With Paper Mario on NSO for a few years now and TTYD finally getting a remake, which of the two do you prefer? Both games are critical and user darlings for the most part and are the only two Mario games of their style. There is obviously other Mario RPGs (SMRPG, M&L) but they're more distinct.

Bonus question: Is your favorite Mario RPG neither of these two, and which one is it?

TTYD was a natural improvement over PM64 so it gets my vote.

Bonus: Super Mario RPG (Snes/Ns)

TTYD was an improvement in pretty much every area. Better looking (obviously), better story, better combat, better platforming, better level design, etc. Paper Mario was a great start, but it's kind of hard to argue it's better than TTYD. Although Watt is cute.

My favorite is either between TTYD and Bowser's Inside Story. Gun to my head I think TTYD would take it. It's probably better overall, but the pacing problems can make it a chore at times. Maybe the Switch remake fixes some of that.

Somewhat. There's an extra pipe at Creepy Steeple and the shortcuts to Chapters 1-7 are organized better.

But at the end of the day, most backtracking and pacing is still there.

I've seen some people on other forums complain about how much worse the backtracking is in TTYD over PM. I mean it probably is worse in that regard, but PM has backtracking in Chapter 4, backtracking after each boss, some backtracking in Chapter 5, etc.

I found the original Paper Mario to be better in almost every aspect: World design, characters, story, essence, charm... The only advantage over the original I see in TTYD are the papercraft abilities, which add a lot to the gameplay. But I enjoyed way more the more cohesive and mario-universe centered world and places of the original over the new races, places and characters introduced in TTYD, which had nothing to do with the franchise (I didn't even like the Sunshine people nor in Mario Sunshine and neither in TTYD, sorry). I enjoyed exploring the original's main city and the villages of the goombas, koopas, yoshis and every other classic race, while I didn't like much the darker/dirtier/out-of-charm tone of the port city in TTYD (althoug I recognize exploring its deepths and secrets with each new ability was nice). Neither liked any other village of the game (I don't even remember any of them, while I have fond memories of every race's place in Paper Mario 64). I also remember how cool and nice was to explore the places out of the cities, such as the forests and that beautiful mountain full of falling stars. The less intricated and more simple/traditional story of the original was also really nice for me, I don't need complex stories in Mario games that take away the charm of enjoying the world itself. The team members were also great by themselves and had nice abilities that contributed to make the world exploration more interesting.

So, overall, I rellay prefer how Paper Mario captured the essence of the mario universe and delivered a really nice world, characters and story without needing to add anything weird or unrelated to the said universe. For me is perfect and the only improvement it would need would be graphic related in order to make the characters and places look more detailed and defined to fit today's resolution and framerate standards.

Paper Mario, better pacing. 1000 is good, really good, but pacing can be off. The whole chapter with the arena is a massive chore. Paper Mario also gets points for being the first.

I just beat the Pit of 100 Trials in TTYD on Switch. I never attempted the whole pit on GameCube.
TTYD's largely unchanged remake (in terms of gameplay, dialogue, and feeling) still reigns supreme for me in Mario RPGs and probably cracks my Top 5 favorite games.
Playing Paper Mario (N64) on NSO around the same time this year made me sour on it a little. On a numerical scale, it went from about a 9.5-9.6 to me down to a 9.2-9.3.
I know it's sort of unfair to overly compare elements of the action commands and battles to TTYD, but well I'm free to make the comparison. The only things I prefer off the top of my head in Paper Mario are the star abilities/star spirits (just press them to use abilities), and there's less backtracking as well (but still plenty).
The dialogue in TTYD is so much better. TTYD is a hilarious game but very little in comparison made me laugh in the original. TTYD's dialogue also is more poignant and memorable in general.
Of course, the combat is a lot better and at least you can save after the final boss and not be stuck on a screen that requires a reset.
So TTYD is my pick of the two, with the remake as superior over the OG despite the OG having 60 FPS and better dialogue skipping and a dialogue backlog.

Both games are equally awsome in my opinion

I'm a bit bias toward the original Paper Mario which I played like 4-5 times over the years.

But TTYD which I last played in 2015 was great. Havent played the remake yet but my vote goes to the original Paper Mario. Very nostalgic.

TTYD is one of the best Mario games ever period. It's a perfect example of a game being able to have a relatively dark and serious plot while remaining charming and lighthearted at its core.