I played through Paper Mario for the first time in a decade. I can now confidently confirm my memories and nostalgia haven’t inflated my perception of the game. Paper Mario is a shining example of what I’d define as a “cozy RPG.”
I’d define a cozy RPG as the video game equivalent of a “cozy mystery” novel, referring to the explicit genre. A short, casual RPG, meant to entertain you within the confines of the genre for a brief adventure. Not concerned with having an epic narrative, deep character development, introspective real world theming. A cozy RPG is meant to be approachable and fun, a game that just lets players enjoy the RPG genre without needing to commit to a piece of media epic in scope and length.
Paper Mario has a simple cliche narrative, with no twists or unexpected developments. The side characters all only have brief arcs with almost no character development. The pacing only ever moves forward, with no time for reflection or backtracking. Each story arc is self contained enough to let you take prolonged breaks between play sessions without feeling confused about what’s happening in the game. A difficulty level that requires minimal strategy/preparation, but remains engaging enough that you can’t just auto battle your way through the game.
Paper Mario is essentially an ideal RPG for people with minimal experience in the genre, or RPG fans who want a quick game that requires minimal effort on their part, while still retaining the core of what they like about the genre.
Paper Mario is a charming game, with a cute, if cliche plot and character archetypes. The writing is mostly straightforward, it’s not as joke-laden later Mario RPGs, or as witty as Super Mario RPG. The game isn’t dialogue heavy though, so it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s just enough to give you the core gist of what’s going on, as well as a little flavor for world building or light humor to keep you from getting bored.
A constant battle for RPGs is to give the player enough personalization in character builds that players feel like they have actual autonomy over the game. Giving the player enough options can make combat feel awkwardly balanced, with encounters potentially being too difficult for players who aren’t good at strategizing with their builds. On the inverse end of the spectrum if combat doesn’t have a baseline level of difficulty, or if there isn’t any incentive to strategizing, a game can fall into the pitfall of having players feel like any time spent on their character build is wasted time, since it’s entirely unnecessary.
Paper Mario’s simple combat plays into its favor heavily in regards to balance. I’d figure that the average casual player will have no trouble getting through the game mostly leveling up HP and only using simple attack boosting badges. Enemy HP values and damage are fairly high, but attack patterns feel balance so that they won’t overwhelm a player. The Master may do 10 damage a turn, but every other enemy and boss will give the player breathing space between turns, so the player always has room to spam healing items and skills, and will put damage the bosses while only using the most basic attacks and no badge strategy.
For players who want a bit more though, I find it very enjoyable to try and get through fights as fast as possible. Being at 1-5 HP intentionally to boost my damage, while forcing me to land my action commands is thrilling. I know that the game isn’t very hard, but being able to put myself intentionally in an all or nothing situation constantly to make encounters go way faster is one of my favorite ways to play games. Between the most casual player using minimal strategy, and somebody like me being at 1HP to power bounce enemies to death, and last stand + nice guard badges letting me nullify all damage to be able to stay alive while at 1HP, there’s a lot of middle ground for less optimal but still enjoyable strategies to experiment with.
With two nice guard badges, defense plus, and last stand equipped, and assuming you land your guard timings, an attack needs to have a power of 10 for it to deal a single point of damage to Mario when you’re at 5 HP and below. If you use Sushie’s defense up skill in battle, then even that 10 damage attack will be entirely nullified. Last stand rounding damage down is actually nuts and allows you to play in such a risky way.
The music might be my one real complaint with the game. The compositions and arrangements are good and the specific sound is unique, but they don’t leave much of an impact. Compared to SMRPG and especially Superstar Saga, the music in Paper Mario is very forgettable to me. It serves its purpose well, but doesn’t stick with you as a lasting earworm.
As a brief aside, I played through on the Japanese version and thought it was really interesting how few allusions to paper there were in the game. Other than Mario falling like a piece of paper in the Koopa Bros. Fortress, paper was never mentioned or referenced aesthetically. It feels like the whole game is chasing after a stage play aesthetic, and the flat characters and environments are meant to all look like stage props and standees, not just “paper.”
It makes me wonder if the localization team choosing the “Paper Mario” name partially drove the developer decision to embrace paper as an actual theme for the series with the sequels.
Regardless I thoroughly enjoyed my revisit to Paper Mario and think the game holds up phenomenally well. It’s a cozy RPG that’s super easy to pick up and play in either short by-stage bursts periodically, or to go through in a single sitting. I’d easily recommend this to somebody as their first RPG, or to an RPG fan who wants a new low effort game to breeze through. It’s a highlight of both the N64 library and entire Mario franchise to me.
— Juni - August 2nd, 2023 —
