New Paper Mario announced!

[Gendo]

Looking forward to it!

[Raxivace]

If its more like the N64 game and Thousand-Year Door I might pick this up.

[Gendo]

That's my hope. It's hard to say based on the info released so far, but one article said that it looks like it's getting back to the roots of the first 2. And Nintendo knows that those were by far the most popular, so hopefully they're smart enough to go that way.

[Raxivace]

Online fans may like the original games more (Myself included), though they seem to have been outsold heavily by newer games.

Paper Mario - 1.37 million
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - 1.91 million
Super Paper Mario - 4.23 million
Paper Mario: Sticker Star - 2.46 million

Source: https://www.vgchartz.com/game/226196/pa ... region=All

No numbers for Color Splash here, though it has "being a Wii U game" working against it lol.

[Gendo]

I wonder how those numbers compare when adjusted for system popularity though. I believe the Wii was Nintendo's best sold system by a lot. And also Super Paper Mario had the advantage of being a game in an already-popular series.

[Gendo]

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/financ ... index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Shows that the Wii had 5 times as many consoles sold as Game Cube, and 3 times as many as N64.

[Raxivace]

Yeah Wii had a much bigger install base, though I wonder how many of those Super Paper Mario sales were people that only picked the console up for Wii Sports and then wanted something else and how many were uh "core audiences" or whatever.

Even relatively speaking I'm kind of surprised Paper Mario 64 sold as little as it did. I guess it sort of makes sense in context though.

[Gendo]

2 years later, finally started playing this. (Origami King). So far, it feels a lot like Color Splash, which isn't great but isn't bad either. As with Color Splash, the battles end up just being something to avoid whenever possible, even though the battle system itself is neat. It just feels like you've wasted time if you accidentally get into a battle instead of avoiding the enemy. The fun is in exploring the overworld. Lots of collectables to find. Boss battles are really fun though.

[Raxivace]

That's a damn shame to hear. I guess that's why a lot of other JRPG's just heal you and/or restore MP after every single fight now though, so even if you just get EXP or whatever from an encounter it doesn't feel wasted.

[Gendo]

Just finished Origami King, 100%. Overall, it's fine. Fairly similar to Color Splash, I felt. Wandering around the world looking for hidden stuff was generally enjoyable, but wouldn't be for everyone. The really good part though was the boss fights. There were a fair number of bosses (10 or so), and they all had fun and unique fights. I really enjoyed doing the boss fights, and enjoyed going back and re-dong them in a minigame that's required for 100%. The final boss was a bit of a letdown in terms of difficulty. A few bosses were actually somewhat hard, though nothing too crazy of course.

It was also less grindy for 100% than pretty much any other Paper Mario. There were a handful of challenges that were actually quite challenging (a few minigames/challenges that took many attempts to win), but pretty much nothing where I felt like I had to do something stupid like run around grinding out a bunch more coins because I didn't have enough to do what I needed for 100%.

[Raxivace]

I kind of wonder what a Paper Mario game just with boss fights would be like now.

[Gendo]

I watched Arlo's long and very critical review of the game. I agree with almost all his points, although I'm more forgiving in general, probably because I'm not a heavy gamer or a professional game critic. The only thing I disagree with is him not liking the boss fights much more than the regular fights.

[Gendo]

This game had no staying power. That is to say, only 1 year later and I barely even remember playing it. You could point to various things that you did in the game, and I wouldn't be able to tell you if I did those last year in Origami King or a few years before that in Color Splash.

[Raxivace]

I think that just goes to show how necessary it is for Nintendo's franchises to be constantly reinventing themselves and trying new things. Even when I've really disliked some random sequel in whatever Nintendo franchise they're usually at least memorable.