Mario Rpg Game Design Analysis

With the recent(ish) release of Paper Mario: Origami King I wanted to do an analysis of the original Paper Mario released in 2000. There are many aspects of the Paper Mario series that make it successful enough to have an impact on the RPG genre. Just look at recent games like Underhero, Bug Fables: The Everlasting Seedling, and even South Park: The Fractured But Whole to see Paper Mario's influence. I wanted to focus on one aspect of Paper Mario so I analyzed the battle mechanics. With the help of the Paper Mario Wiki and the Mario Wiki I've made a semi accurate spreadsheet of every enemy, item, badge, partner, and base statistic in Paper Mario. Feel free to check out the spreadsheet and play around with it here.

What's in a Number

I started my research thinking the beauty in Paper Mario's battle system was that it focused on small numbers. For reference another popular RPG that released one year after Paper Mario was Final Fantasy X. In FFX the main character starts with about 500 HP and can deal about 150 damage with a basic attack. Meanwhile Mario starts with 10 HP and can deal a whooping 1 point of damage.

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So, what's the beauty in doing 1 damage, you'd think players wouldn't feel great about it. Well this gives upgrades more weight to the gameplay. The first upgrade players get effectively doubles Mario's attack power and every small increase holds more power to the player. Comparing again to FFX every upgrade feels like a steady increase keeping up with the game's challenges, but never impacting the player in the same way. It's also to Paper Mario's credit that damage numbers appear with a nice VFX showing a star for every point of damage. It's important that a relatively large number is sold to the player and the difference between 1 damage and 5 damage comes across as a huge impact. However, small numbers are not what makes a battle system great.

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Approachability for Everyone

When I first played Paper Mario without knowing much about RPGs, I only used the hammer because it was the easiest action command to perform, I put all my stats in HP because it meant I could live longer, and I used Watt because her ability to ignore enemy defense is great. Now when if I play with a deeper knowledge of the game, I put all my stats into my badges and FP to have special effects that make battles easier and use special moves to deal more damage.

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The real beauty in Paper Mario's battle system is that both of these ways to play were totally viable. I was able to play in very different ways and still enjoy the experience the game offered. It doesn't matter what the players understanding of the game is, most people will still enjoy it.

What Did I Learn and How We Can Make Better RPGs

This is probably obvious to most designers but the biggest takeaway from my analysis is to know your audience. Paper Mario is targeted towards children. That's why making combat approachable and having damage outputs that can be counted on one hand was effective. Final Fantasy and other RPGs aren't bad for doing something else, they just target a very different audience.

The next time you're working on an RPG combat system think about the audience you're reaching out too. If you're going after a hardcore audience, make the numbers complex and reward players for fully understanding the depth of your systems. If you're targeting casual players think about how many ways the player can win and how easily players understand the game.