PM64 vs TTYD

Disclaimer: I love the heck out of both PM64 and TTYD, they are among my favorite games of all time and always will be.

So the purpose of this pastebin is to talk critically about TTYD specifically and where it excels and suffers compared to the original game. People hold TTYD on too high of a pedestal and I would like to shed some light to break through the clouds of nostalgia bias clouding this game in a general sense. First let's talk about the few areas TTYD easily outdoes its predecessor then delve into it's massive weaknesses as a sequel.


Strengths:
	> Combat - This is the most obvious way that TTYD makes a lot of advancements over PM64. Partners now have their own HP values and can use items, super guarding was introduced, the general pace of combat was hastened, stylish moves were introduced to refill star power, and the list goes on. The result is a combat system with a much higher skill cap, much higher player involvement and strategy, and more room to add more challenging fights overall. Partners very much felt like a small extension of Mario in PM64 and I honestly question why they gave any enemies the ability to attack your partner since the game never really teaches you properly that that's even something to be ready for. These improvements aren't without their flaws however, and I'll talk about that a bit later.

	> Story/Writing - PM64 had great writing and story, but it was rather safe and tame compared to TTYD's imagination and charm. Having a first game in a spin-off series having the standard "Bowser kidnaps Peach and shenanigans ensue" plot is totally fine, but you can tell that they went all out with TTYD's story and characters. Some of my favorite characters in gaming all come from that TTYD imagination: Doopliss, the Shadow Sirens, Flavio, Bobbery, Don Pianta, etc. TTYD pushes the "paper" gimmick a bit further in gameplay and visuals but keeps it out of the writing (unlike newer games) as I believe it should.

	> Content - For reasons I'll cover later, I don't feel like TTYD has that much meaningful content difference in the main story, but TTYD excels in post-game and side content. The Pit of 100 Trials was a fantastic and challenging addition that really shows off how much the combat is improved. Adding shine sprites as collectibles strikes me as a little artificial and shallow, but does add a little something to exploration.


Weaknesses:
	> Combat - While I did say combat was mostly improved earlier, those improvements did also come with a lot of issues. Firstly, the addition of partner health means that more enemies need ways to attack your back-line party member. However, unlike the Mario & Luigi series which gives very clear tells to learn regarding which person is being attacked, TTYD really doesn't do this and leads to more or less guessing a lot of attack timings (which also actively hampers the new super guarding mechanic as well). In addition, the partners have a TON of health when upgraded and sorta trivialize a lot of fights due to having a ton of HP sponges to slap in front of Mario. Almost every effort the game makes to be more difficult is undermined by the other improvements to the combat system making things so much easier. The insane amount of experience you gain in Chapter 3 also throws a bit of a wrench in the difficulty curve.

	> Level Design - This is one of TTYD's biggest sore spots in my eyes. Chapter 1 is excellent and really embodies the "town > dungeon" structure that I believe made PM64's chapters so strong. I would honestly argue Chapter 1 in TTYD is stronger even than most chapters in PM64. It does an excellent job of teaching you the games mechanics in a way that really reminds me of why people see Mega Man X's intro stage as being so good. With that being said, almost every other chapter in TTYD feels super same-y and involves WAY too much back and forth to disguise the lack of anything interesting happening. Each chapter more or less feels like a rail going back and forth letting the story and writing be the engaging part while the gameplay suffers greatly. So many chapters are just flat hallways that you go right, trigger something, go left, trigger something, and repeat until you enter a crappy shell of a dungeon and fight a boss (Chapters 2 and 4-6 all being the worst offenders, although Chapter 2 does actually have an interesting dungeon design). It's really easy to not pay attention to how boring what you're actually doing in each chapter is when you're engaged in the story, but every repeat playthrough really makes this structure weakness apparent.

	> Repeating of ideas - This is something that I could easily just list every little thing that TTYD copy pastes with minor changes from PM64, but instead I'll bring up only the most blatant I feel. So much of TTYD just feels way too similar to PM64 with parts of the game just feeling like an "HD" remake of PM64.
		- Chapter Themes: Chapter 1 is still a grassland surrounded Koopa Village followed by a castle and Chapter 5 is still a tropical island followed by a cave dungeon with a second boss fight as you attempt to leave the chapter (it even heavily features an NPC explorer character following you throughout).
		- Partners: Goombella, Koops, and Bobbery are almost complete copies gameplay-wise of their PM64 counterparts with their only standout feature being better characters personality/writing-wise, elements of other partners are also pasted straight into the more unique partners (Lakilester > Flurrie, Parakarry > Yoshi, Bow > Vivian, etc). There are plenty of other Mario enemies that could have easily been partners with unique abilities but they were just completely ignored (Magikoopa, Chain Chomp, Monty Mole, Shy Guy, etc).

	> Controls - Playing PM64 and TTYD side-by-side really illustrates how off the two games feel from each other. The action command windows feel super strange, precise, and relatively unclear in TTYD. The jumping in TTYD also feels REALLY heavy compared to PM64 which makes what little platforming you actually have to do way more difficult than it needs to be (the removal of the spin also adds to this). It feels like a lot of the levels being super flat and boring stems from the poor jumping physics, Chapter 5 in particular actually tries to have a lot more platforming and it just feels awful. PM64 has a ton of platforming and almost all of it feels really smooth. Adding the additional commands for the hammer upgrades also feels largely unnecessary. Why can't you just upgrade your hammer and break new blocks instead of having to rotate the control stick for no reason? Also, the hammer upgrades retain their colors from PM64, however not a single Ultra Hammer red and yellow block appears in TTYD so now the blocks you can break with each upgrade just make no sense at all. I will say however the new Ultra Jump is a huge improvement over the one in PM64 which basically changed nothing other than breaking through ice as well.

	> Plot McGuffins - For every improvement TTYD made to the characters and writing, it blows my mind that the main thing you collect for story progression is faceless and bland in TTYD. Each Star Spirit in PM64 had an admittedly minor but unique character to them and their involvement in their respective star power attack added a lot of charm to them. TTYD however just has bland colored stars that do bland, flavorless special attacks that make no connection to the chapter you receive them (apart from maybe Power Lift).