Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam
"I can't believe there's a whole other dimension." — Princess Peach
Protagonist(s): Mario Luigi Paper Mario Genre(s): Role-playing Platform(s): Nintendo 3DS Release Date: JP: December 3, 2015 EU: December 4, 2015 AU: December 10, 2015 NA: January 22, 2016 Developer(s): AlphaDream Publisher(s): Nintendo Country: Japan Series: Mario & Luigi Predecessor: Paper Mario: Sticker Star Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Successor: Mario + Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions (Mario & Luigi games, remakes/by release date) Mario & Luigi: Brothership (chronologically)

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (known as Paper Jam Bros. in Europe) is a role-playing game developed by AlphaDream and published by Nintendo, released in December 2015/January 2016 for the Nintendo 3DS. It serves as a crossover between that series and the Paper Mario games, introducing gameplay and design elements from both series, and is the last original game in the Mario & Luigi series to be developed by AlphaDream before their closure in 2020.

The game was followed by Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions two years later in 2017, in terms of remakes, while a direct follow-up, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, will release on November 7, 2024.

Why It's a Paper Jam

1. As the title suggests, Paper Mario makes his debut in the Mario & Luigi series, and he is able to perform a variety of unique moves and abilities in the field and battle that are unique from the real Mario Bros. (such as floating whenever he jumps to dodge obstacles and copying himself to increase the number of attacks he can make, but he is also more vulnerable to fire due to being made out of paper).
   • Besides the usual Bros. Attacks the real Mario Bros. can do, Paper Mario is also able to initiate Trio Attacks that transform the enemies into paper and allows the three of them to do various actions against them, such as the Trio Racquet, Trio Whirligig, Trio Shuriken and Trio Meteor.
2. Although some sprites and 3D models were taken directly from previous 3DS Mario RPG's (such as Dream Team and Sticker Star), there are many new ones as well, and in general the game's design is just as fantastic as previous Mario & Luigi games.
3. As always, Yoko Shimamura composes an excellent soundtrack for the game, with some of the great tracks being "Mixed-Up Scramble" (the battle track), "Time's Running Out" (time-based and Nabbit missions), "Springtime Breeze," "Falling to Pieces," "Double Bowsers!", and "Big Bang (boss theme)."
   • Even better, once you complete the game once, you gain access to a Jukebox and see Paper Luigi as an Easter Egg napping, along with various other reactions for different tracks.
4. Paper Jam has more bosses than Dream Team, and their abilities are similar to ones from previous games (e.g. King Boo acts similarly to Dark Star from Bowser's Inside Story and King Bob-omb is essentially the second stage of Pi'illodium from the previous game), although a few of them use the player's tactics against them, such as Paper Petey Piranha stealing Paper Mario's Copy Block to make copies of himself, Larry and Ludwig use their own Battle Cards against the player with their Dark Star Points, and Shiny RoboBowser using his own version of Paper Mario's Trio Attack Hammer.
   • While on the subject of Shiny RoboBowser, he is considered to be one of the best bosses in the series thanks to his attacks, large health pool and epic music track playing during the boss battle.
   • Just like the Giant Battles before them, the Papercraft Battles are creative and fun to fight (this time holding the 3DS horizontally rather than vertically).
5. As usual, there are many funny moments in the game, such as the two Bowsers arguing with each other, even after they kidnapped the Peaches, while the Bowser Jr.'s befriend each other, or when Luigi tries to hug Paper Mario but accidentally crumpled him doing so.
   • The story, while following the typical "Peach gets kidnapped when something interesting happens, so Mario and Luigi must save her" plot, is more complex than one would expect in a Mario & Luigi game with many twists too keep it interesting.
6. The Lakitu Info Center provides several quests for you (a majority of them are required to proceed), such as finding and chasing down Paper Toads (although these quests, and the Paper Toads themselves, have a lot of problems; see BQ #2), catching Nabbit to receive Bros. Attacks, defeating certain enemies such as the Koopalings or Bowser, reaching the goal before a Yoshi does and answering trivia questions.
   • If you complete enough quests, you are given certain cards (there are 70 Medals one can obtain, 26 of which are in Hard Mode, which are harder than the ones you completed), and once you complete all Paper Toad quests, you will obtain the Trio Meteor.
7. The Battle Cards concept, taken from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and two previous Mario & Luigi games, is handled as well as it was previously: by successfully performing attacks, the player is given Star Points, which are then used for the Battle Cards themselves. Each card does a specific action, such as restoring 40% of Paper Mario's BP or negating damage from enemies during critical moments.
8. Paper Jam also brings several changes to the traditional Mario & Luigi RPG's core gameplay mechanics:
   • You can block enemies' attacks by holding the X button, similar to the first two Paper Mario games.
   • The tutorials are entirely optional, unlike the previous games, and can be accessed from the Guide in the Main Menu.
   • There are seven ranks as opposed to the usual five, the two new ones being the Boomerang Rank (obtained between Levels 12 and 18) and Leaf Rank (obtained between Levels 27 and 35).
   • A lot of UI has been improved, such as health icons and animations when starting a battle.
9. You can now speed up cutscenes by holding the R button or tapping and holding the icon on the Touch Screen. This was added to address the criticism of being unable to skip cutscenes and other unnecessary information.
10. Some Bros. Attacks that appeared in Dream Team reappear in this one with a few changes made, including:
    • Mario's 3D Red Shell costs 3 BP instead of 4.
    • Bomb Derby (also used by Mario) costs 7 BP rather than 9.
    • Luigi's Fire Flower returns to its gameplay from Partners in Time and Bowser's Inside Story (repeatedly tapping the A or B buttons rather than timing your presses) and costs 3 BP instead of 5.
    • The Dropchopper (also used by Luigi) no longer requires gyro controls to use (instead using the Circle Pad), despite still costing 7 BP.
      • While on the topic of Bros. Attacks, several more were added alongside Trio Attacks, including Drill Shell, Rocket Blast, Toad Trail, and Mega Thwonk.
11. Just like the previous two games, you can refight bosses in the Battle Ring, the last of which is Dry Bowser.
12. This is the first game in the series to include Amiibo support; you can use any compatible ones (including Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Bowser and Yoshi) to create new Battle Cards.
13. Many of Paper Jam's character weaknesses were improved upon, since AlphaDream wanted a third character in battle, so they included Paper Mario to not make the story too big, and it worked pretty well (for the most part, at least).

Bad Qualities

1. Somewhat misleading title: Though the idea of mixing Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario together is a good one, the elements from the latter series are mostly inspired by Sticker Star (which is considered the weakest Paper Mario game), and rather than making a crossover with major elements of both franchises such as antagonists (e.g. Shadow Queen, Cackletta, Fawful, etc.), the only major Paper Mario-related things included in the game are the characters and paper theme.
2. Paper Toad Missions, such as finding them or making a group, are usually very annoying because the player must finish most of them to proceed, and the Paper Toads themselves run around in fear due to them thinking Mario is a monster and/or one of Bowser's minions. You'd expect that Peach or a Lakitu would tell them this isn't the case and he is there to help them, but it ends up not being the case.
3. Missed opportunities:
   • Paper Luigi does not appear in the main story once, being reduced to appearing at the Jukebox, which makes the European title Paper Jam Bros. look incorrect as a result.
   • Almost none of the events of the previous games from either series are mentioned, save for Starlow and some bosses from Sticker Star appearing. While this can be seen as wasted potential, the excellent writing of Paper Jam gives the game a unique identity. Overall, however, it feels more like a standalone title rather than connected to any of the previous Mario & Luigi or Paper Mario games.
   • For unknown reasons, Beanish people (who appeared in every prior game in one form or another) do not appear in this game at all; this is the only game in the series to have this distinction.
4. The premise of the game is that Luigi knocks over a special book that happens to contain Paper Mario's universe; this is baffling because it was never mentioned anywhere in the Paper Mario series that it took place inside a book, but rather centered around stories from a specific book.
   • What's also confusing is that Paper Mario wasn't established to be a separate character from the real Mario in previous games, along with with Paper Peach and Paper Bowser. In fact, Mr. Miyamoto himself stated that Mario and Paper Mario were supposed to be the same character.
5. Controlling three separate characters with their own buttons at the same time can be confusing, but luckily you can press X to use the Trio Jump, then hold it to use the Trio Rush.
6. There are a lot of glitches and out-of-bounds clipping, making Paper Jam the most broken Mario & Luigi game. While some are considered "good bad bugs," such as the ability to complete the game more quickly, others are more game-breaking and can softlock the game.
   • It doesn't help that the game can be completed in under an hour if you know what you're doing.
7. While the Battle Cards are a nice concept, they are overpowered once you obtain them, particularly the ones where enemies' levels get lowered by 5 or 10 and raise the EXP given after battles, which makes Paper Jam a lot easier than its predecessors.

Reception

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam received mostly positive critic reviews, holding and aggregated Metacritic score of 76/100 and an 8/10 from Nintendo Life. User scores, however, are much more mixed-to-positive, with a 7.4/10 on Metacritic; players were disappointed by the story, hit-or-miss implementation of Paper Mario elements, locations and some Paper Toad missions, but were positive of the design, soundtrack, battles and minor improvements over Dream Team's gameplay.

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