Paper Mario Category Description/Opinions

Paper Mario Speedrun Categories:
In Paper Mario there are several speedrunning categories with their own pros and cons and definitions, here I will explain all the categories on the leaderboards as well as how I feel about them
Paper Mario Any%: The simplest definition of beat the game as fast as possible. However a lot of people like it and a lot of people hate it. Both have their good reasons.
Pros:
-It is the shortest category
-It has a lot of cool tricks
Cons:
-It has the most rng out of any category and all of it is clustered in the final fights of the game
-It has some pretty boring and repetitive gameplay as you have to play through the volcano multiple times
Overall this category is okay. I personally would not recommend this to beginners as it is easy to get very discouraged playing this category as you have the first half filled with hard tricks and the later half with brutal rng. As for me I enjoy this category occasionally but i would say it is one of my least favorite categories to play.

Paper Mario Any% No WW: Beat the game but with a restriction, you may not use the Wrong Warp of the game (WW) also known as Peach Warp. Restriction categories can get a lot of hate and this one definitely has, but not really for any good reason other than it is arbitrary. Anyway here is my analysis.
Pros:
- Does a lot of cool tricks but nothing too difficult
- You get to experience a lot of the movement based parts of the game
- Pretty beginner friendly to get runs done, but not too easy to optimize either
Cons:
- This has the hardest Bowser fight in any category (depending on routes)
- A little similar to any% at the moment
Overall this category is very good. My number one recommendation to beginner players. In my opinion this restriction works well as you do not get to "cheese" your way through the game as much as any% does. First portion is some hard-ish tricks, middle portion is difficult movement and last portion is some good movement, some rng, and some fight skill. As for me, I think this category is pretty fun but I prefer other categories.

Paper Mario All Cards: Touch every star spirit card and then beat the game. This is the "All Dungeons" category of paper mario which is generally pretty popular.
Pros:
-Has an amazing and fun route
-Get to experience most portions of the game
-Has a ton of cool tricks
Cons:
-Some tricks are very difficult, especially to do consistently in runs
-Is extremely punishing for an error
This category is extremely good (I have some bias here sorry :P). Is a very solid mix of movement, menuing and tricks. Has enough rng to heavily influence the run but not too much such that it gets out of hand. Because of the card lzs tricks getting around peach cutscenes it is much more fun to run as less cutscenes=more gameplay. This is my favorite category to run and in my opinion takes the most skill to get an optimized time in compared to other categories.Beginners can play this category too as the harder skips are not too essential at first, and use an easier route.

Paper Mario Any% Glitchless: Beat the game without glitches. The only tricks that are not glitches are the pie jumps in chapter 1 and the parakarry timesaver with the drawer in chapter 3. Everything else is a glitch (including luigi skip). A bit more popular for newer players.
Pros:
- Nothing really hard to learn for the category
- You get tons of experience in movement
- Very fun to race
Cons:
- It is pretty much all movement and rng
- Can get boring somewhat fast
- Sometimes glitches are actually hard to avoid (lol)
This category is okay. I think it is the best racing category because the lack of tricks can keep it somewhat close. While I do think that this is a good beginner category as players do not have to put in much work to the category I would not put this at the top of the list for beginners. I feel that beginners should have a little more challenge than this just to see what it feels like first which is why I chose any% no ww as the preferred beginner category. This category is in my opinion not as fun to grind attempts off than pretty much any other category. Much more entertaining as a race.


Paper Mario All Bosses: Beat every boss, including optional bosses. This is often confused with all cards but you DO NOT HAVE TO TOUCH ANY CARDS, and you have to do more than all cards as you have to kill all bosses some of which includes the dojo fights and the blooper fights. Not very many runs of it, but it is still a category.
Pros:
-Has tons of cool tricks including some exclusive to this category
-Mario is very OP in this category
-Fun route to play
-Get to see a lot of the game (more than all cards)
Cons:
-Its exclusive tricks are difficult
-It is a little too close to All Cards in its route, especially in the beginning
This category is good, fun to play and has cool exclusives but feels a bit too similar to All Cards. You can opt out of the exclusive tricks which in my opinion makes this category pretty easy, but its a bit long still. Not much more to say about this category.

Paper Mario Chalkboard%: Complete the Chalkboard in mario's house that has a "/" in it. This requires the player to collect all star pieces, all badges, all quizmos, and all recipes, as well as beat the game. This category is rarely played. While I have not done a run of this category I know exactly what it entails and I have done a run of a category similar to it in the past that no longer exists.
Pros:
-You get to have every badge to your disposal
-Has a cool combination of tricks
-Weird combination of getting everything but being extremely underleveled
Cons:
-Feels like it is missing things as a "completionist" category
-Has very long mundane and boring sections such as making recipes and farming quizmo
-Is the longest category
No one really runs this category and it does not come up very often. In my opinion it is probably one of the worst categories in Paper Mario. The cons heavily outweigh the pros here in my opinion, and to me does not seem terribly fun to play. This does not mean it is no fun to me but I think that other categories are more fun.

These are the categories and if you have not figured out my order of preference here it is:
All Cards>All Bosses>Any% No WW>>Any% Glitchless>Any%>>Chalkboard%