario 64, we were treated with a subtle, chuckle-funny Mario who actually seemed to have a personality that hasn't been captured since. Mario seemed to realize the absurdity of the world he lives in and the situations he encounters. Goombas? Flying turtles? Ridable dinosaurs? These games are a constant joke and rarely appreciated as such. Unfortunately I missed the original paper mario because I was turned off by the visual design when it was released (I've since gotten it via VC), but I did play the GC version, and the handheld RPG-ish Mario/Luigi titles, and they've all felt like pale imitations of the original in terms of characterization. The jokes fell flat and the design felt like a betrayal on par with the jump from Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask to Windwaker in the Zelda series.

Also, Mario RPG was actually sort of difficult. Not overwhelming, but 1000 Year Door and especially the GBA/DS titles were nerfed to the point of being unfun. This could partly be due to weaker narrative that I didn't feel compelled to hear the end of, but also they continued, and in some cases made more complex, the fun battle design of Mario RPG, but at the same time took the other strategic RPG elements out of play. Weapons, Armor, Magic and Character Party-- all things that are not brainbusting gameplay mechanics, but still important elements that required deliberate choices, were all nerfed to the point of being nearly inconsequential. It's like we went from having to work to beat the game, to having the game accommodate us so we could beat harder things as we played through it. There was almost literally no challenge, and as a result, despite playing Mario RPG through nearly half a dozen times, I've not been able to maintain interest enough to play a single one of its spiritual successors to the end. Maybe it's cause I wanted another full RPG, and the Paper Marios are only half RPG. Super Paper Mario is on my GameFly queue, and I'm going to try that one with a more open mind.

Perhaps I'm just a sucker for rounded edges and vibrant color palettes, but I still think Mario RPG looks better than just about anything on the N64 and PS1 that wasn't a cutscene. It's charming and makes the most of a limited technology in the same way that Donkey Kong Country did aroun the same time and first-party Wii games like Mario Galaxy are doing now. Everything was smooth and polished, unlike the awkward polygonal phase that's only now starting to get truly worked out of games with our powerful new PS3s and 360s. It may be simple, but it's certainly not ugly.

At the end of the day though, different gamers like different things. If you're looking for an engaging, witty, playful RPG experience, Mario RPG is one of the best that's been done. It's a great genre piece. But it is, despite its nuances, a classic style RPG that requires time and dedication to really play through and is not everyone's idea of a good time. But it's what, 10 bucks now on VC? That beats the $60 I paid for a new cartridge back in the day, and should be manageable for most anyone with even a passing interest in trying one of the more noteworthy games in RPG history.