@Deathborn:
The overreaction over Federation Force is really baffling. I remember during the time of Prime Trilogy that I often stumbled upon people wanting a multiplayer spin-off of Metroid where you play a Federation soldier… It's a spin-off. Get over it! At least, it is honest about what it is and is not parading as a main title when it isn't ... like Hunters.
It has been already stated multiple times that it would be more alluring to fans if it weren't for the fact that it's coming after years of not actually providing main games with the qualities people have come to love about the series. The insulting thing is the timing, it's like if they had released animal crossing amiibo festival after 6 years of no main animal crossing title.
Just because you clearly don't give a fuck about the game being a bastardized addition to the series doesn't mean that other people have to "get over it". People have the right to have standards about products they enjoy and to criticize content. Without criticism we're all just mindless consumers, but I guess you're ok with that?
Yeah! It must be because of those filthy casuals!
I'm blaming the company, not the audience. A proper management would involve catering to a wide demographic with titles aimed at each, instead of trying to make every title appeal to everyone. It's the same in any industry… you try to make a product that appeal to as many people as possible, you're going to miss a huge amount of your audience.
And not because they had 2 turn-based with timed input RPG series and that was redundant.
Probably why everyone keeps asking for more of it.
Classic Paper Mario battle system isn't as deep as you make it appear and was going nowhere. I absolutely loved the first Paper Mario but already started to get bored during Thousand-Year Door because the battles became stale really quickly.
Just with the badge system you have multiple ways of approaching battles. You say thousand year door was more stale but there was a literal fuckton more inventiveness in that battle system that the original didn't have. With the original paper mario I was able to cheese 99% of the battles with two things: charge and power bounce. Renders bosses useless and if you manage partners well the random enemies you fight in the overworld are no problem.
I tried the same thing in thousand-year door, and that didn't quite work. Bosses are actually structured to test adaptability to different situations, aside perhaps from Crump who's just weak every single time you fight him. Then you have things like the pit of 100 trials where item management, badge allocation and other things come into play and it's actually a rather enjoyable experience THAT REQUIRES THOUGHT. Gets even more interesting if you go and try the pre-hooktail pit of 100 trials.
Then you also have inventive sections like glitz pit thrown in between to make things interesting and… fuck man, are we talking about the same game?
The constant back and forth and forced grinding in some chapters didn't really helped (and Thousand Year Door is already divided in levels. They are just linked by a hub instead ot map).
GRINDING? IN PAPER MARIO? I'm certain now you're talking about some other game, because there's something fucking wrong if you're grinding in fucking paper mario.
Also, levels in paper mario rpgs is not even close to being the same thing as the level system they have in sticker star and seem to have in color splash. It's a game design thing. In the rpgs the game has life, the towns have residents and you move freely between them, exploring and interacting. It's worldbuilding, and pretty good one too particularly in thousand-year door where you have NPCs with their own individual story arcs and different lines at different points in the game.
Having a level system doesn't allow for that. It segments gameplay so that you enter, you have a mission, and you leave, and that prevents world-building from being as organic or player-oriented. Like, compare the world-building in Luigi's Mansion and Dark Moon, and you should see how it's different. In one it's you moving around and exploring, having missions of course but still you directing gameplay. In the other it's some old dude saying "oh, I done fucked up again, could you go to that mansion again to do this and only this and then be pulled back here before being sent back?"
it cuts the experience, interrupts it, and can even discourage further play, because hey, I got to sleep and I don't feel like doing another chapter. Whereas an open-world environment means it's easier to get lost and invested in the game's world.
It makes sense to me that they ditched it in favor of the superior Mario and Luigi system, which strangely require even more investment and focus.
Except that the mario and luigi system is much much closer to the paper mario system than it is to sticker star or color splash. The latter two involve collecting shit and then throwing it at enemies. The former involve character progression and attacks based on action commands.
Like, seriously, I want you to explain to me how color splash is in any way reminiscent to a mario and luigi game.
Add to this that they had a really original universe with the paper stuff but that it was completely disconnected from gameplay (and no, the occasionnal key-door interactions with paper transformations don't count). The trend I see after Thousand Year Door is that they decided to explore gameplay possibilities linked to the paper aspect of the universe: 2-dimensional, stickers and now color. Attributing the changes of concept to casuals gamers is bullshit.
It's like you work for Nintendo because you seem to also completely miss the point of what paper mario is.
It never was about wanting to play paper mario because he's paper. It's about wanting to play paper mario because it was a mario RPG. The original paper mario was even supposed to be a sequel/follow-up of sorts to Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars. The paper concept came in mind to justify the graphic system that they decided to go for, and it gave them an aesthetic much in the same way yarn became an aesthetic for that one yoshi/kirby game.
Thousand year door was more tongue-in-cheek about the paper mario concept, but it still had, in its direction, keen awareness of what it is people wanted in a mario RPG: original story, a good world you want to explore, and original characters. You know how people loved the fuck out of geno and mallow? Stuff like that. And hey, it worked! People love partners, because they had character, and in having character they gave mario characters and gave him a straight comedic role to play. Thousand year door even more so with much better developed partners.
What they're doing now is the complete opposite. It's an idiot in an ivory tower thinking the hype about the game is 1) paper and 2) mario, and giving us nothing but that. It's not the shitty gimmicks that keep people invested. They're selling points. What keep people invested in games is the experience, and in terms of paper mario that was as much about the character and story as it was about the gameplay. Super Paper Mario for Wii was not the RPG we wanted either, but guess what? It's story is really really elaborate, it has amazing characters and it's actually memorable, and in doing these things that one stands the test of time.
But nope, these games are fucking shallow empty shells of what people are asking for. Tapping stickers on a screen doesn't do shit if people don't care about what's happening, and sure, some people may enjoy these games and that's just as good, they're games in the end. But that doesn't detract from the point that it's Nintendo using a brand that came to represent something to sell something else. It's like if they finally showed us Zelda U and instead of a classic zelda experience it was a tower defense game. Fun? possibly. Zelda? Fucking no.
Does the next Paper Mario looks appealing? Not really… but we haven't seen anything, the concept could hold a lot of potential and Nintendo is notorious for making shitty first impressions while announcing games.
Yea… except that's not true. Thing is, unless there's drastic reworking into a title chances are you can capture the feel of it from the first release. It's this superpower you get from having played games and worked in the industry and developed an expertise for it.
What we have seen:
- All NPC characters are the same generic toad, OCCASIONALLY colored differently. Only other character is a floating bucket with eyes.
- No dialogue shown. A hallmark of Mario RPGs is quirky dialogue. None seen.
- Combat involved someone holding the stylus on a card and flicking it upwards. No other involvement was shown.
- It was referred to as an "action adventure" series.
- Toad collecting was shown as an objective in the game.
- Special powers revolve around lol it's paper instead of anything with character. It's not even a cute, pixelated fan with eyes... nope, just a fucking picture of a fan, like sticker star having "thing" stickers.
That says a lot. With Paper Jam it was the same thing, where from the very first trailer it was near exclusively "lol it's paper, get it?" mechanics instead of anything with actual character. And from the first trailer to the time it came out I saw nothing different. NOTHING. I have no reason to believe this game will be different.
What's also working against you is that I remember very precisely when thousand-year door was first previewed in e3 2004 and it was a very different situation. Things that were shown: return of action commands, quirky dialogue, new bad guys (shit it's a fucking giant dragon made of paper!), new setting, new stage mechanics, fuzzies raining from the ceiling in the middle of a battle. Oh yea, and side-scrolling Bowser I believe. See, that was a reveal that implied that there was character in the game, not something where the most creative character is a bucket with eyes and the second most creative is a yellow shy guy.
So while yes, ultimately a released product is what you judge, the thing is that it's very easy to have an idea of what a game's direction is from the first look. And this is a case where they can polish it as much as they want, but if the direction is not what the fans want it's not going to matter for shit. It's also a title to be released THIS YEAR, and it's probably the main mario game for Wii U this year so I don't think they're going to go and delay it or anything to completely change direction, or suddenly in E3 there's going to be a lively world full of original characters and a deep compelling storyline. If the aim of the game had been to provide that, it would have been shown.
Sticker star was really meh (the game design being mostly at fault IMO. The lack of character interactions and plot is just an aggravating factor. In fact, it may have been a consequence of the team struggling to make the concept work for a full game) but this one could be good.
It's been mentioned many times, mostly by me, how they had a working, standard paper mario game in the works until miyamoto stepped in and forced a change in direction, hence more focus on mario standards and on the sticker gimmick.
This one shows exactly the same principles in mind. It could be good, sure, but it sure as fuck isn't paper mario, it's just a mario made of paper.
Also, Paper Jam is a good game.
No one said it wasn't. It's just not… eh, you should know what I'm talking about by now.
edit:
for context, take a look at the thousand-year door trailer we got in 2004, which I believe was the first we saw of it after it was announced the year before: