Ditches the turn based combat system which I really really didn't like but it retains some of the heart and a respectable story

Definitely not the same as Paper Mario, but a fun as heck action-platformer RPG with a neat gimmick and fun character writing; a lot of people will dock points for the lack of partners, but honestly keeping the cast to four well-established characters really let them refine the character writing in this one.

I kind of missed the more traditional menu-based battles of Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door, though this game did have some interesting ideas of its own too.

Being my first Paper Mario, I didn't find myself particularly alienated by it. The game has fantastic writing and I dug the gimmicks it came up with. On the negative, the game is a lot more cumbersome and slower than a typical Mario game and most of the perspective puzzles were blatantly obvious and uninteresting. The RPG mechanics have virtually no customization and feel pretty pointless overall. This game feels like a normal Mario game trying to force Paper Mario mechanics and it doesn't work