Japanese Role Playing Games might legitimately be my least favorite genre of game. Even saying something like “least favorite” doesn’t sit particularly well with me. I think “most disliked” probably puts the correct amount of stank on it. There are few genres of games I do not regularly engage with and simulation sports being another one that stands out to me, I wouldn’t say I even dislike them. Sure a lot of them do some fairly shitty things surrounding microtransactions and some yearly iterations are worse than others but I don’t think these things are systemic to the genre. I am not a sports person and thus they are not of a great deal of interest to me. But I have played Maddens and 2Ks and I don’t have a problem with a lot of the minute to minute gameplay. It is still engaging. Conventional JRPGs on the other hand I cannot make that claim about. When I say “conventional” JRPG I am referring to something like a Final Fantasy, a Dragon Quest, or a Shin Megami Tensei. Dark Souls and other From Software games are RPGs that are made by a Japanese company. However it is paramount you understand these are Western RPGs that happen to be Japanese. Know the difference, it could save your life.

I think it makes sense for JRPGs to have existed. Early in the medium’s lifestyle, I genuinely am not sure you could have made something that was financially solvent for the company while being a big brick delivery of story and writing. I do not think a walking simulator would have sold in 86’. So sure, throw in your mediocre combat systems to break it up and make it feel like you aren’t just reading a book. But the idea that there are still things, both in the AAA and indie space, that are coming out as turn based JRPGs absolutely blows my fucking mind. I think that they have got to be the most absolutely creatively bankrupt excuse for gameplay that sees any amount of major popularity. If you want to tell a story, character driven or otherwise, you can not only do simple but still engaging gameplay instead of this menu driven bullshit but you can completely drop the pretense and just make a walking simulator to deliver your story. Even doing a visual novel seems more respectful to me, let’s cut out the tedium and just engage with the story you wrote. These games are extremely often upwards of 50 hours and for no good reason, arbitrarily dividing story beats with countless repetitive battles. Even in games where you do not have to deal with random encounters, you will inevitably need to face some sort of boss encounter that you will have needed to have gotten your arbitrary number up high enough so that you can dish out similarly arbitrarily large numbers to make the arbitrary enemy number hit zero. If you are not at the magic number yet, then do not fret, you can go and grind to get your level up higher. It is this designer’s opinion that if you are ever needing to resort to your players grinding to make progress, then you as a designer have failed to pace your content or systems accurately. A well designed game should never need the player to resort to grinding in order to pass. This is not a comment exclusive to JRPGs either, lots of genres can suffer from this for things like their economy or even something like multiplayer progression. If a player is playing the game not because they are having fun engaging with it, but instead because they need to reach some goal, then you have not designed your game well. You should not need to hatefuck a game to make progress.

And I think a lot of JRPGs have a ton of charm to them and I think there are a ton that are written well. I just don’t understand why so much charm has to get shackled to the most mindless and tedious gameplay system ever conceived. The more contemporary Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon (Quest) has all of the writing hallmarks I have loved about the series leading up to this point, but it swaps the gameplay from a real time brawler into a really shitty turn based combat system. This was done because the development team, who were all massive Dragon Quest fans, wanted to try their hand at making one. Unfortunately this, being the start of a new story, was a great jumping on point for new players despite it being completely different from previous entries and it sold and reviewed exceptionally well. I gave it my best shot and got 30 hours into the 60+ hour game and then the ask for me to start grinding began to set in. I dropped it and have not looked back. To make matters worse, it is the direction the Yakuza games will be taking going forward. I will always be curious for developers to try new things that interest them and shake up their games but I do not think this could have ended up worse for me specifically. But maybe this is the price I have to pay for Final Fantasy to shift to a more active real time battle system. I have been stuck my entire life having to ask myself the question of “Are you interested in playing Dragon Quest or do you just like how Slimes look”. The answer is always the Slimes.

However I have said before and I will say again, I play things out of every genre. My small cabal of JRPG franchises can be counted on one hand, things like Pokemon or a Persona game. Both of these games, while having all of the normal earmarks of conventional JRPGs, do a number of other things that not only keep the game moving at a fun pace, but never require the player to grind. This is something I would doubly call out in the more recent Persona titles, which are frankly more like a visual novel with JRPG gameplay interspersed in-between. Choices made in the visual novel portions give you boons that will make your time in the JRPG portions significantly easier and empower the player in a way other than just doing combat to level characters up. I think IF a JRPG is going to be done, this is one of the best ways to do it, with the JRPG elements taking a backseat to support other aspects of the game. I think Persona could work as a pure VN, but the JRPG sections are paced in such a way that as I am maybe growing a little tired of the VN parts, I can hop into the dungeons and do something else for awhile. Then when I am getting kinda bored with the dungeon crawling, I can shift back into VN mode. But my favorite JRPG franchise without question would be the Super Mario RPG franchise. Very early on, it was doing things to set itself apart from the contemporaries of the time and then really hit its stride in the 2000s.

But this franchise exists in a weird spot with two parallel tracks and a common progenitor. Moreover, every one of them exists independently from another, share no story elements, and could more or less be playable in any order aside from dips in quality. So the three games I am going to talk about today are Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, Paper Mario, and Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. These all share a lot of DNA with each other but have subtle enough differences to exist on their own. All of them however, exemplify what I would consider ideal, if not perfect, JRPG gameplay. It is a franchise that, much like a Final Fantasy, will change things throughout each iteration but still stick to some core tenants. It is a franchise that can absolutely stand amongst the giants of the genre.

Released in 1996 as a collaboration between Square (present day Square Enix) and Nintendo, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is exactly what you would expect. We start the journey of this franchise here. Applying the conventional JRPG formula that had put Square on the map with Final Fantasy with a hefty layer of Nintendo charm and polish for Mario’s final outing on the Super Nintendo, a few months before the release of Super Mario 64. You play as Mario and a small party of returning and new characters to take down the Smithy Gang who have invaded Mario’s realm from another dimension. Mario will roam all over the various kingdoms engaging in turn based combat with Princess Toadstool (present day Peach) and franchise big bad Bowser alongside you in battle as opposed to their normal roles. This is a game I have played off and on my entire life that I had never actually played to completion until very recently. The JRPG dislike has been with me equally as long. That being said I have never disliked or hated Seven Stars. Just one of those things that has eluded me.

This game establishes a ton of the fundamental gameplay elements that are going to be carried into Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi. To name the key ones you have Action Commands in combat, turn based combat, and a lack of random encounters by having enemies freely roaming around on the level to be battled or avoided at the player’s discretion. The other gameplay constant is that leveling up gives you a choice of where to put extra stat points. You have a decidedly humorous story filled with slapstick and jokes and never really gets too serious. Another choice is to have an antagonist other than Bowser. In future installments across the franchise Bowser will play the roles of main antagonist, secondary antagonist, ambient force of nature, secondary protagonist, and co-protagonist. I have always enjoyed this subversion of the typical Mario characters and I think lends a lot more credence to how Mario creator Miyamoto has described the relationship of Mario and Bowser. He describes them as like a troupe of actors who inhabit different roles for each story, which is also why Mario and Bowser race go-karts and play tennis together. Bowser is habitually one of the most likable characters throughout and I think it lets them flex his character a lot by being a powerful and hopeless romantic who is just a habitual fuckup.

But it does a lot of what you would expect from a Square JRPG of the mid 90s. It does not have an entire identity of its own yet and has one foot in the past and one foot in the future. Enough for a lover of Final Fantasy VI to feel safe and at home but also enough for someone like me to see value in as a Paper Mario fan. You have inns, item shops, party members who stand in a line to fight, and weird river based mini games between main segments. Playing it back to back with Shin Megami Tensei V was also what made me want to write this piece, however I think the game I actually want to speak more passionately about is the spiritual successor and where I think the franchise actually begins to hit its stride: Paper Mario.

Paper Mario is either a sequel or a spiritual successor to Seven Stars depending how much of a pedantic douche you want to be, which is why this pedantic douche did call it a spiritual successor. Mario is weird like that where very few games actually acknowledge earlier ones. However this is not what I am here to talk about today. Paper Mario being the second Mario RPG has the responsibility of codifying the things that set a Mario RPG apart from others. Many elements are taken wholesale from Seven Star while other things are changed, such as the 3 combatant battle system, instead having the player control Mario and one of a party of partner characters who can be traded out mid battle at the expense of an action. When you level up you have the option of putting points into more HP, more FP, or more BP. BP is a new concept that is introduced that stands for Badge Points. Badges are where the meat of the RPG elements lay. Badges are what allow Mario to use different special attacks, get different stat boots, find more money, make enemies easier, and several other elements. Having high BP would get you a wider breadth of combat options but if you do not balance yourself as to also add points to HP and FP you might be in trouble. However it is even possible to use badges to increase these stats. Badges used in lieu of an equipment screen that was found in Seven Stars. Paper also carries over the idea of a shared MP (called FP) pool that all player controlled characters use for special abilities. Another key difference is that Paper was not developed in conjunction with Square, who was developing Final Fantasy VII for the Playstation 1 at the time, but instead developed by Nintendo’s first party studio Intelligent Systems, developers of the strategy RPG franchises Fire Emblem and Famicom Wars. Square, to this day, maintains the rights for the characters introduced in Seven Stars so a new supporting cast needed to be created for this game.

Outside of a singular village that is inhabited by monsters who decided to make their own society in Seven Stars, all of the friendly NPCs are Toads. Paper Mario immediately deviates from this by having familiar creatures like Goombas, Koopas, and Bob-ombs serve both as enemies you encounter as well as your general NPCs and shopkeepers. It then further modifies them, giving each one a feeling of personality and charm. All of Mario’s partners follow this design principle and I think it is fantastic. Having Bowser’s army simply be made up of defectors to the crown as opposed to entire swaths of racers makes way more sense and creates a lot of very memorable characters. However despite the subversion of expectations, this title does see Bowser return as the primary antagonist. He is also at some of his most competent, having stolen an artifact that just makes him invincible all the time. Pretty good plan all in all.

Moving over to our handheld track brings us 2003’s Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga for the Gameboy Advance. This is another crack at the Mario RPG formula once again carrying over some elements from Seven Stars but also making its own tweaks that set it apart from Paper Mario. You will still see a variety of Goombas, Koopas, and others throughout the kingdom both as friend and foe but gone are the large ensemble parties of Seven Stars and Paper instead choosing to focus only on Mario and his brother Luigi being playable. From there each brother has the same core moves but with minor twists applied to each that can situationally change when and how you will attack in combat including different special attacks with different executions. Another deviation is that each brother has his own MP, called Bros Points rather than sharing one single pool between them. Fewer characters but an equal amount of breadth to the gameplay. Comedic writing is maintained and is just as charming as its counterpart. Bowser takes on a role of helping the brothers as a new antagonist has attacked Peach and he will have absolutely none of that. While it is certainly more evolved than its progenitor, it does not per se move the franchise forward in any way as a lot of the choices made are simply different ways of implementing the changes established in Paper Mario. One key difference however is that it is developed by AlphaDream, a now defunct studio that was formed by several ex-Square employees in addition to Nintendo employees. The only real thing I can think to say that meaningfully sets it apart from Paper is that you can play it on mobile platforms and that it is a bit more demanding on the RPG elements. When leveling up the player will select a different stat to put a random amount of bonus points into. These are your standard RPG stat blocks, things like HP, MP, and Attack as well as the “Stache” stat. Stache is more or less just Luck but it also governs things like item prices and critical hit damage. Talking about the brother’s mustaches is a recurring gag throughout the game. This was also the first game where Luigi started being the butt of jokes compared to his brother. Luigi’s timid nature was explored in Luigi’s Mansion which was also released around this time but this is where a lot of the gloves came off and they openly made fun of him, a trend which has continued.

I feel like I have written an online recipe with the amount of background I have given on this before actually getting into the point I want to make. What does the Mario RPG franchise do to set itself apart from other JRPGs and why do I like it so much?

Let me talk to you all about Action Commands. Action Commands are a concept I referenced earlier and frankly, it is criminal that every JRPG going forward did not emulate them. The concept is extremely simple, when you are attacking, you as a player will do some kind of timed button press or additional input and when it is successful, you will deal more damage. I.e. if you have Mario jump, you can press the attack button right before contact is made with the enemy and you will get a boost to the damage you deal. On the receiving end of this, you can take similar actions to reduce the damage you take. None of this is required of course but it fundamentally encourages the player to pay attention and take a more active role in combat while still preserving the turn based RPG gameplay. In Seven Stars it is exclusively a timed press of the attack button but Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi really blow the doors off the idea with Mario and Luigi going so far as to let you change different levels of assists to deal yet more damage with your special attacks adding a layer of risk and reward. None of these are so prohibitively difficult that it is annoying but it makes it hurt when you miss and happy when you hit. Mario and Luigi feature longer strings of buttons and commands that must be hit to execute special attacks. At the lowest level, time slows down and you have ample windows to hit the buttons. At the highest however, the move executes in real time and you have no prompts. If you can manage to perform this, you will deal significantly greater damage and use less energy. You are also treated to the real time visuals of the move executing which feels and looks sublime when properly done. I think that this is more of a matter of taste however compared to the relatively simple implementation of Action Commands in the other two games. I think once you start asking for a lot of input with a lot of variety you might lose the interest of some players. But I think extremely few would argue against the basic implementation making the game worse. This dovetails with my second point which is that because Action Commands give the player more agency in combat, the required levels for progression are a lot fuzzier.

You don’t need to grind in any of these games. You certainly can if you feel like it or if maybe you are more inexperienced with games like this and need every little stat boost you can get. However the game has built in systems from stopping you trying to grind because enemies will curve off into fewer and fewer experience points until they eventually give nothing at all. These games are balanced and paced extremely well by having a broad system of items, upgrades, and action commands. They are not random battle oriented JRPGs so in theory almost every enemy encounter could be avoided, but I don’t think that is even a remotely typical use case and even then it is probably still possible to complete the game. I have always played these at a leisurely pace, skipping some battles throughout and I have never felt like the numbers were too titled out of my favor to be successful or that the encounters were not beatable. This keeps them accessible to newer players while also being rewarding to players on future runs. I harped on it earlier but I would seriously play a significant amount more JRPGs if they could just keep the combat interesting as well as not making me slog through so many boring battles to keep my stats good enough to take on the area bosses.

These games have a laundry list of little tiny tweaks to the standard JRPG formula that I think make them so enjoyable, completely timeless, and that allow them to remain fun despite several repeat playthroughs. Extremely fun writing with extremely good visual presentation. While certainly not the deepest levels of combat and player builds, there is enough for anyone to find ways to play that suit their style. Seven Stars lets you assemble your ideal three party members for battle, Paper gives you the Badge system, and Mario and Luigi let you get more granular with your stat tweaking. I would obviously advocate these to an entrenched JRPG fan, but I think that they are an extremely rare example of a title that can reach out to people who do not generally play these types of games. They can be as appealing to someone as a first or a fiftieth RPG. It is a franchise with several entries no matter what path you decide to pursue. However in pursuing these paths not every game is created equally.

There is a final element to these games. It is the modern day reception and iterations. I generally don’t write these to be negative but after that intro to this, I am in for a pound. Each entry brings its own gimmick or tweak to the overall rules established by the franchise. In Mario and Luigi you can see yourself needing to enter the realm of dreams to team up with a multiplying Dream Luigi, teaming up with your baby counterparts, or battling inside of Bowser while Bowser is also fighting. There is even one crossover game featuring Paper Mario. I think that the overall level of quality between each game in the Mario and Luigi franchise is pretty high. With Paper Jam being the worst and Superstar Saga or Bowser’s Inside Story being the best. I cannot however speak as highly about the consistency of the Paper Mario franchise. Paper Mario got one single, what I would call, “sequel”. This is Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. It is my personal favorite JRPG of all time and the one that most people would call the highlight of the franchise. After Thousand Year Door, Nintendo tried to take Paper Mario into being a more conventional action platformer, dropping the RPG elements and making Super Paper Mario for the Wii in 2007. I think this was a completely enjoyable title but wasn’t really a Mario RPG title. From there is where things start to get thorny. 2012 sees the release of Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Miyamoto, acting as producer, insisted that gameplay should be distinct from previous Paper Mario games, as he believed the concept was too similar to previous titles in the franchise. This led to the stripping out of a ton of mechanics as well as gutting a lot of the writing and story. We see the removal of partner characters and also see the removal of different species as NPCs, instead having everyone just be Toads like in Seven Stars. I really disliked everything I played of this and was not even able to finish it. A few years later in 2016 we see another attempt being made with Paper Mario: Color Splash however this continued to draw a lot of criticism due to more or less continuing on the gameplay mechanics from Sticker Star despite improvements to the writing and an extremely nice visual presentation as it was the series first outing on an HD console. Which then brings us to 2020’s Paper Mario: The Origami King. It is a title I have only just started but I remain skeptical as the RPG mechanics and gameplay I fell in love with from the original title remain absent. Instead a, albeit unique, system of rotating rings is used making combat really play more like a puzzle than a fight. If nothing else, partner characters do make a return but serve more of a flavor role due to the de-emphasis on combat and RPG elements. This is where the franchise has been left right now.

I think Nintendo is at a loss for what to do with Paper Mario, unable to recapture what enamored fans with the first two entries and dead set on an attitude that whatever made those games great isn’t what Paper Mario is supposed to be. With the closure of AlphaDreamI do not anticipate new entries in the Mario and Luigi franchise for the foreseeable future. Remakes of the two most popular games in that series were released on 3DS but they did not do meaningful sales numbers as both of them were released after the launch of the Nintendo Switch. I would borderline call that self sabotage. While I do really like this franchise though, they are not doing anything that could not be emulated by a different JRPG developer. To this point, indie developer Moonsprout Games released Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling in 2019. Bug Fables is unashamedly a send up to the first two Paper Mario titles and I had the pleasure of playing through it in mid 2021. It felt great and was, if anything, too reliant on Paper Mario and could have likely introduced more of its own original ideas, but it was still an absolute grand slam and can go toe to toe with Paper Mario or Thousand Year Door.

All I ask of a JRPG is to be written well, have charming characters, and just not be a tedious slog to play through. We live in an age where VNs and walking sims are critically and commercially successful. If you do not do something fun and meaningful with your gameplay, then what the fuck are we even doing here. Cut the padding, save the development costs, and don’t waste my time with your menuing that you want to pass off as “gameplay.”