Paper Mario was initially fine IMO. It laserfocused into a very different niche; because it made stat logic simple math puzzles, the developers were able to bui

Paper Mario was initially fine IMO. It laserfocused into a very different niche; because it made stat logic simple math puzzles, the developers were able to build out the interactive element to SMRPGs fights into something that feels appropriate, yet not too obtrusive (something which the franchise would end up losing by the time Sticker Star came rolling around). A lot of attacks in SMRPG just have one button you press to make them stronger; by contrast Paper Mario would introduce things like stick flicking, holding moves or inserting certain button combinations to make them stronger. Tonally I'd say 64, TTYD and Super manage to stick close enough to being "quirky, yet funny" with all of them having some emotional beats that they don't undercut. Sticker Star, Color Splash and Origami King all veer into self-parody levels when it comes to the writing and it just... sucks really. It's hard to take the entire thing seriously when everything you interact with makes a joke about how everything is made of paper every other sentence. Mario & Luigi for the most part isn't really based on SMRPG. Most of it's DNA comes from a game called Tomato Adventure instead. That said, it did end up borrowing the more superficial RPG elements. Superstar Saga and Partners in Time probably fare the best in terms of mixing more RPG-like elements, while the games after would rapidly swing between "way too easy" and "absurdly difficult" when it came to the interactive component. I'd say that last bit about game design only really started to fade away in... around the early-to-mid-2010s really. It was falling out of favor before that with Xbox and Playstation's approach to game design but the whole "everything is online now" means that games are trying to fight with their players against the inevitable deluge of other games out there.