Unpopular opinions about the Mario series

Shy Guy on Wheels said:
It's your fault for playing Sticker Star in the first place.
Click to expand...
Sticker Star isn't that bad, folks. Y'all didn't get out your pitchforks for Ride to Hell Retribution, and that was more of an offensive smear on humanity.

Moldomré said:
I've never really understood why people hate Starlow. So please, everyone tell me why you hate her and you might be able to convince me/make me see the truth.
Click to expand...
She overstayed her welcome way long ago and she should just die an explosive and bloody death.
 
Starlow's just...okay. I've appreciated watching her character development throughout the games, but really...she shouldn't have left BIS. DT would have been fine with just Dreambert, and PJ only had Starlow as an excuse not to add even one OC.

As uncreative as they say Sticker Star and Color Splash are, at least they both had one OC. Paper Jam didn't even have that. They didn't even introduce paper forms of pre-existing characters like Toadsworth, or include any OCs from previous M&L or PM games.
 
People care way too much about OCs. What they should care about is good writing.
 
Original characters don't define what makes a game creative by themselves. It's how they are written what matters more. Good original characters don't occupy spaces that Canon characters can comfortably do, for instance. Good original characters also aren't inexplicably stronger than the Canon characters right the moment they appear, which a lot of the villains absolutely fail that test. OC characters come with their own lazy and tired tropes, being that of Mary Sue. Probably haven't read enough fanfics of OC characters, but those characters tend to have their own cliché pattern of characterization, and yes, Mario OCs do fall in there.

Paper Jam was fine without OCs and I imagine trying to add OCs would just make the game spiral quickly out of control. Crossover ideas are so common in fanfic, Paper Jam could have easily turned worse than Super Paper Mario.

Dream Stone Spirit said:
OCs are the basis of creativity, and creativity is the basis of good writing.
Click to expand...
they certainly are not inherently creative.
 
Don't tell me Paper Jam was fine without OCs. The story was so bland and the weakest of any Mario RPG, partly due to the complete lack of OCs. Having no OCs is fine, if they can make up for it by expanding on the personalities of pre-existing characters. But, to put it bluntly, Paper Jam didn't.

There were some great aspects of Paper Jam, especially the core gameplay, but saying that Paper Jam did "just fine" without OCs when it clearly didn't is just wrong. Compare it to Partners in Time, which, while the story did have missed potential, it made up for it with sheer creativity and an abundance of OCs. Paper Jam's story needed to be outright rewritten.
 
Yeah, it seemed fine to me. The storytelling might be "bland" but it's very straightforward, just being Mario and friends warping to a paper world. Bowser is also involved. Now Bowser and Paper Bowser team up and do bad things. Mario and friends try to stop them. We don't need much more story beyond that, and it's so refreshingly simple. It's hard to mock it for being tryhard because it's not being tryhard. Honestly, you're giving too much weight on the OCs and not enough credit to the pre-existing characters, who have a lot more to work from than new characters obviously. You CAN give them creative attributes too as with any other OC. I'm not sure what made you think Paper Jam didn't expand on the existing characters, it certainly put them in completely new situations. Just having characters interact with themselves is funny tome and they can even write themselves.

Partners in Time's story was ridiculous (Peach's plotline of trapping Queen Shroob was half-assed and probably wasn't necessary) as with any other Mario story, but the Shroobs were written better than the other villains and I feel they had actual motivations. (Baby) Bowser wasn't tossed aside like used tissue wad when the Shroobs invaded, he actually posed some degree competence, though adult Bowser contributed nothing, if I recall correctly. I wouldn't call Partners in Time's abundance of OCs directly tied to whatever creativity it showcased, as Super Paper Mario had a further skewed ratio of OC- original characters and it turned out to be dreary and cliche and boring.
 
Dream Stone Spirit said:
OCs are the basis of creativity, and creativity is the basis of good writing.
Click to expand...

By that logic Mario would have died out years ago after Donkey Kong. In fact franchises with recurring characters wouldn't exist due to this bizarre notion that a character has to be "original" in order to be good.

Dream Stone Spirit said:
Don't tell me Paper Jam was fine without OCs. The story was so bland and the weakest of any Mario RPG, partly due to the complete lack of OCs. Having no OCs is fine, if they can make up for it by expanding on the personalities of pre-existing characters. But, to put it bluntly, Paper Jam didn't.

There were some great aspects of Paper Jam, especially the core gameplay, but saying that Paper Jam did "just fine" without OCs when it clearly didn't is just wrong. Compare it to Partners in Time, which, while the story did have missed potential, it made up for it with sheer creativity and an abundance of OCs. Paper Jam's story needed to be outright rewritten.
Click to expand...

As someone who just finished playing Partners in time like, a day or two ago, and while I did enjoy it, I'm struggling to find what was so creative about it. The scenario was just a typical alien invasion storyline with some time travel shenanigans to justify it's present meets past scenario.

In fact. It probably has the least amount of new characters in any game in the series prior to PJ since the only new characters in it of note are Kylie Koopa, Toadbert, and the Shroobs themselves who all act the same. The rest of the game's major characters are all pre-established long timers and their past counterparts.

And Paper Jam most certainly did "expand on the personalities" of those involved (and I put that in quotes since this franchise will contradict itself all the time for the sake of the current game) primarily with people like Toadette, the 2 Bowser jrs, the koopalings first actual talking role and how Bowser is negligent of his son when busy with his princess kidnapping/world conquering schemes.

Being "original" (which by the way is a misnomer since most Mario characters are just derivatives of some long running trope of some kind) doesn't make for inherently good character types or creativity. Execution above all else is what matters.
 
Paper Jam's entire story just felt like the developers thought "hey, let's pretend Partners in Time never happened and instead make a new game with the same focus on character interactions! Hmm...we can't do time travel again, so let's make it paper instead! Yeah! That's sure to rope in those Paper Mario fans! You know what? Using four buttons was a point of criticism in Partners in Time, so let's cut Paper Luigi from the game because making him an NPC wouldn't make sense! What a brilliant idea! Oh, we better make the entire story SUPER unoriginal because the platformers can get away with that! Oh no, our deadline is approaching, we'd better make the story even more bland by making the entire story propelled by the wreckage of this one bridge that makes everything super inconvenient for the player when they finally get around it! And to top it off, let's make Twinsy Tropics Dungeon so tedious that people will despise us even more for creating this gameplay inconvenience! A genius idea!"

Thus is the story of the development of Paper Jam's story.
 
I mean, Paper Jam didn't even try to highlight the subtle differences between how characters are portrayed between M&L and Paper Mario. Most of their defining traits in Paper Jam are that they don't have voice clips and they flap around in the wind, otherwise being literally the same character in every possible other aspect. Paper Luigi isn't even there in any meaningful way, and coincidentally enough he's the most distinct one in the PM series since he has full lines of dialogue. Gee, I wonder who was afraid of that confrontation of having a paper character portrayed differently from his non-paper counterpart. Paper Bowser's personality is also copy-pasted from M&L Bowser. While in the PM series he's always been more light-hearted, even in PM64 when he was the villain, he was still goofier than modern M&L Bowser. If you can't highlight any differences in portrayal other than being flappier when the wind blows, what's the point of crossing them over to begin with.

I can also think of many places when (previously-established) OCs would've made more sense than what was put, namely when we start seeing main series bosses like King Boo and King Bob-Omb who have no prior connection to either of the 2 specific subseries that are supposed to be the focus. Wiggler sure, he's been in every M&L, and Petey's been in Partners in Time. But really, choosing characters that have never been in either of the 2 series over characters that would highlight the crossover aspect just because they're "main series" was unnecessary. Good boss fights and portrayals, but they would just be better suited to a full-on M&L title ala Petey in Partners in Time. Nabbit also has nothing to do with either series and would've been cool to see in a straight-up M&L or PM, but in a crossover I really think what has previously been in the series makes way more sense. Like oh idk... M&L's own recurring thief character. (Popple)

M&L had a very dedicated line of recurring characters starting with Fawful but then establishing stuff like the Brocks, Elite Trio, bringing back other Beanish, making reference to the Shroobs, etc for BIS and DT. Paper Jam just felt very disconnected from the series it was in, and even moreso from the so-called guest series. Especially since the extra modes in the remakes have made full use of them, despite making even less sense there (Elite Trio for one, their appearance in the SSS remake was nice but kind of opened up a lot more questions than it answered, while at the end of DT they were last seen fully ready to fight alongside Bowser on his next plan)
 
Dream Stone Spirit said:
Paper Jam's entire story just felt like the developers thought "hey, let's pretend Partners in Time never happened and instead make a new game with the same focus on character interactions! Hmm...we can't do time travel again, so let's make it paper instead! Yeah! That's sure to rope in those Paper Mario fans! You know what? Using four buttons was a point of criticism in Partners in Time, so let's cut Paper Luigi from the game because making him an NPC wouldn't make sense! What a brilliant idea! Oh, we better make the entire story SUPER unoriginal because the platformers can get away with that! Oh no, our deadline is approaching, we'd better make the story even more bland by making the entire story propelled by the wreckage of this one bridge that makes everything super inconvenient for the player when they finally get around it! And to top it off, let's make Twinsy Tropics Dungeon so tedious that people will despise us even more for creating this gameplay inconvenience! A genius idea!"

Thus is the story of the development of Paper Jam's story.
Click to expand...

It's plot is about as original as anything else the series ever had.

The storylines have never been the high point of this series. Character interaction is all it's ever had going for it.

And I find it funny you give shit to PJ for re-using plot devices when the game you're profile is currently referencing re-uses about a half dozen plot devices from superstar saga.
 
Mcmadness said:
Dream Stone Spirit said:
Paper Jam's entire story just felt like the developers thought "hey, let's pretend Partners in Time never happened and instead make a new game with the same focus on character interactions! Hmm...we can't do time travel again, so let's make it paper instead! Yeah! That's sure to rope in those Paper Mario fans! You know what? Using four buttons was a point of criticism in Partners in Time, so let's cut Paper Luigi from the game because making him an NPC wouldn't make sense! What a brilliant idea! Oh, we better make the entire story SUPER unoriginal because the platformers can get away with that! Oh no, our deadline is approaching, we'd better make the story even more bland by making the entire story propelled by the wreckage of this one bridge that makes everything super inconvenient for the player when they finally get around it! And to top it off, let's make Twinsy Tropics Dungeon so tedious that people will despise us even more for creating this gameplay inconvenience! A genius idea!"

Thus is the story of the development of Paper Jam's story.
Click to expand...

It's plot is about as original as anything else the series ever had.

The storylines have never been the high point of this series. Character interaction is all it's ever had going for it.

And I find it funny you give *bleep* to PJ for re-using plot devices when the game you're profile is currently referencing re-uses about a half dozen plot devices from superstar saga.
Click to expand...
I don't know what you're talking about. Dream Team didn't reuse that much from Superstar Saga. What, you're referring to Popple? He only appeared in the game for an hour at most. He was a mere reference and had little relevance in the story. That didn't detract anything from what is by far the most creative M&L game to date.

Paper Jam, on the other hand, had absolutely nothing original. Nothing. As FTG said, it felt very disconnected from the other M&L games and even more disconnected from the PM games. It had no OCs, not even pre-existing OCs (besides Starlow) from previous Mario RPGs. The plot was a direct ripoff of the mainline games, made even blander by the fact that the entire thing is driven by the wreckage of a bridge. I absolutely despise the Twinsy Tropics Dungeon so that plot point did nothing good and only served as a terrible inconvenience to the player. If they had instead let you bust into Bowser's Castle at that early part of the game, and actually fight the Bowsers that early on, then they could have put another plot twist there instead that would help the story take off and be more original. But if the only plot twist they could actually come up with is a gameplay inconvenience, keeping in mind that these are the very same developers who made four previous games bursting with creativity, is just pathetic. And if you're going to bring up Neo Bowser Castle, that's just a ripoff of Dream Team that could have been done much earlier instead of them wrecking that dang bridge.

I liked Paper Jam. I liked the battle system, I liked moving as a trio, I liked the quest system, I liked the Papercraft Battles, I liked the character interactions. But I did not like the story, and I can't see why you guys are defending it.
 
Mcmadness said:
People care way too much about OCs. What they should care about is good writing.
Click to expand...

I care about OCs...

As long as they're mine.
 
Beanbean Kingdom
P'illo Kingdom
Prince of both kingdoms is a major ally.
Bean Star
Dream Stone
both are wish granting macguffins the main antagonists want.
One of the 2 main antagonists is a magical, three pointy fingered, laughing person who wears a cape with similar powers and abilities.
mid game collection quest
End game involves a flying castle

And that's just off the top of my head.


Also still waiting for you to actually address my points rather than just repeating yourself. You keep saying that past games were "full of creativity" and I'm still waiting for you actually outline what was all that original. Because as someone whose played as many games as I have, I'm not seeing it. At all.
 
Mmmm, Fawfulthegreat64, I think you might be overstating any character differences and they're probably colored by your own biases. Luigi, I think, has the most defined differences between his Paper counterpart and... well... virtually every other Luigi variation (maybe besides the rather vain Luigi from Fortune Street and that articulate Luigi from Luigi's Mansion). But I don't even like how Luigi's paper version is depicted; Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario, as he's too bold, too arrogant for my liking. And he's a lame stuck-up loser in Thousand-Year Door.

I really don't know how that different Paper Bowser is from M & L Bowser; they both had their lame moments and their moronic moments and their "shit got real moments" and their "badass cartoon villain jokes". The real takeaway is that there is an excuse for two of each character without getting easily confused. And I'm pretty sure the paper characters allowed for Papercraft making and all, don't know how that stuff works, but it should play into that setting.

Not sure how Popple would fit in without feeling phoned in, honestly. Do we use Doopliss as his counterpart? Can't have BeanBean crap without Fawful, and who's going to be Fawful's strong counterpart? I don't think Nabbit would've been all that necessary, but if they really needed a thief character, Nabbit probably is the path of least resistance.

As for disconnection, I see your point, but I'm not sure if coherency really is Mario & Luigi's strong point, as we got terminally amnesiac recurring characters like Kylie and Popple, and that was before Paper Jam. Even after Paper Jam, you see Shroob pictures in Mario's House in the Superstar Saga remake, which doesn't really make any sense to me. Partners in Time is time-travel and all, you say, Mario and Luigi show no recollection of meeting Shroobs before, in the beginning of Partners in Time, since they get defeated easily and have to be explained what's going on when the time machine doesn't come back. It just doesn't make sense to me chronological-wise but makes a lot more sense on the game design side, where developers just like their past games and reference them for jokes.

I can't say it enough: Mario has no canon, even within their own subseries that sometimes show a slight resemblance of canon. Paper Jam really shows. They just want to do something crazy with Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario but without inviting all the contrivances both these worlds have, so they went with established characters.

Dream Stone Spirit said:
I liked Paper Jam. I liked the battle system, I liked moving as a trio, I liked the quest system, I liked the Papercraft Battles, I liked the character interactions. But I did not like the story, and I can't see why you guys are defending it.
Click to expand...
I'm defending it because it's so stupid and simple as Mario plots should be. It's nonsense, but self-aware of its nonsense (via paper jokes), so it doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's why I love the plots to Mario Party and love the plot to Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix, and I'm growing to love the Mario & Sonic plots (remember hating them but realized how on-par they are to Mario Mix's plot). Mario should use those kinds of plots in the future rather than try to play it straight like Super Paper Mario. Hell, even parody plots, which are done to death too, work better in Mario plots.
 
Shy Guy on Wheels said:
[Starlow] purely exists to shit on Luigi.
Click to expand...
Waluigi pretty much has this covered.
772px-MP4_star.jpg
 
I feel like Waluigi spends more time being shat on than doing any shitting.
 
Waluigi is that guy who tries kicking Luigi while Luigi is smelling the roses but winds up kicking a nearby Wiggler because his aim sucks.
 
M&S at the London Olympics is worse then M&S at the Winter Olympics in almost every way.

Events

The events feel more like a test of patience then anything else. Oh yes, swinging the controller to right for the next half hour definitely sounds like fun, and having to do it for two rounds sounds like even more fun. The only event in Winter that took a significant amount of time was Curling, and at least that was fleshed out. Table Tennis is literally just swinging the controller to right and waiting for the CPU to purposefully screw up, and sometimes having to press the B button to perform your Special Shot when it's ready. Football's default time is 10 Minutes, and it doesn't use the special time speed up magic that was used in Speed Skating, you literally have to spend 10 minutes playing what is essentially a glorified minigame. It's almost exactly the same as Ice Hockey in Winter, which was only 60 seconds long.

Dream Events are the only developed events in London, and the fact that Winter just copy and pasted the exact same event onto a new map with items and was still just as developed as the Dream Events in London shows how undeveloped the main events in London are.. 90% of the standard Events are swinging the controller around like a madman (track events, swimming, table tennis, javelin, long jump, badminton), or to a specific rhythm (canoeing, gymnastic events, discus, hammer). Football (literally just Ice Hockey), Cycling, Equestrian, and Beach Volleyball are the only developed standard events in London. The only events I haven't mentioned are Fencing and Shooting, and while they require some effort, they're definitely not developed. In Winter a lot of the events gave you control over where you went, it made the events requires some effort, even if the CPU players were a literal joke. Bobsleigh and Skeleton required you to stay in the line, Snowboarding and Skiing gave you full control over what you did, and Speed Skating required you to turn. That may not sound like a lot until you remember that the Track events in London were just swinging the controller up and down with nothing else to them.

The amount of Dream Events is also lacking. Not every event got a Dream Event in London, while in Winter every category got an event, alongside the unique Dream Gliding and Dream Snowball Fight.

London Party

London Party is literally just the Party Games and Festival Mode rolled into one. It improves on Festival mode by having more then just Events, and improves on the Party Games by actually having depth. The problem? It's the only side mode. You can play events by themselves, or a mode that lasts 30 Minutes at the bare minimum. Want a quick series of events you can play with your friends in a short time span? Nope, you have to spend 30 minutes playing this mode. Want to play through a Marathon of events? Well you also have to play through minigames, collect stickers, and run around a map for the duration of the mode.

While London Party is an improvement over what came before it, it comes at the cost of variety.

Shopping

Shopping is purely worse in London. In Winter completing an event gives you a few Star Points, getting a medal gets you more, break an Olympic Record or World Record and that's even more Star Points, and completing a challenge for the first time gets you even more Star Points. On the other hand if you complete an event in London you get a Scratchcard, if you get first place, break a record, or complete a challenge well give yourself a pat on the back because otherwise you won't get anything at all. No matter how well you do you always get only one Scratchcard, no more, no less. Before you can redeem those Scratchcards for something you want though, you get to waste your time scratching them to get a chance at winning something that you don't want. Yes Mr. RNG, I really did want that Navy Blue Table Tennis Shirt instead of something cool like those remixes. The fact that I actively want to fail at winning anything should speak volumes as to how bad the concept of Scratchcards is.

Let's also talk about going to shops, because that's worse too. In Winter you had a nice little village for the menu. The shops were... shops, the village had the playable characters walking around it to give it some life, and you could even buy some decorations to make it look nicer. Meanwhile London is just a boring menu with no personality or anything interesting to it. You select whether you want to exchange the blank cards or scratch the new ones you've gained, then select what you want to buy on a menu and that's it. No village to look around and decorate, no hidden shops down an alleyway, just a boring menu. Even what you can buy is worse. In Winter you could buy Music, Cosmetics for your Mii, the Special Shop allowed you to buy special content such as previously mentioned decorations, the Winter Gear shop allowed you customise your Bobsleigh, Skis, Snowboard and Hang-glider, and the library allowed you to read about the history of the Olympics. London only allows you to buy Music, or cosmetics for your Mii, removing three things you could buy in the previous game.

The only real improvement is that you don't need a special item to change the music of an event, and you can permanently set the default music of an event, but everything else is pretty much a downgrade.



Overall I rate this game Sonic Heroes but with Guitars/10
 
Dream Stone Spirit said:
Beijing > London > Sochi > Rio > Vancouver

That's my stance.
Click to expand...

How is Beijing the best one? It was a novelty as the first game (A bit of a shame on myself that it's the only one I actually own. But I think I'll definitely change that for the Tokyo game on the Switch) but it's rather clunky now revisiting it compared to later entries with many a forced motion control.

I'd even say Rio was probably a better game then the first since while it lacked content the execution of many events are improved.

Anyway for me, Vancouver and London remain the best ones of each respective season of Olympics. I do have some decent hopes in the Tokyo game to perhaps be the best Summer olympics based solely on the fact that Sega has had the license since 2016 and the game will be based in Sega and Nintendo's home country. They should hopefully put their best effort in representing the homeland.
 
I liked how Beijing actually had that Olympic feel, unlike the other installments (and I'm not basing this off of nostalgia, as I played Beijing last), but thinking about it more, I should probably have ranked it lower due to the smaller roster and lack of Dream Events. Also, I'm basing this entirely off the console versions, as I don't have any of the handheld versions.

Wait, did I actually put Rio above Vancouver? That was a mistake. Rio sucks.

So, for a more accurate ranking...

London > Sochi > Beijing > Vancouver > Rio
 
I don't know how anyone could rank these when they are all bad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back