Ranking EVERY Paper Mario Game - The Golden Bolt

with the release of paper mario the origami king mario's rpg turned not rpg franchise now spans six games and nearly two decades ever since i was a kid i've had a soft spot for paper mario i was even one of those kids that actually cut out and played with those magazine ads labeled as a free demo i i was very lonely while it took me a good while to actually sit down and play these games all the way through in the last few years i've gone through every game explored every world and crumpled thousands of enemies now that i've finished the origami king and to celebrate the upcoming 20th anniversary for this series i'm going to rank every single paper mario game with one key fold this ranking won't just be from worst to best it will also rank these games from least to most essential a great game doesn't necessarily make for a must play one after all and to clear this up right up front no i'm not including games like super mario rpg on this list nor am i including the mario and luigi series bug fables bugs snacks or anything else of the sort maybe one day down the road i'll tackle every mario rpg but i've got a good amount of them left to play before i can do that so with that let's turn the page and get started that's that's the last paper pun i promise it's just that turning pages is part of my intro you just roll the intro you'll see [Music] now if you know anything about paper mario or if you've ever been in an online discussion um ever you already have an idea which games are likely going to bookend this list but some of you may not know why sticker star is the worst paper mario game for a long time i questioned the vitriol lofted against paper mario's 3ds adventure could a new battle approach really be this poor or were people overreacting and then i played it despite being named 2012's dice handheld game of the year yes actually sticker star is at least as bad as everybody says that it is thanks to an infuriatingly bad combat system a stripped back narrative compared to previous games and a completely misinformed game direction now i'm gonna give any sticker star apologists a little bit of fuel here i'll be the first to admit that i didn't finish this game i just couldn't bring myself to slog through it i could get past the story being simplified for the series first portable entry but i couldn't get past the big sticking point no pun intended that everybody brings up first there is no reason whatsoever to engage in non-mandatory battles sticker star's combat requires mario to pick attacks now in the form of one used stickers out of his sticker book bafflingly sticker star even locks mario's basic hammer and jump attacks behind these stickers meaning that every single turn you're using an exceedingly limited resource the series trademark action commands return for these attacks as well which on one hand is great because it means that ideally a skilled player won't waste as many stickers but it also sucks because it means that you've gotta be perfect to waste as few stickers as possible winning random battles doesn't grant you enough stickers to justify what you're wasting just to kill a goomba and stickers are intended to act not only as your only method of attack but also as a replacement for experience points and progression add in the fact that these stickers take up different amounts of physical space in your limited sticker book depending on their strength and you've got a game that becomes this tedious mix of inventory management and avoiding actually managing that inventory as much as you possibly can so this hybrid platformer turn-based rpg gives you precisely zero in-game reward for its turn-based combat and if anything it actively punishes you for entering random battles because stickers are precious commodities that should be saved for this game's obtuse boss fights yeah even the boss fights in this game just suck in most cases it's impossible to damage these bosses without a special thing sticker based on some real world appliance or item that you'll find in an earlier level it's a neat idea on pit nope can't say that it's a neat idea in concept but although it plays well with this game's much more heavily papercraft focused aesthetic it turns sticker stars only potentially decent battles into puzzles puzzles mind you that are as simple as pick the correct sticker yeah you've done it i'm so proud of you i wish your father was here to see this and if you happen to miss one of these things which isn't that hard to do in this game be prepared to play a previous level all over again to grab it as this game can also be chock full of the wonderful concept of backtracking and the biggest sin of all is that sticker star isn't just a poor game it's also a boring game going through simple platforming levels could be fine if the quick jumpy style didn't immediately clash with the clunky battle system but that said the worlds aren't even that interesting to explore because in peak early 2010's nintendo fashion shigeru miyamoto didn't like the original concept and overhauled the game from its supposed thousand-year door styled plans miyamoto-san suggested and of course by suggested i mean ordered that the game be focused mostly in the mushroom kingdom in the established already tired trope of grass than desert than forest than ice than fire than castle world themes that it focused predominantly on established mario characters rather than adding many new companions to the mix and this is a quote by the way it's fine without one so do we need a story now this 20-hour long attempted role-playing game certainly didn't need a story it's like miyamoto said in his other famous quote a rushed game is forever bad but keep your dirty stories out of my goddamn mario games sticker star is a game that fails to deliver in every single meaningful way outside of having a pretty decent soundtrack and it dug the series into a hole that intelligent systems is still digging out of eight years later according to many fans there's no question given not only its poor quality but its impact on the series since its release that sticker star is the worst paper mario game and frankly it's not even close now despite saying that i wasn't counting any mario and luigi games i'm obligated to at least mention paper jam the surprisingly long awaited crossover between the two mario rpg subseries i'm still not ranking it but if i don't at least say its name once i'm gonna get like 50 people trying to um actually me in the comments by saying there are seven games there aren't there are six if you're the first one to do that by the way you i want to open the next game on this list by saying that i actually like paper mario color splash i know i know that's something of a hot take around these parts but yeah i really genuinely did enjoy my time with this game even if i hadn't though there's no question that the gap between sixth and fifth on this list is massive where sticker star was mostly lifeless symptomatic of nintendo's desire for a cleaner wide appeal brand image following the wii's success with the more casual market color splash is a charming downright funny game that attempts to break past the guardrails that intelligent systems seems to have been stuck in which in some way is also emblematic of nintendo at the time of color splash's release a company in the middle of a changing of the guards struggling through the least successful period in its history in a sort of holding pattern just months before its new console will drop and change everything yeah don't forget color splash came out in october 2016 making it the final major exclusive on the wii u i can't say that the game ended the wii u's life with a bang because thanks to some other games on this list that i played more recently my overall opinion on color splash has significantly shifted what i can say though is that it ended the wii u's life with a lot of laughter because the writing in this game is top notch there's a joke in there somewhere about the wii u being a laughingstock but i don't feel like making it so go nuts in the comments now originally i had a lot more that i was going to say for this entry but i realized that i could summarize it much more effectively like this where sticker star failed at being both an rpg and an adventure game color splash succeeds much more at being an adventure game while still failing at being an rpg following the game's paint motif every level contains spots where the color has literally been sucked out as bowser's minions use straws to harvest the paint for his evil plans the silly premise of sucking the color out of the world with bendy straws leads to many of my favorite gags from toad screaming that he can't feel his pants to another toad pondering if taking away straws would solve the problem then saying wait no that would just mean that only the bad guys have straws to another toad attacking you during a fight and saying that his wife left him to yet another toad offering to hang out and watch dvds with you promising that it won't be weird i um i lost my train of thought there were we talking about how there are so many toads in this game this is one of the big complaints that people have about color splash much like sticker star before it this game cuts back on its design variants both of the minor characters that you'll see throughout the adventure and the costumes that those characters will wear from what we can gather this is one of those guardrails that nintendo has put around the mario franchise in a recent interview nintendo producer ken sketanabe said that it's no longer possible to modify mario characters or to create original characters that touch on the mario universe although he didn't give a reason why so while intelligent systems is sort of working with a hand tied behind its back stylistically they've clearly tried their hardest to make these homogenous toad designs stand out as much as possible through dialogue and humor sadly this also means that this game follows much of the same groundwork that stickerstar had laid four years prior although again the team has tried to massage the flawed mechanics to come together in a slightly more satisfying way for example one-use stickers are replaced by one-use cards which um yeah that's a choice now while they're identical conceptually you can hold a total of 99 cards regardless of their strength or size which goes a long way here you can play around with your deck however you wish to try and guarantee a good hand such as stacking the deck full of different types of jump cards or you can pay some coins to pull more cards into your hand during battle layered on top of this is that aforementioned paint gimmick by using some of the limited reserves of paint in your paint can which is also this game's partner huey you can color in as little or as much of the cards as you'd like to determine the damage that these cards will then deal different types of cards will use different amounts of each of the three primary paint colors as well the key to color splash's mild success compared to its predecessor's failure is that it combines this rpg side with the adventure side far more decisively you'll earn countless cards and even refill your pain a bit by defeating enemies and filling in the colorless spots in each level using that paint will grant you more cards that you can use for the battles thanks to this i very rarely felt low on cards in fact i usually wound up close to the max just by painting in the spots on the map and adventuring additionally winning battles will earn you some pseudo experience that increases your maximum paint threshold for each color since you'll have to use a lot of paint to color in the white splashes throughout the maps you'll very likely want this to limit your backtracking of course you can also just ignore most of the level painting if you want to as well but at that point you're sort of missing the point a bit as i said earlier color splash is really the point that i would say that paper mario moved into this adventure genre that it was starting to aim for with super paper mario and sticker star onward experiencing every little secret that a level has to offer is meant to be part of the fun here in color splash's case though that's going to get tedious by the end because this game does run a few hours too long i enjoyed getting the full clears on levels and i really had a blast my first time through experiencing the different papercraft locales and exploring the different styles of level sure not much of this game is going to be super unique conceptually this wasn't the first mario game to have a fun train level or a unique haunted house after all but it's all fun and different enough to drive you to keep going the problem here is still that turn-based side because as different as the battle system may be it's incredibly slow this is one of the few wii u games where the gamepad is the only controller option color splash makes you use the gamepad's touchscreen to select color in and then swipe the cards to the main screen on your tv which means that you'll be spending a lot of battle time setting up for a battle each turn even as fun as this gameplay loop may be conceptually from exploring and filling in spots with paint to earn cards then using those cards in battle to earn paint experience and more cards and repeating eventually the slow grind of the battle system will wear on you and you'll start to avoid battles whenever possible considering that a game like super paper mario got by just fine being a straight up platformer 9 years prior it makes me start to wonder why color splash would push for this slow disconnected style of turn-based gameplay if the intent is to make a fun adventure game in a bubble color splash fares just fine as a solid 7 out of 10 average kind of game certainly not bad by any stretch just conflicting in its focus i really did have fun with the game both on my first run and more recently albeit less so the second time around now that i've recently sat down to go through the few paper mario games that i hadn't yet finished though and i've seen those games tackle this same rpg vs adventure game struggle in a more effective way my tone has changed a bit color splash as charming as it is has major flaws that detract from the experience for many players although not too many people even played this game so a lot of people are whining about something they've never played but you know i guess that's par for the course nowadays and while i think it's a fun romp that may stretch out a bit too long by no means is it an essential paper mario to play thanks in part to the next entry and this is where things are going to get a bit controversial i'm gonna ask that you hear me out on this one because it'll take a little while to fully explain why i feel this way but next up is a tie at number three on this list between the most recent paper mario and the first let's talk about paper mario 64 first just so that i don't keep people seething for too long now i know i said it at the top of the video but this game is actually one of my earliest gaming memories i'm not entirely sure why the early hours of paper mario are so seared into my mind though i only rented the game once from blockbuster back then i don't even think i was five years old and i certainly had no clue what i was doing at the time but something about it i'm guessing the visual style kept scratching at me a little voice telling me to go back and see why i remembered it for years until i finally did back in 2013. if you'll forgive a little bit of an anecdote here i was in high school back at this time and we were in a bit of a rough financial spot back then so for a little while we actually had our internet cut off considering my group often played something online together i suddenly had nothing to do my buddy knowing i was bored and needed to kill some time gave me a totally legal copy of paper mario and certainly not just a rom from his flash drive and with nothing better to do i finally dug in and i fell in love all over again and thanks to that it's been a very special game to me coming right around the same time that i had beaten the legend of dragoon another rpg with a fondness for action commands that i just adored i must have beaten paper mario in less than a week i just couldn't get enough of it paper mario is exactly the kind of game that i imagined back when i was a kid whenever i would envision a game where you actually get to explore the mushroom kingdom moving through seven expansive regions freeing the star spirits to stop bowser and save princess peach mario meets up with several companions whose abilities will help him on his journey as well as in battle there's a reason paper mario is often referred to as an excellent starter rpg and it's because it lays down a simple battle structure using most of mario's iconic abilities and like super mario rpg before it paper mario makes use of action commands like pressing a right as mario jumps onto an enemy allowing players to deal extra damage and keep them paying attention during moves considering that this game landed at the tail end of an era of role-playing games full of long and often bloated battle animations it was not only a perfect fit for the simple pickup and play style of mario it's the perfect counter to all of those rpgs that left nintendo behind at the start of that console generation before i get too into the weeds on the original though let's jump ahead 20 years and look at what paper mario has become since its outset paper mario the origami king launched on july 20th not even a week ago at the time of this recording and much to the dismay of many paper mario die hards it's like color splash and sticker star before it not an rpg with experience points and proper stats but instead an action-adventure game that retains a turn-based battle system although when i say turn-based well this game is kind of unique every battle rather than being a traditional rpg fight takes place on a ring that mario can rotate and slide forward and backward lining up enemies in a straight line or two rows of two will leave them primed for a jump attack or a hammer swing respectively and if you get enemies in exactly the right order you'll deal bonus damage i can't say i expected paper mario to become a flat out puzzle game but that's kind of what it is here and you know what i actually really enjoy it rather than the sort of artificial reward of seeing a number go up and watching your character get stronger based on predetermined math instead you'll feel an actual dopamine hit as you slide these rings into order and wipe out entire waves of enemies in one or two turns and also a number will artificially go up but instead of experience that number will be your coins i'm not even kidding in my first hour of the game i already had over 10 000 coins but we'll touch on that in a moment this more refined fight structure takes up so little of your time that battles pretty much never drag i'm talking what feel like 30 to 60 second fights until the second half of the game and even then maybe no more than two minutes tops when you start a battle up you've got a ring timer phase that'll count down how long you have to lock in the enemy positions and from there you'll choose your attacks defend against the enemy attacks afterwards and repeat until the enemies are defeated and when i say choose your attacks i can happily say that intelligent systems learn to leave the regular stomp and hammer attacks as permanent moves only took him three games to remember that god instead of a gimmicky one-use card or sticker system mario can equip different pairs of boots or hammers as gear allowing him to deal more damage avoid hurting himself on spiked enemies or even gain some extra money with the gold gear while these items will break after a number of uses replacements are plentiful out in the wild and you can always use some of your thousands and thousands of coins to buy more if not it's a happy compromise that allows for a good amount of strategy in battle do you think you can nail down four straight action commands to take down a line of enemies with the regular boots or would you rather spend a use of some stronger shiny or flashy boots to take them down without worrying about messing up adding to this is the expanded level design of origami king featuring the widest most sprawling levels this series has ever had with levels as big as they are now i start to look forward to these battles acting as a little breather or pace breaker while i'm looking for moons uh toads see origami king i'd argue takes from the mario odyssey school of thought it throws you into these expansive worlds and gives you hundreds and hundreds of collectibles along the way to whatever main objective you may have like in color splash before these collectibles are toads but they're so much more present here rather than being mostly shoved off to the side and we also have collectible pieces of treasure complementing them whether these paper toads are crumbled up into balls had their faces cut out by a hole punch or have been folded into little origami birds or flowers or bugs or fish it's up to mario to smack them with his hammer and unfurl them into their usual flat selves when you do so you'll be rewarded with some unique funny line of dialogue said by these toads or maybe even a hint towards your next objective and then they'll join the audience of toads that surrounds the ring during every battle although this audience concept returns from games like thousand year door here it's mixed directly into the gameplay loop during battle you can spend some coins to summon these toads from the audience to help you out at which point they may attack an enemy move the ring one or two slots towards its correct position for free give you an item or some health or any other number of randomized options it's these two very involved but very distinct reward loops pushing back and forth on one another that really keeps origami king interesting for its 30-hour run time well that and the absolutely superb writing origami king while it doesn't bring back battle partners like the fans of paper mario 64 and thousand your door have been asking does bring them back to a smaller and slightly different extent starting in chapter 2 you'll add a string of somewhat temporary non-controllable partners for specific chapters and areas that'll aid you in battle each turn and sometimes in the overworld but more than that they bring so much more character to a game already filled to the brim with it sure they may often look like generic mario characters once again thanks to that baffling design limitation imposed by nintendo but that doesn't stop a character like bobby the bomb from often stealing the show with his back and forth humor with the other star of the show olivia this paper fold princess might be my favorite companion in the entire paper mario series she straddles the line between bubbly and annoying perfectly resulting in this charming presence guiding you throughout the adventure it can be a moment as stupid as mario wearing a paper mache goomba mask to make her laugh uncontrollably or her learning a whole song and dance number to summon an ancient shrine or her begging mario to take a detour to explore the shogun studios theme park no matter the circumstance i'm always smiling at her expressive dialogue and personality plus all of her magical summon abilities that you'll gain throughout the adventure further add to her charm making a thousand ton tortoise do a full cheer routine with pom-poms and everything or even making a giant fire-breathing phoenix adorable thanks to these companions being temporary origami king is able to expand on the friendship and dialogue between your companions in a way that the series really never could before yes in the past games some chapters might have been focused around a specific companion but you could almost always use your favorites anyway potentially cutting back on the amount of development that you'd get for the other cast members here you are guaranteed to have the companion that is meant for that chapter which allows the writing to take more risks flesh out that companion olivia and even our silent protagonist mario even more and in one case do something that you would outright never expect that they would actually do in a mario game and this keep in mind is with those limitations imposed by nintendo and they still completely blew me away and it's because of all of this that i would put some of origami king's chapters up there with the best in any paper mario game the shogun studios theme park and snippet city especially stand out making chapters 2 and 3 this back-to-back romp that left me wishing the entire game was as great as these areas and really it gets close while in previous games you'd get a unique aesthetic in every chapter origami king feels like the first game in this entire series or at the very least in the last 16 years where you start to get a completely different experience in every chapter thanks to it being so uncuffed as an adventure game in fact origami king leans so much into that adventure that it removes the level numbers seen in the games from super paper mario onward and there aren't even chapter numbers for the first time in this entire franchise instead the world allows the levels to flow into one another so that while each one is distinct you feel like get this you're on an adventure that isn't determined by an arbitrary world one one or world four three number structure it's still relatively formulaic for the majority of the game taking you through two dungeons each chapter but what happens in between can take its time or it can be a thrilling sprint to the end thanks to these dungeons and one section that makes you take three trials of power wisdom and courage origami king can begin to feel more like a paper zelda than a paper mario and i adore it for that hell chapter 4's entire structure may as well be a love letter to the wind waker with the great sea a sea chart full of small islands and a giant sea tower awaiting you at the end i will say though that the game has an incredibly slow start taking probably three to four hours to really get going and taking another three or so hours to really get good but when it does the time starts to melt away it's very hand-holdy at the outset as it introduces all the new mechanics and tries to really let the story take its time but i don't think such a simple story as origami creature mad help origami creature's sister origami creature stop him needs that much room to breathe every chapter or rather what would be a chapter in the previous games feels like its own meaty journey while still allowing you to explore completely different side areas in one case you could even start to explore the great sea area from chapter 4 as soon as chapter 2 and you'll come back to it a couple times in between on the topic of visuals origami king leans even more into the papercraft aesthetic with color splash's colorless paint spots replaced by holes in this paper mache world and it goes as far to make origami versions of the usual mario baddies the main enemies that you'll fight the whole game and making the main bosses a selection of office supplies amazingly named the legion of stationery i know that fans groaned out when realistic inanimate objects were once again made into a focus in this game but i promise you they somehow gave a roll of tape more character than you could ever expect there are even these giant enemies made of paper mache fittingly named paper machos which you'll fight in the overworld rather than in the ring-based battle system and man does this add even more to the experience these fights may be as simple as avoiding an attack and hammering in on a weak spot but they're sprinkled in just enough so that the regular battle system doesn't get stale too quickly and they give you a bit of a taste as to what the next paper mario games battling may start to focus on origami king as sanitized as its character designs often still are is an absolutely gorgeous game full of bombastic set pieces and cutscenes that have taken this series far beyond what it's ever been before shroom sniffit city is one of the most visually appealing areas i've seen on the nintendo switch complimented by the series usually stellar soundtrack work everything and i mean everything about origami king is so lovingly crafted that even the toad town theme or the absolutely great battle theme gets remixed with every new chapter and area in order to keep it all fresh i do wish that we'd see more actual paper abilities returning though having this whole paper world is beautiful like seriously this game is stunning visually but this time around it really made me wish that we'd see mario use his paper niss after all if the rest of the game is gonna do it why can't he anymore the closest we get here is mario getting his face ripped off by a hole punch and by the way holy sh how do they get away with that and while i'm on the hole punch boss i do have to address the weakest part of origami king and that's the boss fights specifically the four velumental guardians that act as mid bosses for most of the chapters these continue with that ring battle system but this time around mario is on the outside with the bosses at the center here you'll manipulate the rings so that mario can step on specific spaces to move in a direction attack or pick up an item working from the outer ring to an attack or magic space somewhere closer to the center if the velumental boss fights weren't so poorly designed this system could actually kind of work and in fact with the non-volumetal bosses it pretty much does these bosses specifically though are often immune to damage unless attacked in an incredibly specific way or order and it's rarely intuitive based on their design so your options are either to try attacking and hoping that you figure it out or to essentially waste a turn so that mario can read one of the hints left in an envelope on the board if you've gotta spell out how to even begin to deal with a boss you haven't designed the boss as well i'm sorry and i don't even get why these hints are left out in the map like they are it makes no sense when olivia has been there to give you hints at every other point in the game i will say that the legion of stationary and the later bosses in the game are far more unique often using their real world gimmick to play with the board the tape boss will stick two rings together so that you can't move or slide them rubber band will throw you guessed it rubber bands down to bounce you into another ring it's all fun and unique and these foes have far stronger visual cues leading you to their weak spots in fact characters like tape and rubber band even show visual signs of their decreasing health as the roll of tape starts to run out every time he throws his skin onto the board to stop you wow that's really metal now that i think about it as the game goes on the non-volumetal bosses become pretty damn fun in their own right and really bring the life out of this turn-based battle system in a totally different way than the regular battles do that said many bosses of both types do tend to overstay their welcome more often than not stretching into the 15 to 20 minute range in a battle system that never felt intended to hold you for more than a few minutes none of these issues stopped me from really loving this game far more than i expected to though origami king still has its problems but it's the first game in this series from the past decade that i can really say i want to see more of i know this reward loop won't be for everybody after all the coin payouts are a perfect example that this game just wasn't satisfying enough to some focus testers it truly feels like everything in this game is 10 times more valuable than it needs to be you'll earn 500 coins from a regular battle against goombas i can only assume because the testers complain that there wasn't enough satisfaction coming from the battle system so the developers just upped the payouts it's the only reason that would explain why items as small as mushrooms are upwards of 70 coins when they were always incredibly cheap in the previous games coin inflation notwithstanding i would say that at worst this ring system is passable you might fall in love with it or you might be genuinely surprised by how much you like it like i did but i don't think that too many people will truly hate it unless they're just struggling to see the patterns in the puzzles and even if you do you can always spend a ton of money and just have the toads do all the work or use the special puzzle solver item that you get part way through the game and now with both of these games mostly covered let's touch on why i put them in a tie here at third place standing out as almost certainly the best rpg on the n64 how could paper mario rank so low on this list and how could i dare put such a beloved game next to the newest paper mario that paper mario fans didn't even want well for one third place isn't that low but beyond that looking at it now having played the thousand year door i don't think that the original is an essential game in this series almost without fail that game takes the framework set up in this one and improves directly upon it thousand year doors improvements are beyond pervasive from the improved battle system to fleshing out the paint by numbers plot of collect these half dozen or so stars to expanding the locales and moving past just being a romp through the mushroom kingdom even down to several thousand year door companions like goombella and coops being at worst identical if not direct upgrades of kumbario and cooper it's tough to think of another sequel that essentially makes the original obsolete but that's what thousand year door is to paper mario 64. if i'm recommending a paper mario rpg to somebody i'm recommending thousand year door every single time the first paper mario is still great of course and it's got some standout moments of its own that aren't just taken wholesale and polished up in the sequel but thanks to how much polished that sequel is given paper mario 64 to me is sort of this museum piece game something that i can only recommend you play if you're already a fan of the games and you want to see where it all started do i think that 64 is a better game than origami king right now i would say yes i'm heavily over correcting though to account for any recency bias that i might have with origami king so if you asked me in a month after it simmered more my opinion might shift slightly in either direction that's in part why i'm exploring how essential each game is rather than talking purely about quality but while i've fallen in love with this polished almost zelda-esque adventure approach origami king still has that slight disconnect that all three modern paper mario games have had where they're still holding on to that jrpg combat despite very much not wanting to actually be jrpgs although i'm quite happy with the ring battle system for being a super unique concept again many bosses notwithstanding and while i don't think that i would take them out in this game specifically i do think that next time around i would very much rather have them just go full action adventure as quick as the battles may be there are still turn-based battles that feel very much at odds with the kind of game that origami king is trying to be to take a quote from my buddy rackrocks origami king feels like what thousand-year door would have been if it was made under the current restrictions it truly is that good that i'm making that comparison and it's why people have been slowly warming up to it this past week now that it's actually in their hands and not just some ethereal concept to hate online i'm confident that this team could knock it out of the park if the next game goes full adventure full zelda and even if that's not exactly what fans of the old school style want at this point it's starting to become their loss meanwhile paper mario 64 has always known what kind of game it wanted to be and it pulls that off with aplomb in a simple fun adventure that lasts exactly as long as it needs to if anything leaving you wanting more so if you personally wanted to consider the og paper mario the true number three on this list in terms of game quality you would have every right to on the other hand origami king might not be a better game than 64 to many people but i would say it's more essential because it's the kind of game that will very likely start to change your mind about the new direction for this series where sticker star and color splash failed in their goals origami king overwhelmingly succeeds even if it's not fully committed to going full zelda just yet no modern paper mario does what it aims to do better than the origami king while paper mario 64 is outclassed in every way by its sequel despite being a really great game by its own merits and speaking of the sequel that brings me to god could you imagine if i put thousand-year door in second after that i would actually be killed no number two is the wii's super paper mario i was hesitant to give this game a shot for the longest time thinking that the move away from rpg into 2d 3d 2.5 d platformer wouldn't quite be my style looking back i'm not sure why i thought that since you know i love platformers but i couldn't be happier to be wrong super paper mario completely busted my tentative list that was coming together for this video what i thought i would put much lower blew me away once i got past the slow start that sort of does this game a disservice and that's why i always try to put aside any preconceived notions i may have when i start a game up because anything can surprise you as long as you're open to it super paper mario's slow start is due to this platforming homage to the original super mario bros every one of the game's eight worlds is split up into four numbered levels just like the original world one one world one two world two three stuff like that more often than not you'll be moving from left to right stomping on goombas and other enemies and racking up a score that doubles as this game's experience points world one especially feels derivative thanks to its traditional grassy landscape and because of this it takes a while to get going even as it introduces this game's key gimmick the ability to jump at any point from a 2d plane of movement to a 3d one this will be the chief source of the game's puzzles and it leads to so many awesome little aha moments hazards like fire bars that would be a huge danger in a true 2d mario game are nothing when you can flip to 3d and straight up walk around them and it's just indescribably cool to see these levels from two completely distinct angles one key point though is that only mario can flip into 3d see throughout the game you'll gain access to peach luigi and bowser as playable characters to flip with mario each has his or her own ability like luigi's high jump peaches float or bowser's insane damage output while i really would have loved to see these characters used a bit more in addition to mario having mario's big four together in a playable capacity is wonderful with each having some unique text dialogue during every situation well besides mario because you know you can't have mario say too much in these games for some reason and these four playable options allow for different strategies during the game's boss fights those boss fights end up being pretty great too usually featuring two or more per chapter and really pushing the game past its traditional platforming roots it's a shame then that we don't really see that many times where super paper mario requires you to swap between characters and their abilities in order to progress the same goes for the pixels a series of little fairy sort of creatures that add to the gang's abilities there are pixels that act as bombs or grab enemies or objects or give you the ability to ground pound or replace mario's hammer because i guess he just forgot his this time and many more all fitted with fun names outside of the more out there hidden collectibles such as the catch cards you don't often need more than a couple of these pixels once you're out of the chapter in which you obtain them i just would have loved to see them push it a little bit more or really i would have loved to see them try a super paper mario 2 rather than completely shift styles yet again this is a really compelling base for a game that never quite kicks it into the next gear mechanically and a sequel in the vein of mario galaxy 2 could have taken this platformer style to the next level so with a slow start and gameplay that's solid but not a home run what is it that makes this game number two on this list that would be the story very mild spoilers ahead in case you haven't played it yet chapter to chapter the plot tends to be as formulaic as it's been in every game in this series go to a new area collect a star at the end repeat six or seven times until you're at the finish line but it's in between these chapters that the intrigue starts to build not only is there the mystery of your guide character tippy and her origins the evil intentions of count blek who's trying to completely wipe out every dimension as revenge and the intrigue of blek's cast of underlings interweaved between chapters we have little nuggets of conversation between two star-crossed lovers although the game takes its sweet time building its world by about the midpoint you'll be compelled to keep pushing forward sure you'll probably already know what twists are coming by chapter 4 or so but instead of turning you off figuring it out will click it into your head in such a way that you want to see how the game plays these reveals predictable certainly isn't a negative in this case and past that super paper mario makes the threat of blek's multiverse ending success all the more real by subverting that classic super mario bros level progression by showing a dimension where blek wins contrasted with the excellent often upbeat soundtrack prior to this this whited out netherverse is truly harrowing as you walk through the devastated empty remains of a kingdom that you trekked through only minutes prior and to cap this driving story off is an ending sequence that's equal parts hilarious and touching leading to what may very well be my favorite mario story of all time hey no you get the out of here super paper mario is a game that knows when to be funny though to be fair this game leans a bit further into weird fourth wall humor than i'd like in classic paper mario fashion it knows when to set up expectations just to subvert them later and it knows when to punch you right in the gut despite being the shortest or maybe second shortest game in this series clocking in at about 14 hours during my playthrough and despite having a little bit more filler than i'd like for such a short game and a platformer no less super paper mario has probably the most heartfelt story the greater mario franchise has seen and that fact if nothing else makes sticker star stylistic shift even worse because they were really onto something special here it's still got some issues of its own including the side content not being nearly as compelling as in earlier or more recent games and the parallel towns of flipside and flopside being really neat conceptually but kind of a chore to travel through but those don't detract from the core experience to any significant degree even if you may not think that this game is gonna be for you remember neither did i that's why i strongly urge you to give super paper mario a shot if you haven't yet already because there'll likely never be another mario game quite like it and this brings us to the most obvious ending possible the number one paper mario game both in terms of quality and essentiality was frankly never in question it's paper mario the thousand year door and just to head off any naysayers that might want to argue that i'm just saying this as a nostalgia pick i didn't play either thousand year door or super paper mario until this year and that didn't stop both games from blowing me away there's not much that i can say about 2004's gamecube classic that hasn't been said before other than that it my wife and there's not much that i can say that i didn't touch on or foreshadow earlier other than that it's without question one of the top 5 gamecube games ever made and depending on how you count mario sunshine and how you feel about later smash games it's just about the only top gamecube game left that you can't play in a better or equivalent form on another console this game broke every mario convention even as soon as its opening minutes when it moves from this bedtime storybook structure to just showing a noose in the town square this hub town of rogueport is an area so unparalleled in the mario series that i made an entire video talking solely about how awesome it is and by awesome i mean this grimy seedy dump of a town that's completely uncharacteristic of the plumber's norm as i said earlier thousand year door takes the original paper mario's base and cranks it up to 12 with so many wild locales and crazy characters that you'll wonder how they got away with making this game and then you'll remember that no other mario game since has been like it and you'll realize that they didn't get away with it from a chapter that lampshades pikmin to one where mario becomes the most legendary professional wrestler in the world to playing through classic super mario bros levels as bowser and princess peach sabotaging the villain's plans while captured aboard a nazi moon base to a chapter that forces you against your own party members as they think you're an imposter no two moments of thousand-year door are quite alike it takes the combat mechanics of its predecessor and polishes them to a radiant sheen including moments where mario and the gang interact with the growing crowd that watches these battles it takes the previously flat companions and gives them fascinating and sometimes outright sad backstories it has a razor sharp wit only maybe matched by origami king but it delivers that wit in a much more subdued manner with fewer laugh out loud moments and more chuckles and silent nods of approval it's just a phenomenal game on every single level if you want to hear more about exactly what makes this game so one of a kind i suggest checking out that rogue port video i mentioned earlier it's one of my favorite videos that i've made this year because it was just so fun to analyze how thousand eurodoor tries and succeeds at being different in every conceivable way i don't think i can distill what makes this game such absolute magic a once in a generation kind of game in any fewer words than i have here but hopefully that video will come close perhaps there will be a future paper mario one day that can fully recapture and reinvigorate thousand eurodoor's energy but until then i don't think there's much chance of another game dethroning the king are there points where your ranking differs from mine please be sure to let me know in the comments after all this is the kind of video meant to create a positive discussion around this wonderful series and with how much toxicity surrounds the non-rpg games i'd like to hear some of your favorite moments and parts of paper mario i also want to say that i didn't really prep a proper outro here because i didn't anticipate this video being quite as long as it is so um uh join me next time when i rank every ghost of tsushima game yeah yeah that thank you very much for watching especially if you made it the whole way through and didn't just skip to the end don't think i didn't notice i saw you go back if you're new here and you enjoyed the video even if you may disagree at points and you want to see more videos of mine make sure to do the thing that i'm obligated to ask you to do and subscribe and maybe even share the video too because sharing really does help if not that's fine too as always until next time stay golden i also want to give a huge thank you to my patreon producers for their generous support in particular special thanks to goldstorm oh seven wolfkosan matthew0606 and buckleschucklow if you'd like to support the vision of this channel and community and gain access to the golden bolts discord server you can do so at patreon.com the golden bolt thank you

Channel: The Golden Bolt

Views: 77,455

Keywords: the golden bolt, paper mario, ranking every paper mario, paper mario ranked, every paper mario ranked, ranking every paper mario game, ranking paper mario games, best paper mario games, paper mario the origami king, paper mario the origami king review, is paper mario origami king good, is origami king good, worst paper mario games, best paper mario, ranking all six paper mario games, paper mario tier liest, origami king review, paper mario origami king review

Id: 2KcCMAQluEo

Length: 45min 59sec (2759 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020