What Happened to Paper Mario?

I think there’s a TINY bit of confusion regarding how I labelled the games in the franchise, so here’s a quick explanation behind each one: The Peak (PM and TTYD): easily the best two games in the series. The “peak” of the series. The Fall (SPM): Still an incredible game, but felt significantly different than the first two. The changes made here did not benefit the series. By “fall” I mean that this was just starting the descent leading toward SS and CS. The term “fall” is not meant to speak negatively to this game, but rather the path it created. The Pit (SS and CS): Pretty self explanatory. These games just aren’t very good. The Rise? (OK and TTYD remake): These games were MUCH better to me in comparison to SS and CS. I believe these games MIGHT be leading to an increase in quality for this series, but I could be wrong (hence the question mark).

He used the star rod to build a fortress under her castle

I remember being sooooo excited for sticker star when seeing still inages and gameplay. Thought it was a return to form......played it 20 minutes never touched it again.

The Badge System was peak man...

I agree that the TTYD Remake is especially hopeful in its tone, as they could've easily remade the first game and called it a day. But remaking the most beloved game in the franchise implies that they might be taking the series back to its roots, both in its mechanics and Pre-Awakening Fire Emblem style writing.

yooo this video is sick underrated loved it!!!!

Bowser could have used Magic, he has the ability to create towers, fortresses, and castles with his magic. Plus the Star Rod could have helped. I wouldn't agree with SPM being part of the fall. Plus it was still made by the OG Intelligent Systems Team. I disagree with lumping Color Splash in with Sticker Star. Color Splash did do things like expand upon the Koopalings and allow us to see them outside the next Castle Boss Fight. Let alone we get some personality for them. There is also some decent world building and we get to see more of well the minions. And some dark themes. Sticker Star while there is the bad gameplay which even Miyamoto hated and told the new Intelligent Systems Team to change(they didn't), there is still some interesting things. Like the stuff with Birdo, the Dry Dry Desert, and the acknowledgement of the previous paper games. Yeah the new Intelligent Systems Team did mess quite a bit when they started making games around Sticker Star.

I don't consider SPM the fall, because it was Sticker Star that started the real issues with the series. NGL seeing that intro made me brace myself for SPM slander. I'm really not sure how you can simultaneously praise SPM and call it the fall. Like you said, the story is arguably the peak of not just the PM series but the Mario franchise in general. It raised the stakes higher than ever before, and another thing SPM was the last entry until the TTYD remake to have is the original enemies & NPCs that populated the first two games. Merlon & co, Whacka, Clefts, Koopatrols, etc. These are all iconic elements that help Paper Mario's flavor of worldbuilding be as iconic as it is. The later games, including Origami King, completely disregard this and use only vanilla Mario elements, and the few original characters they do have are all either paper/craft-themed or a completely different medium from the flat vector sprites of Mario and co. Because that's the loophole they were forced to use. SPM had no such loopholes. Yes, the series often falls flat when experimenting with the gameplay, but I don't think it's the experimentation itself that ruins it. It's just they had a few misses in a row and really were reluctant to ditch the things that didn't work. At least they did try to move towards a better system in Origami King, suggesting the mediocre gameplay was never the intent. The sterile story and characters absolutely were though, as seen in many interviews. Which is why I always considered that to be the main thing that killed the series. So I'll always consider Sticker Star the fall and pit simultaneously, while SPM was the last classic entry (hopefully until the TTYD remake and at long last the next entry being a full-on Paper Mario 4, made with intent and passion)

Pretty good video :)

as much as I think the style of turned based battles are great, I think the defining feature of the original paper mario games is the world. 8 chapters split up across 8 unique areas that are trying to be weirder than what you'd find in a typical mario game. I think super paper mario still feels like a paper mario game because the world is still wacky like it is in ttyd and the original. I also do think the turn based system isn't perfect in paper mario and the mario and luigi series did a better job at creating dynamic turn based combat with action commands.

Get this boy some more subs

Sticker Star and Color Splash are still great games to me and to many others. I don't care what people say about these. Those games will always have their fans, no matter what.

There are multiple other videos covering this topic and I'd argue this... isn't exactly the strongest. I've personally played through Super and saw someone play the entirety of Origami King (I was hoping to give it a chance), and I don't think the labels placed on them are that accurate. Firstly is Super, which you labelled as "the fall"... and then proceeded to practically only ever praise it? Like, yea, change is dangerous (due to its factor of unknown), but that's the thing: Super's formula still worked well, the execution was just rough around the edges at worst. And yet for the next game they STILL ditched it, this time because of how bad the initial reception was, which was inevitable with such a genre shift (because people are scared of change; that doesn't mean the change itself is bad, you need far more concrete criticisms to prove that). The few flaws SPM still present do not erase all of its efforts at being a good package deal, with its excellent story, unique world, memorable characters, and overall nailing the feel of expanding the universe (or, well, multiverse. Story spoilers, I guess). For all intents and purposes, despite the gameplay shift and its share of small issues (slow movement speed and some tedious sections), it was very much still the next Paper Mario, and definitely proudly presented as such. This feeling would be very much gone for the next THREE games (yes I'd argue TOK as well), until the TTYD remake finally gave us a glimpse back into the beloved world that was taken away from us too early, even if it was a glimpse we had already seen before. To me, calling SPM the "fall" of Paper Mario is like calling Black/White the "fall" of Pokemon, which cannot hold true as the issues that plague that series have far stronger roots in XY; or in Paper Mario's case, Sticker Star. Then there's Origami King, which you labelled as part of "the rise". Unlike the first (sadly) four games and the TTYD remake, I have not played either Color Splash or Origami King, as my experience with them was secondhand: I watched others play through those games, in hopes that the many times I've heard "it's better than Sticker Star" held as true as possible. While they did hold true, it was far from as much as I was hoping. The main thing that I think roots OK to SS and CS more than to the original trilogy is its world. There is few really interesting things in said world, be they characters or locales. With the exception of the "obligatory fairy companion" (which, yes, technically started in Super but became most prominent in SS due to a lack of other memorable characters), most of the "partners" that tag along with you sometimes are basically noncharacters, and the NPCs don't exactly pick that slack back up either. Gone are the creative designs and species unique to the Paper Mario series, now most of the characters you see are the same old boring Mario looks we've had literally everywhere else. And the bosses don't even get to be cool takes either, somehow finding a way to outdo Sticker Star's bosses in lameness-- you're not fighting the Koopalings in relatively creative boss fights forced by the fact they all have similar statures so everything else has to carry the unique boss fight, you're not fighting powered-up versions of regular enemies, you're fighting literal office supplies. The only redeeming factor to that is technically venting out the frustration that those have caused in the last two games, but even then OK still has a couple cameos from that elements that depict them in a better light. Speaking of, the bosses compound something that the dialogue of OK very much shares with SS and CS, insisting that the artstyle of those games IS the world. While OK uses it far more cleverly than its predecessors, this can very easily break immersion-- why care about what happens to the world if all of it is paper? Couldn't the damage then just be refolded or recycled back? This can make a plot point that would indeed be very scary to think about in another game (like, say, Miitopia's faceless people for a "random" example), feel hard to take seriously in this one (because even if you do the same... couldn't you then just make a new face out of paper and drawing? Bianca from Animal Crossing has exactly that and that game doesn't even pretend to be literal paper). The first three games relegated "paper" aesthetics to essentially either magic or just comedic convenience, letting the world breathe by itself; the fun, wacky and creative world of Mario, yes, but still a believable "real" world. The idea that the appeal of the franchise started and ended with "Mario but Paper" very much began with Sticker Star and lived all the way to Origami King. While its humor and dialogue was still an improvement... much of the same could already be said about Color Splash in the first place. TOK's main areas of improvement compared to CS were the story having more level of depth and the gameplay being marginally more interesting, which again even then were also improvements CS had over SS, having a far more interesting overworld gameplay, and a only slightly less tedious battle system that still didn't give any reason to engage with it that you couldn't just get on the overworld (and isn't interesting on its own; you do the puzzle five times and then start actively avoiding enemy encounters). To me, TOK wasn't part of "the rise", it was just "the least bad that SS's formula could get". Super to me is part of the "fun & creative" PMs, while OK is part of the "sterile" PMs.

You forgot to talk about mario and luigi paper jam lol