Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam 3DS review

## The Main Course

2 days ago was love day, and today I'm going to share something I do not love. This game.

Hi, I'm IBABluePeach, I play things.™

That's my trademark and if anyone says similar things to that, I'm allowed to sue you. And because I have said it in the internet, it's automatically real.

Enough of that, let's review.

   The game starts off with Luigi being the wussy that he is, scared of the dark and all that shiz. Toad #31279 being the lazy bum that he is (he's clearly capable), tells Luigi to take a peak at the hole there. Both are scared of a rat, Luigi falls, a book comes off the shelf, and a bunch of other things happen.

Okay, I'm pretty sure Mario has a whole variety of characters other than Toads, Goombas, Koopas, Shy Guys, Piranha Plants, and Hammer Bros. Considering that this game is exclusively using NSMB characters, I'd expect to see some Bloopers and Lakitus too!

Now I will admit, I haven't completed the whole game yet, but I'll review the juciest parts of the game.

Oh, this horrible abomination is back. I guess coming up with another guide character was hard. Trying to stay relevant and important as usual, this is Starlow, who Nintendo seems to never let go. You're officially a worse character than Kersti.

Oh yeah, this game let's characters meet their paper counterparts. Nintendo also promised there would be some ***very interesting interactions*** between them. I'm like some 23 hours into this game and I've yet to see that. I feel ripped off. In this part, you walk around Peach's Castle to get $$$ and other stuff until you are asked to collect Paper Toads. This game seriously needs its title changed to Paper Mario & Luigi: Mission Toad-possible because this is all you're going to be doing throughout the whole game if you want to make any actual progress. Of course, the first batch of Toad's hiding in Peach's Castle are easy, so you shouldn't worry about that. I will say that the trickiest one would be one of the Paper Toad's hiding in a regular Toad's shadow. But you have to talk to people.

Also, Paper Toads are the worse thing in this game. Getting kidnapped by Goombas, no other character has reached this level of patheticness. They are also stupid. During future Toad missions, they run away from you, knowing damn well that there are 2 Marios and 1 Luigi behind them. The worst part is that they are programmed to run away from you so after you catch them, you have to hear their bullshit dialogue saying stuff like "I thought it was Bowser's minions derpp." Mario does not look like a Goomba and the statement offends me because I am a social justice warrior. Okay, I'm not a SJW LMAO, but you get the idea, Mario ≠ Goomba and Mario ≠ Bowser.

Back to the main story, Toadette is in the game, and so are Lakitus telling you that they'll help you on your way. Your first enemies are Paper Goombas, whom get molested by Mario and Luigi because they've never seen something made out of paper when they just rescued Paper Toads a few minutes ago. You'll be fighting at least 50x of these and regular Goombas until you finally get introduced to a new enemy. ***Interesting gameplay*** they say, I've yet to see it. Now I will admit, where I'm at right now, it's actually starting to pick up, surprisingly.

    You get nostalgia battle music back, at least until you get introduced to Paper Mario, which comes at the cost of replacing it with crappy music. After that battle, we cut to Bowser's Castle, because we all care about what he's doing at the moment. Paper Bowser is conveniently present there, and here we go again! ***INTERESTING INTERACTIONS!***Since Bowser is always funny, the interaction is at least more interesting than all the other ones so far. Unfortunately, it's only Bowser. Paper Bowser only copies everything Bowser says afterwards. After playing Sticker Star, he's better off silent in this game as well instead of being a copycat and copying everything Bowser says. Since the first three Paper Mario games don't exist according to Nintendo, a silent Bowser from Sticker Star is better than one that copies everything, and I just repeated the same sentence again. Also they fight. I'm going to guess the real Bowser won because he still acts more than a leader than Paper Bowser does later on. Also Bowser Jr paper interaction.

Also there are many things that you don't have access to, only because they aren't introduced until nearly endgame. Like collecting beans from the ground. Since the brothers forgot all about drilling from Dream Team, and any other game before that, they don't remember until later on how to drill.

This game also brought something I didn't like from Dream Team: Expert Challenges. Now even worse. Instead of dodging an enemy once and then easily kill it the next turn, you have to dodge them 5 times now. They also brought another horrible thing, which is the Attackathon from Bowser's Inside Story, where you have to get a perfect on every attack in order to get awards. Your rewards......they are now expert challenges. Which means you don't earn your award, you buy them with more points that you earn. Also the Arcade has a ranking system, which is more unforgiving than trying to get 3 stars in Mario Kart: Super Circuit.

There is also something else this game has that is interesting to most: Amiibo$$$. All this does is give you extra battle cards which make the game easier. I don't own any, so I can't get this game over with quickly. You get them from beating specific enemies that drop amiibo$$$ cards. After all that, this game becomes boss battle after papercraft boss battle, after five Toad hunts and the cycle repeats for every NSMB world you go to. Next is the desert world.

    The desert is a place that is immense and empty. Uninteresting and such. I cannot tell you how many times I tried to keep myself awake trying to figure out where to go. If I'm starting to fall asleep when playing you're game, you know you probably did a poor job at it, or maybe I'm doing a poor job at falling asleep. After a few more boss battles, Luigi loses the book, the Koopalings kidnap the bros, and Roy makes a good point about their paper counterparts.

The million dollar question is, does this foreshadow a future Paper Mario game for the Wii U? Fortunately for you people that care, I have all the answers! It's going to disappoint a lot of you, but it's ***no***. "But why?" must be the first thing you're going to say. Why? Because this was nothing more than a little joke that should make you chortle. They're not really going to create another Paper Mario game. It's been dead for a while now, and Paper Jam was its only revival for any future Paper Mario games. Series games usually end with crossovers, unless you're Marvel, DC, Capcom, or someone else I'm not remembering. Anyways, Sticker Star probably turned off many people that would want another Paper Mario sometime in the future. Unless this becomes a thing, I will eat my words. For now, I say no more Paper Mario due to budget crisis and stuff, and my predictions better be right because I love having predictions come true. Just take a look at any Mario Party 10 topic before March on GameFAQs. Almost everything about that game that I predicted came true. I should still continue predicting stuff until I become a Nintendo game developer, a dream I like to think will never happen lol.

Anyways, I'm done with this game, if you like it, you like it.

Final verdict? I'm disappointed. I'm actually glad I'm not 13 years old or younger, because this would probably be the biggest disappointment in the world after Sticker Star happened. Probably because I had OCs more in mind back then. Regardless, I wasn't entertained by this game too often, and it's not really as funny as the other RPG games. Just imagine this, Nintendo announces a crossover with Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario. What would all the kiddies do? They would imagine that Nintendo would utilize all characters from previous RPGs and maybe new ones. Also it's the year 2010. How would you react? Sticker Star and Dream Team didn't exist yet. If it got released, many people would boycott it and be disappointed by it. But since Sticker Star exists, this game is kind of lucky to not receive a lot of criticism, at least from anyone that's not a reviewer. But since this is a review, it's getting 4.9/10. Hey IGN, I managed to do a better half-assed review than you did. Am I a good reviewer now?

Anyways, key points. People always say that Dream Team drones on forever. I actually feel that's the case for this game. It's probably because all the areas look the same. This is probably going to get some backlash only because the same could be said for any other past RPG game as well. The battle cards are a nice mechanic though, EXP cards are the best! But then again, amiibo$$$ are needed if you want to have everything. Thankfully it's just a bonus and not the entire game like Animal Crossing: amiibo$$$ Festival. At least I knew how this game was going to turn out, so I didn't really have high hopes. Now I don't care if OC characters made it or not. I just wanted a game that would entertain me with its unique things it has to offer, and this game doesn't really have much to offer. With this now, this game is my least favorite of the Mario & Luigi games, managing to be worse than Bowser's Inside Story, which I didn't know was possible. Bias, sorry.

This is how I rank them: Superstar Saga>Dream Team>Partner's in Time>Bowser's Inside Story>Paper Jam

I need to play Partner's in Time again, maybe then I'll decide how I'll rank the bottom 3. Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate Paper Jam, it's just a disappointment compared to other Mario RPGs I feel. Or maybe I'm just getting older and I'm no longer finding the same joy I had when playing any of the older games? Who knows, I actually still enjoy playing The Thousand Year Door and Superstar Saga. Maybe I have a bias for this game. Who knows. Share your stories if you have any, I could elaborate more about the situation about this game if you want.

Spoiler alert: Luigi never meets his paper counterpart and Toadette and Starlow don't meet theirs at all.

## The Side Stuff

Yes, part 2 of this review. Seems lazy, but whatever. Going back to this because I still never managed to make a few points clear. First point, I don't care about OCs, or at least not as much as I used to when I was younger. Second, I prefer Sticker Star over this game and believe this is the worst Mario RPG Nintendo has created. Hey guys, please redeem yourselves for the next sequels, if there are any, I don't want it to end on a *thorny* note.

    Back to more plotpoints because I actually feel like writing more. Mario & Luigi and the other Mario find Bowser's Castle, because the plot wants us going there before the two Bowser's unite, or something like that. The only thing stopping us.... two random ass Pokeys raining from the sky apparently with no explanation. We learn a new move, only because it became situational, and the same Pokeys stop us from reaching Bowser's Castle for no reason. Also they have more segments this time, for no reason. We fall to an underground area and we fight Spinies and ugly sand yellow guys that are called Sandmaargh. Now we do more fighting, which takes forever. The enemies in this game aren't hard, and don't take 8340204983 damage per hit, but they take forever to kill. After we get out of the underground area, we are immediately told by Toad #80352 to go do another fetch quest of rescuing Paper Toads. We are timed 20 minutes this time, but there should be no problem, it should take you at least 10 minutes to complete it if you fight everything. Also the sand area is called Doop Doop Dunes. I don't know why, but the whole world expected Doopliss to appear in this area, even though both things have nothing in relation and because this game only has NSMB and Sticker Star enemy exclusives. The next hour or so you'll spend trying to do more Toad Missions to progress, then you fight the Pokeys, then another Papercraft battle. NEXT!

I said it in the main review, I'll say it again. The Koopalings abduct the bros, Luigi loses the book and everyone is jailed. THE END. The game ends here. Evil wins for once.

No they don't. Paper Mario gets out of the cell, and then they fight Hammer Bros that stole their battle commands. After fighting rats and more Koopas, you fight Roy and Wendy. Because I didn't know what to expect, I beat the boss with 1 HP with all bros, something I would never expect to happen considering my luck. Then the bros escape the jail and they found themselves stuck in World 3, the tropical world. This world is pointless because you have to rescue more Paper Toads in order to make a boat and leave the world. There isn't even a boss in this world. This is bad level design. Just imagine me playing the water world from NSMBU and I get all the way through the castle only to find out that there is no boss.

After rescuing all the Paper Toads, we can sail away. We go back to World 1 and we are told to go back to Peach's Castle. She is kidnapped. Sorry, I forgot, there are two princesses this time. So we have to go to World 4, the ice world. Then a boss shows up out of nowhere and we fight Paper Petey Piranha. Now can can proceed.WTF is this? This isn't World 4. Oh, we have to get out of the spooky poisonous forest before we can go to World 4, why wasn't I told that we are playing the Worlds out of order in this game. This is World 5.

Because Sticker Star is the ***very BIG inspiration for this game***, much like that game, we find a Wiggler in this dump. He'll help us out, only if we give him a billion fruits laying around in the forest. The Wiggler likes melon, so we have to race a Yoshi. I actually ended up losing the race the first time because I didn't know what to expect. This is worse than getting a Game Over. Also much like Sticker Star, Paper Kamek mind controls the already mutated caterpillar and we have to fight both of them. After beating them, the Wiggler starts having smokes coming from his body, and he dies.

After almost shedding a tear from that cutscene, Wiggler evolves into Flutter. I expected that to happen, but apparently they have to play mindgames and toy with our emotions to make it look like Wiggler died. >:(

We can now go to World 4. So now we are in the ice world, I have no clue what the hell we're suppose to do here, so this is the part where I stopped playing the game and haven't got back to playing it for almost a month now, no thanks to my busy schedule. I guess this is where the full pointless review comes to an end. Anyways, see ya next time until I review Mario Party 10 for the Wii U.