Allllrighty, so comments on
Paper Jam.
After the last entry in the series, I was hoping for something a bit more humorous.
Dream Team fell a little flat in the humor department. Well, this one improves in that department, although I don't think anything had me rolling. It's more subtle, chuckle-worthy humor.
The addition of Paper Mario is a good one, too. It adds a lot to the complexity of the battles, and keeping track of all three characters when trying to counter is pretty rough at times. There's also an "emergency guard" button that went pretty much unused, although there were times I probably
should have used it.
Make no mistake, enemies will take you to task until you learn their patterns. I definitely didn't slide through with no game overs. One battle in particular with some Shiny Bob-ombs early in the game absolutely destroyed me. The Wiggler boss was one of the hardest, and the final set of bosses has very little margin for error... and I blew the timing many, many times at the end. Keep your items stocked up, you're gonna need 'em. (I was also probably very underleveled, so your mileage may vary.)
You can also employ "battle cards" now. You earn Star Points for successful attacks, and you can spend them on one of three cards at a time that are pulled from your deck of 10. These can tilt a fight your way, and after ignoring them for some time, they really saved my bacon in the end game. They don't use a turn when played, so if you keep some healing ones in the deck, you can use them to heal up without wasting a potential attack turn.
The Trio attacks are pretty cool, too. They're even bigger attacks than the Bros. attacks, and only Paper Mario can trigger them. My two standbys at the end were Trio Kite and Trio Shuriken. I never really got the hang of Trio Meteor, so I went with stuff that I knew could consistently damage enemies.
The game looks about like what you'd expect from a
M&L game. I like the addition of the paper stuff, though... except for the Papercraft battles. Now, don't get me wrong, they're alright, but the control isn't all that great. I'm sure part of that is to reflect the oversized, tank-like nature of the papercrafts. There's a weird rhythm-based minigame to charge up your attacks, and there's some strategy towards the end for when to sneak in a recharge. I could have done without it, but as a change of pace, it was fine.
Also added to the mix are other various minigames. Most of them deal with finding paper Toads, or saving them. Unlike some folks, I thought the diversions were just fine. I actually did all the hard mode challenges as well... although there are a few that I'm sure cropped up after the final run. It's been pointed out that these let some asset re-use happen, but that particular usage doesn't bother me.
The game really doesn't waste your time that much. The tutorializing has been pushed well into the background (it's optional, and you can even practice in-battle for the various team attacks). Unless you count the Toad hunts as wasted time, of course. There's a little bit of revisiting areas, but you usually get to new territory pretty quickly.
All in all, I enjoyed the game a ton. It's definitely not as good as
Bowser's Inside Story, but it's really close to
Superstar Saga. Certainly an improvement on
Dream Team, and there's no touchscreen stuff, either. I'd definitely recommend it to fans of the series. I'd probably start with some of the other games if you're new to it, but this isn't a bad place to start, either.
The last thing I didn't mention was the music. Some of it's the expected
Mario-sounding stuff, but it's Yuko Shimomura. There's some
excellent tunes in there, with one of my favorites being
this one.
