Paper Mario 2

When I first heard of Paper Mario 2 or actually when I saw the first videos I thought it could be indead also make fun to play RPGs. Until then I only had played 2 games of the Pokémon series and Final Fantasy X which was the reason why I kept away from this genre for so long g I like round-based battles but FFX simply frustrated me and kind of bored me.

But Paper Mario 2 is exactly the opposite. The round-based battles are actually very easy to learn and not the least boring simply they also require some activity on the players site. You have for example to push a button or a combination of buttons in the right order and at the right time which isn't all that complicated or hard but adds the sort of action to round based battles I was missing in the kind of battle system for too long :-)

But wait... perhaps I should start with a little intro to this game first ;-) Paper Mario 2 has more or less your typical Mario-universe-storyline: Peach gets peachnapped and Mario has to fight the bad guys to win her back. More or less because the story is a little bit more complicated than that but the basics are the same. I won't give any more details or I would have to put a big big spoiler warning on the frontpage ;-) The game simply lives from its quite nice story and the great ideas the developers had, so I could take some AH!OH! effect away from you which is something I certainly don't want to do.

Mario is not alone on this quest. After just a few minutes you find your first ally who also fights with you in the battles. But not only that. Every ally brings new techniques into the team which you can use to solve puzzles, find hidden items and things like that.

As the name already indicates the game doesn't have the kind of graphic you'd expect after playing - let's say - Super Mario Sunshine or Mario 64. The graphic style of the characters could have been taken directly out of a fairy tale book. Mario and his friends (and foes) appear as 2-dimensional drawings in a more or less 3-dimensional environment. Sounds strange, well it is, but it looks great :-) Best check out one of the movies for example available on gamespot.com to get to know the graphic style. The graphics are very fluid and you won't experience only 1 or 2 slowdowns during the game, at least I noticed 2 during my 32+ hours playing this game.

The sound is quite Mario like. From spooky in the ghost mansion to wintery in the snow country to happy in the villages. High quality as usual :-) Even Mario knows 2 sounds ;-)

The controls are very simple. Every move will be introduced when you learn it and you will have enough time for practicing it before needing it. You also get upgraded to your primary and secundary weapon (jump and hammer) where a cute little Toad girl gives you a small practice session. She also seems to fall secretly in love with Mario which seems to be quite common for girls in the Mario universe ;-) Ok, enough of that g

In the last couple of days I posted about my progress on fighting the end boss and you might have got the impression that this game is hard. It is not. Just the last boss fight is quite hard if you are not all to well prepared. During the rest of the game the fights are actually quite simply but not too simply so that you should never lose interest. As I've already mentioned, the fights are turn-based/round-based. During the game you learn more and more attacks you can use here and you can level-up your characters so that they learn even more attacks (for your team mates) and/or get higher heart-levels, blossom-levels or badge-levels. Blossoms are the money you pay for using some special attacks during the battles while badges can change your character properties. You can only choose badges as long as your badge-level is high enough. So choose wisely (esp. during the end boss fight). Badges can for example give Mario new attacks or make special attacks cost less blossoms.

But there is something else to collect during the battles: Star power. When progressing in the game you will find stars that give you special abilities. Every ability needs a certain level of star power. To get some star power you have to perform special moves or make a small parade during the battle so that the audience gets something back for their money. Then they'll cheer and this applause raises your star power.

You can also collect items during the journey (but only a limited amount of them in the beginning) including keys for unlocking doors and treasure chests, mushrooms for regenerating some hearts and things like that.

The puzzles in this game aren't all that hard to solve but are really entertaining (perhaps simply because they are not hard). Most of the time you need to combine your partner's abilities with Mario's to solve these little puzzles.