This is courtesy of my unnamed friend who writes tons of things and never shows them to anyone, so I'm hoping I can in turn show him that his writing has value by posting this here for him:
It would seem that the paper mario series isn't going to return to it's once prestigious roots any time soon.
(dons Clyde Crashcup getup)
Ladies and gentlemen, here is the problem of creating difficulty. Those of you who were around for the old testament of gaming- the atari and nes days- may recall that we went from super mario bros. to a rehash of doki doki panic, instead of the genuine super mario bros. 2. This was because Japanese executives believed smb2 was too difficult for western audiences.
But even then, the old mario games were brutally unforgiving in comparison to modern titles. The first one gave you a finite number of lives, power-ups that disappeared with one hit, and a time limit. Lose all your lives and you die.
Nowadays that sort of thing would get cries of "fake difficulty".
Nowadays, Mario is supposed to be the icon of "fun". Other series can handle the idea of punishing, masochistic gameplay, but Mario seems to be headed in the direction of main campaigns being centered around very young- and impatient- audiences being able to beat the game.
Admittedly, balancing difficulty and fun is a very difficult thing to do- perhaps one of the issues would be the margin of error being allowed for; how many mistakes you can make before a situation becomes costly to salvage or is beyond saving.
Certain games like Darkest Dungeon offer a very punishing gauntlet where it is easy to find yourself in a downward spiral, with permadeath consequences for fallen party members. Compare this to, say, Persona 5 or Trials of Mana, where party members who end the fight K.O.ed revive with one HP.
Admittedly, this is not the best example- DD expects you to hire, train and send new adventurers off to die or go insane on a regular basis, whereas in Jrpgs, a new party member is a rare event. Persona 5 Royal and FF7 remake also have some degree of 'accessible campaign, brutal bonus boss', where while you might need to grind out a few levels to make it past a story boss, all bets are off if you go on the mission with several skulls or open the chest when your mission control says they've got a bad feeling.
Paper Mario, however, has taken the concept of experience points and choosing how to develop a plumber and replaced it with coins and expendable stickers/cards/whatever, reducing gameplay to what often feels like a very accurate representation of that great solution- "throw money at it".
Grinding for ingame cash to upgrade weapons and armor is nothing new, of course, but reducing the paper mario/superstar/mario rpg series to buying items and timed button presses feels as though it's cheapening the experience. This has been another Rant by [name withheld], remember to read, shrug, and ignore.
