Paper Mario (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Now that we’re technically halfway into the adventure, with far more to discuss, I figured it was time to do an aside.

What To Do In The Mushroom Kingdom: A Tourist’s Video Guide, Pt. 1

Heeey~ so it’s your first time visiting the Kingdom? No? But it just doesn’t feel the same? I getcha. Our landmass changes a lot every couple years, even the Toads keep getting lost. Places disappear, new ones appear. This guide’s gonna be outdated by the next Mario game. But since you’re here now, visiting, I figured you’d like to know some of the stuff you can find currently, and what sort of fun you can get up to. Oh, just ignore the giant clown car in the sky with two castles stacked on top like a bad wedding cake, it’s no biggie.

One of those shops has a rather... uh...
aggressive marketing campaign.

Badges: What would be a tourism visit without some badges that say “Hey, I’ve been there!”? Well, fear not, we’ve got you covered. Across the land you can find a wide, wide variety of badges (our most recent number says 80) to equip to yourself. Some will add a jingle to your actions, changing the normal FX you’d get from doing something. Several of them will also greatly help you out if you want to see more of the Kingdom, as it can be a pretty dangerous place at times! Like now...

You will find most of these in the wild, but they’re also sold in at least two shops: One in Toad Town, the other on the upper floor of the fortune teller Merluvlee’s place near Shooting Star Summit. That one uses a special currency called Star Pieces, I’ll get back to that in a moment. We’ve yet to think of something to give to a daring soul that somehow finds all the existing badges, so “catching them all” isn’t necessary – but the more you have, the more options you’ve got to brave the wilderness!

These? Oh, that's just the ones pinned to my
red shirt. I got 50 more in the collection.

There’s even some weirdos out there who figured out a way to become nigh-unstoppable monsters of power by voluntarily keeping their health extremely low while boosting their Badge and Flower Points extremely high – some daredevils, those guys, but hey, whatever floats their boat, I guess. (Not kidding – look up Danger Mario.) I don't recommend this.

You never know who will give you a Star Piece.

Star Pieces: If you find even one of these, treasure it, cherish it. Those are so valuable that we can’t even trade them for coins! So valuable, in fact, that they’re usually hidden around the Kingdom, or given as rewards for quests. But if you want, you can use them as a currency to buy badges from Merlow, who lives on Merluvlee’s upper floor. And look at that, Merlow’s full stock costs the exact amount of Star Pieces in existence (that we know of), a whopping 160! If you want to look for them all, that is…

Quizzes for Pieces: Think you know anything? Think you can answer any question about the Mushroom Kingdom? Well, you can always test your luck with Chuck Quizmo, the wandering quiz host. Find him somewhere, he asks a question, if you answer correctly, you get one of those famed Star Pieces! For some reason, this guy is always gonna have a question on something you’ve seen on your travels. He’s convenient like that!

Maybe you should just pay the toll...

Meet amazing characters!: This land is bustling with activity from people from all walks of life, from giant turtle-dragons to little plumbers passing by everything in-between. You never know who or what you’ll meet. Some of them will love to chit-chat or trade goods or try to kill you on your way to some other place which is why you must always be well-equipped! These are folks you can avoid if you know how to. Call them optional, yeah. Optional to your journey around our Kingdom. Like Buzzar the vulture, these little Anti Guys, maybe even the blind Kent C. Koopa who holds an illegal toll booth just outside Toad Town…

If you want to take that risk, you can even go into our surprisingly clean sewers and encounter Bloopers! And no, I don’t just mean the tape we left down there with all our funny failed takes for this tourism video! Actually… yeah, the sewers are kinda nice, they have a lot of pipes that lead to several other main area of the Kingdom. We’d heartily recommend it if it weren’t for the Bloopers trying to murder us every time to have a way to quickly travel to and from any place! Speaking of optional people…

Yeah, this Master really hurts.

Come to the Dojo: One of our less-advertised attractions in Toad Town is the Dojo. Come here to have a chat with the Master, a champion who has honed his skills to become what’s possibly the best combatant in the entire Kingdom, and his protégés Chan and Lee. If you can defeat even one of these, you’ll gain an honorary place in the Dojo! Beat both, then face the Master, and who knows – all this fame could become yours! If you don’t end up in the Toad Town hospital because you challenged a GOSH DARN MARTIAL ARTS MASTER YOU NITWIT! *cough* But there is something very rewarding here. Although, maybe it’s best reserved for seasoned veterans of the Mushroom Kingdom… (Tape to be continued)

Chapter 5: Hot, Hot Times on Lavalava Island

If you fall off the slippery whale, you can
swim. I hear Koopas are good at swimming.

In order to get to Lavalava Island, Mario needs some form of ride. There’s a whale at the Toad Town pier, and after we rescue it from an annoying Fuzzy caterpillar, we’re good to go. Professor Kolorado tags along. The team arrives to the island, with a tribe of Yoshis living on the grassy land. Okay, this chapter has taken a turn for the adorable. We even see five baby Yoshis under the watchful eye of their babysitter, an elderly purple Cheep-Cheep named Sushie. Mario follows Kolorado towards the volcano, with the old Kooparchaeologist smelling treasure down there, but a river of flowing magma is blocking the path. We’ll have to find another way.

So the crew returns to the village, only to see the Yoshis in a panic: The babies have disappeared! All five of them! Even Sushie, who went to look for them, did not return! Kolorado insists that Mario solves this issue so the treasure hunt can resume. If it weren't that a Star Spirit is in that volcano, I'd tell you where you can shove that treasure, Kolorado.

Ah, the Yoshis... such models of parenthood...

The Fish Waterbender

Mario and his partner thus go into the jungle, and are quick to find the grandma fish, stuck in a tree. How the Yoshi babies got her there, nobody knows. A hammer hit or two to the palmtree and she’s freed! She promptly joins the party in order to help. Combat-wise, one wouldn’t expect the Cheep-Cheep to be one of the more formidable fighters in the cast, with moves that hit hard and have extra effects against fiery creatures. Water power, y’all! And outside of battle, she can be used to cross ponds of water. That ability is necessary to find the baby Yoshis scattered around the wilderness.

Eh. He's not as aesthetically pleasing
to the eye as the Yoshis.

Mario returns with Sushie to the Yoshi village, where everyone has calmed down. He even receives a gift from the leader of the village, a statue that will lead him to Raphael the Raven, true legend of the place, and the Raven will help Mario get to the volcano. Sushie heard that Mario is heading into this dangerous place to save Princess Peach, so she elects to accompany the plumber on this quest.

We get to Raphael and the Ravens (this legit sounds like a band name), and they make a path towards the volcano. Kolorado still follows us throughout, but keeps getting himself hurt. It’s not fruit punch, it’s lava, you bloody idiot Koopa. Don’t dip your shell-covered ass in that magma. I swear, just because the newest member in the party is a babysitter, doesn’t mean we suddenly have to babysit YOU.

Get out of the way, you idiot Koopa!

...Thanks for the reminder, game.

The volcano itself is fairly straightforward. It features a lot of fire enemies, so Sushie shines with her abilities. The most notable item you find here is an Ultra Hammer, which can destroy even stronger blocks in the way and deals more damage. It ends in a fight against a large Venus Fire Trap with two smaller buds, these plants somehow very at ease despite living in lava. The best part? Once they’re defeated, you get the victory jingle and some EXP, and then… they come back, this time on fire. Well that’s good, we have water and ice powers on our side now.

I hope that magma's gonna burn some
common sense in that turtle head.

Once these elite Venus Fire Traps are defeated, the fifth Spirit, Misstar, is freed. But the floor becomes unstable, forcing Mario, his party ally, Kolorado, and the Spirit to flee by flight, leaving an actual treasure chest behind, the one that the archeologist had been looking for. Misstar’s ability is Smooch, which restores 20 of Mario’s HP at the cost of three bars of Star Power. We can also retrieve the treasure chest, which survived the eruption, and take its contents back to Kolorado, who gives a magical seed in return.

"Gee, I don't know~ is it me? I know
astrophysics, ask me harder questions!"

Back to Princess Peach, she goes out to sneak around her castle again. This time, she stumbles on a few mooks who are making a quiz game for fun, and instead of sending her back they ask her to participate. 10 questions, and Peach can win most of them. Only two or three cannot be answered by the player, because they’re about the next area where a Star Spirit can be found – the Flower Fields, accessible by the Flower Portal in Toad Town. Good to know! Then, at the end, if Peach won the game, she gets an extra prize – on top of a participation prize called the Sneaky Parasol, an item she can use to mimic the appearance of others. This ends when Bowser shows up, spots her, and has her sent back to her room.

As Mario, his partner, and Kolorado depart, who shows up? Little Shit, who swam all the way from Toad Town. Too bad, we’re leaving aboard the whale. Well, Little Shit swims the entire trip back AGAIN just to fight Mario. As a result, his HP drops to half in this fight; and that’s good, too, as he has sprouted wings as well as a spike on his eggshell helmet. This little shit is getting harder to beat every time, but we have lots of options to damage him regardless.

I normally would have a policy against hurting
kindergartners, but this one sprouted wings and
a head spike just to spite me so I'll make an
exception, just this once!

Chapter 6: Dark Days in Flower Fields

Yes, Mario, I see the door too, you can put
your Metal gear exclamation mark away.

Thanks to the Peach interlude, we know that we must get to Flower Fields; the only way to do that is to collect the four Magical Seeds from Bub-Ulbs across the lands previously visited and have a Toad plant them on a flower patch in Toad Town, which makes a door appear.

We make our first steps into Flower Fields, and we can indeed see that in this land, the sun is gone. Nothing but clouds up there, preventing the shine from reaching the plantpeople. The cause? The Puff-Puff machine, creating the clouds, controlled by the army of a nasty creature called Huff N. Puff, is blocking the sun. There aren’t many ways to get there, though; only a giant beanstalk sort of thing could reach those heights and restore the skies to normal.

I think I have more important things to do
right now, don't you think? Like...
saving your plant asses!

This leads to one of the most tedious fetch quests in the entire game. You have to gather the Magical Bean, plant it in Fertile Soil, and pour Miracle Water over it. You can follow six paths, three of which are locked off by gates guarded by colorful flowers. Each one of them wants a berry of their corresponding color (blue for blue, red for red, yellow for yellow). They won’t let you pass until you bring them what they want.

Need I remind everyone that a big deal is made that the flowers, the plant inhabitants of Flower Fields, are practically DYING due to the lack of sunshine? You three color flowers, you. Are. About. To. Die. I think Mario saving you matters more than getting a little berry snack. Thankfully, the bean and the soil are fairly easy to find. The Miracle Water, on the other hand…

Oh yeah, I'll bring you a really beautiful item
called a pair of cutters. Just wait till you see
what that item can do. The cutters are so
 beautiful, you'll be off your root.

Okay, get a load of this: The pond has dried up because Lakitus stole the Water Stone, source of water for the land. The pond’s inhabitant, Lily, is sad because of this. Who has the stone? A narcissistic rose named Rosie, who refuses to give it back because it’s jealous of Lily. Every plant here is dying, you included, and you won’t give the one thing I need right now to make everything right again? Fuck you, Rosie. I should just take it by force by setting you the fuck on fire. Everyone would survive, except you. As much as I’d prefer that, we instead have to do a detour by a crystal tree, get a crystal berry, and take it to Rosie so she’ll finally hand over the Water Stone, so we can rescue Lily, get yet another type of berry, so that yet another flower will help us reach the next part of the chapter, where we'll finally get the Miracle Water. AUGH.

Does it show that I hate this chapter? Fetch quest chapters are so damn tedious. It feels like filler, plain and simple. The mental hoops some NPCs must be going through in order to justify being in the way of a friggin’ hero saving the friggin’ world, all because they want one particular item… And in particularly egotistical ways, too.

Oh, good. A hedge maze guarded by Lakitus
now. Lord knows our time hasn't been
wasted enough in this Chapter so far.

Lakilester ("SPIKE!") is useful in the
overworld in many places, but he straight-up
sucks in battle. After Watt and Sushie,
he's a disappointing final ally.

We eventually meet the Sun, saddened and ashamed that it cannot shine at the moment. On our way back, we encounter a Lakitu called Lakilester (“Spike!”, he corrects), who says he was tasked by Huff N. Puff to challenge the heroes. He’s defeated easily and accepts whatever Mario will do to him upon defeat, but after his girlfriend Lakilulu comes by to console him, the Lakitu is forgiven and elects to join the group. He wants to become a real “man” (never mind that he’s a cloud-floaty… thingy), instead of pretending to be one!

At the end of this quest, we find the cloud-making machine and destroy it, which eliminates the clouds and allows the Sun to rise and shine again. This FINALLY lets Mario get the soil ready, plant the bean and water it, creating a beanstalk that takes him to the land of the clouds, where he quickly finds the villain of this arc.

Where does Lakilester ("....Spike!") get all these
Spinies from anyway?

Huff N. Puff represents everything good and bad about many bosses in this game. He has a fun design and some cool moves. There’s a gimmick to the fight, which means that Mario needs to find a good strategy to beat him. In this case, every hit on Puff will make him release tiny versions of himself, which he can toss at Mario to attack, or inhale to replenish his own health. Mario and his ally must then try to destroy the little Puffs quickly, usually through moves that hit all enemies. However, we also get very little time to get a feel of the character; he’s absent from the arc until we fight him head-on, meaning that he gets few, if any, significant scenes. Even Little Shit – oh, excuse me, Jr. Troopa – gets more personality.

These magical disguises are incredibles! If it
weren't for Twink, we'd have no idea this is the
Princess!

After the cloud guy is down, we rescue the sixth Spirit, Klevar. For two bars of Star Power, he can unleash the move Time Out, which has a chance of paralyzing enemies for a couple turns. Following this, we get a Peach scene in which she keeps on sneaking around her castle, this time using the Sneaky Parasol to take the form of Koopatrols and Clubbas. She’s eventually found out by Kammy due to her perfume telling on her, but not before the princess learns that Kammy is setting something up for when Mario will inevitably show up for a confrontation…

We shall resume this in Part 4!