@MetaMario:
No love for Partners in Time or Bowser's Inside Story?
I will always love Bowser's Inside Story as my first Mario RPG for making Bowser playable protagonist, the quirky inside anatomy locations, the seamless transition between the outside and inside world on opposite screens, the Fawful hijinks, the music, and perfecting the Mario & Luigi battle system. But I can agree with the flaws people point out about the gimmicky mini games/Giant Bowser battles and the overworld locales/NPCs/plot progression paling in comparison to Superstar Saga.
I sort of like Partners in Time. The best praise I can give it are the gloomy alien ambiances and making E. Gadd a major character like he deserves to be.
Everything Dream Team tried was done better in Bowser's Inside Story, but it's still sort of a decent game. And I still don't forgive that game for not remixing Popple's theme.
Paper Jam arguably has the best battle system gameplay in the Mario & Luigi series, but everything else about that game was mediocre, underwhelming, tedious, or annoying. I am not exaggerating when I say that two-thirds of the entire game are spent collecting Toads or piloting giant gimmicky paper crafts either. I will never play it again.
I liked Super Paper Mario a bunch. I can actually get into the gameplay and even the lack of partners in exchange for multiple playable characters and fairy weapons. It almost feels like the main series platformer Mario with actual effort put into having a story that I always wanted. Although you can definitely argue it gets too wordy. What mainly bothers me is the art-style though. Just… ew. Especially when so many of the characters and locales might have looked better in the original art-style. I guess they really wanted to play up the different dimensions gimmick both in sci-fi terms and geometry terms? I don't know, but it wasn't worth it and should have been used for a whole new series if they really wanted that. Also, great music in this game too.
I haven't even finished Sticker Star and never will. I couldn't stand the lack of battle incentive, generic world/story, and needing certain stickers to progress through levels. It had good music though.
I haven't bought Color Splash. I know it improved on the Sticker Star formula to make it at least somewhat tolerable, but I just can't get into the fact that you can't select which enemies to target in battle. Such a small complaint, I know, but when I look at that and think about how bothersome it will be to keep recharging your paint and cards, I can't stand potentially wasting my money on such core gameplay features.
It goes without saying that I love the first two Paper Mario games and Superstar Saga. Unfortunately, I have not played Super Mario RPG yet. Now that I I think about it, I may have even downloaded it on my Wii U. Looks like I have an extra pastime to look forward to this summer before college starts again.