Mario & Luigi Paper Jam :)

+ First M&L game to introduce a fast forward button. THANK GOD
+ The battle card system is a pretty cool and customizable replacement of BiS/DT'S badge system. Huge fan tbh.
+ The two bowser jrs interacting is legit super adorable

Exploration

- Can't sneak past enemies while tunneled underground. In all the past games, you can

- The area themes are so ridiculously bland. Generic plain, generic bowser castle, generic forest, generic desert, and a copy of Mt pajamaja but more generic. I guess they assumed the paper gimmicks would make up for it? But like... there's almost none outside of meme toad hunts and an occasional "paper mario slips through this crack" one-time gimmick. They literally called the final dungeon Neo Bowser Castle - they couldn't be assed to give it a different name than Dream Team's final area, Neo Bowser Castle LOL. Like, just compare the world maps of Paper Jam vs Dream Team. It's like half the size and variety, and the "variety" of PJ's areas have "new super mario bros" syndrome.

- On top of the game having bland areas, it has... very few of them? The design philosophy of this game is making you redo these areas with minor changes. So it's basically skyward sword revisits, but only/most of the negatives - cuz paper jam design philosophy also usually lack shortcuts (so if you happen to fall to an area, REDO EVERYTHING!!!) Dream Team did a consistently good job of unlocking shortcuts as you progress through an area, but I guess paper jam just had to have none so you can't take them on your forced revisits - which, said forced revisits often didn't have shortcuts either :)

- The game has an X button that lets everyone jump simultaneously (albeit at a lower height), and then you dash - which is great! Except 1. This shortcut literally doesn't work if you're missing a bro (due to story reasons), so if you got used to it, TOUGH LUCK, 2. This fundamentally just isn't a real QoL because your jump height is way lower than normal jumps, so you still have to consecutively press A -> B -> Y anyways, and 3....

- This game clearly came our during the "omg jerk off and orgasm to open world" era, because the design philosophy of every area is basically a giant open area. That isn't strictly bad, BUT it gets really repetitive especially since it starts to feel like a giant empty space filled with nothing. There just... isn't content. This is compounded by how bland the areas are in general. This also means that having a "run button" basically doesn't matter compared to past M&L games, because areas are just so much bigger, so it takes just as long (if not longer) to traverse the world than all the past M&L games that LACKED a run button anyways. Thanks.

- No save blocks. Yes you can save anywhere - but Dream Team had save blocks AND save anywhere. And those save blocks (usually) served as both a reminder and a warning that a boss is coming up. Paper Jam doesn't. And this is compounded by....

- ...the fact that paper jam pops surprise bosses at you everywhere - so you can't even really predict "oh, the end of a dungeon is coming up, so there's likely a fight", because there are pretty frequently bosses that spawn mid-dungeon with no warning. This makes it even worse if you want to manage your card decks for generics vs bosses, because oops you can't switch to your boss-slaying card deck! Oh and paper jam DOES have health blocks that literally remind you to save, but those are rarely (if ever) placed before bosses. They're often in towns / START of dungeon areas.

- The UI for battle card deck creation is so god awful. You'll stash up like 60-70 cards by playing the game and buying them. How do you pick cards to add/remove? It's a single row where you can only see 3 cards at a time. Think of the echoes of wisdom menu, except zoomed in where you can only see 3 entries at a time instead of >10, and it covers the entire screen. Yeah. It's bad. And there isn't a distinctly clear indicator of which cards are already in your deck - it technically exists but it's a tiny checkmark in the upper right corner of a giant card image. It doesn't stand out. It's bad. This game is bad.

- In past games, the hammer shortcut has always been 1 R press from jump. In this game? Nope it's the opposite - 1 L press instead!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (this isn't strictly a bad thing tbf but like... why)

- The overworld abilities have the usual hammer and drill return, but with more steps - which whatever, ok, it's slower but it's fancy to get paper mario involved.

- Trio Grab is a cool concept, but every time you set up Trio Grab, the game forces a ~2 second grab animation attempt even if you don't press any buttons, which just serves to waste your fucking time when you're trying to aim/time a grab. Note that many forced minigames require setting up Trio Grab while on a timer and/or being required to dodge shit, so this is REALLY FUCKING BAD

- Trio Glider is basically spin bros but really really bad controls - cuz it has REALLY BAD INPUT DELAY!!!! A lot of the spots you're supposed to glide over have coins that literally lay out the timing of your glide inputs but... again, really bad input delay makes it near impossible to follow them. On top of that, when you end Trio Glider, the game yeets all of your bros forward (backward? I forget), so if you happen to land near a ledge, some of the bros will just fall off, so you have to fall down to get them again, then re-climb. Note that the FIRST GAME didn't have this issue with spin bros, because the game always carefully forces your inactive bro to land on the ledge instead of forward/behind you.

- Game has a bean tracker per area, and it's good! Except the first visit to bowser's castle has beans but they're untracked. Turns out, they're missable after that visit because it transforms. I guess at least it's not tracked so you can still get a full completion of the tracker, but man this just feels bad in a game that's clearly designed to have "completionist" trackers.


Battles

- The dodging inputs for both jumps and hammer have a pretty considerable input delay. Like, in a game all about tight dodging, this is VERY BAD. This means you have to make all of your dodges earlier and/or react even more quickly.

- A lot of the bros attacks require mashing. Like, HARD mashing. Where every input you make matters so it's in your best interest to give yourself carpal tunnel. SSS (gba) did this for chopper bros but they fixed it in the remake by making it "get this many inputs in the window" rather than "the faster you mash, the more you hit". Paper Jam is especially offensive about this with fire flower, where it was timed/rhythmic mashing in PiT and BiS, and not much mashing in DT, but it's a hard MASH-ASAP in PJ

- Dream Team and Paper Jam have separate equipment slots for your boots and hammer - so they'll have different attack values depending on if you attack with your boots or hammer (or neither, in some cases!). In DT, Bros Items / Luiginary attacks have a description that distinctly highlights which of the two weapons you use (if applicable) to deal damage with. Take a wild guess on if PJ describes that :)

- They couldn't be assed to come up with new bros items for mario and luigi, because they flat out copied dropchopper and bomb derby - yeah green shell and fire flower are too, but they're basically beginner staples in the entire series. And dropchopper is just way worse too, because...

- Analog pad has no analog depth. This means tilting (instead of full press) does nothing. This isn't a big deal in the overworld, but it's pretty god awful in some bros attacks. Especially dropchopper which was originally gyro-controlled in DT, but now it's analog pad where you have to adjust by FULLY tapping right/left (instead of slightly), and it... doesn't work well because it's a move where you want to make slight adjustments, not "digital all or nothing" adjustments. This is a pattern for almost all bros/trio moves too - aiming is all digital, so making small adjustments is incredibly awkward (very apparent in trio shuriken), etc.

- Stacked paper enemies make some bros attacks just.... take forever, since it takes longer per enemy that exists. Trio Whirligig is by far one of the best trio attacks since it uses Mario's attack (it doesn't tell you) and does flat damage to every enemy - but it also takes longer per enemy. Including each paper enemy in a stack. I've timed it once - I've had it take >50 seconds for the entire animation to play out :)

- Paper Mario's hammer counter is supposed to serve as a safeguard if you have more copies, to make countering easier. When you release his hammer, all of his copies will consecutively swing as well. EXCEPT YOU'RE STILL VULNERABLE IN BETWEEN THE CONSECUTIVE SWINGS. What this means is, what should be a counter that lasts for, say, 15 frames, effectively turns into a counter that alternates between (I made up these numbers but just get an idea of this) 3 frames of countering and 1 frame of being vulnerable. Obviously you can avoid this by timing your first swing perfectly so it won't matter, but like this still doesn't solve every issue, it's clearly SUPPOSED to be a fallback but FAILS at that, and is just really bad because...

- The more copies paper mario has, the longer his counter animation is. He is vulnerable at the end. That means if you have to swing your hammer in quick succession, and you have too many copies, it can be impossible to actually counter because your animation lasted too long, you're vulnerable at the end, and you'll just hit because the counter system really isn't designed around paper mario having copies. God this game is bad.

- Papercraft battle controls are also terrible. You will always move forward when you turn - this means if you're trying to adjust your aim with anything, you're always moving forward - so if you're too close to a ledge, you will inevitably fall if you just try to turn too much, so you have to do a 180, back off, 180 again, then re-aim. This is ESPECIALLY PROBLEMATIC for the final papercraft stage gauntlet, where you have to aim fireballs at a ship... over a bottomless pit that hurts you. Geez this is a garbage game.

- During papercraft battles, the toad rhythm minigame is... tedious but required. And all enemies will stop and dance to the music while you do it to recharge your meter (which is cute!) - EXCEPT FOR THE FINAL BOSS. Which uh killed me because the game conditioned me into assuming it's 100 safe. Haha good game.








TOAD HUNTS

I explicitly left this out of all the feedback above, to show that no, this game sucks even without the #1 most common complaint - the toad hunts. But I'll leave this here anyways as an obligatory "yeah this is why paper jam sucks", because it legit is not an exaggeration to say you will spend over 1/3 of the main game hunting toads.