the_dengle said:
Mario riding around on the little Yoshi is pretty slapsticky. And I wouldn't call the stadium battles normal; as I recall, a lot of the later ones had caveats like, 'you can't jump,' or 'you can't use items.' Maybe some other things like having to nail a certain number of action commands. I don't remember exactly. I am genuinely curious though about what part of Paper Mario's story you find so engaging if it isn't the humor. The tournament is a good example but it's still just one instance. How about, say, the Toy Box chapter of the N64 Paper Mario? |
Honestly, I don't remember much from the original title outside of running away from ghosts and the final sequence. I do remember enjoying the Yoshi's Island part, though. I don't really remember a lot of humor from the first game.
TTYD:
Chapter 1: epic castle with a spooky tale of this monstrous dragon
Chapter 2: Hated it. Nothing fun here.
Chapter 3: Mysterious fight pit and cool unfolding events
Chapter 4: Cool mystery story again and it was a somewhat spooky tale, which thank god was intriguing because the gameplay in this part was literally "run to the castle! now run to the town! now run to the castle!" going through the same instances and fighting the same enemies over and over...
Chapter 5: Cool Pirate story and exploring the unknown caves. When you fought the pirate captain, he turned to your side, and then you had a HUGE epic battle against the Naut guys, that was so epic! I think that's one of my favorite story sequences.
Chapter 6: The mysterious events happening on the train. The penguin was funny and I enjoyed his deductive humor. I loved the desolate atmosphere of exploring the train station in the middle of the chapter, and I loved the way the chapter ended with the last boss. It was rather creepy seeing everyone missing from the train right before the boss battle.
Chapter 7: One of the less interesting story areas, but finally finding the super computer guy was really cool. Speaking of which, I LOVED his story parts with peach. His character really developed and you could feel his emotions. The gameplay in these sections sucked, but I loved them regardless.
Chapter 8: Biggest turn of events in the story, you start to figure out more about the ancient town, and the final confrontation against the ghost sisters and the final boss is so awesome. I feel really heroic when the battle starts and (don't tell anyone I said this) I get chills when it plays that cheesy sequence of the Stars calling out to everyone to give mario support.
Not mentioned above: Seeing the port town evolve as the gameplay went on was really fun, as was exploring the ruins under the ground and figuring out more and more about them.
