I think I played Paper Mario for about 7 hours today. Initially, it was while Clark was napping... then when he woke up but Rhonda didn't. Then the game endured some lengthy pauses while I fed and played with him. He seemed fairly entertained by it, during a couple sessions where he was calm enough to sit and watch the TV. Bright colors, little moving things, soft happy music. I wish Nintendo was more aggressive with soundtrack albums, because the various musics of Paper Mario are all great.
I only have one star to go before (I assume) the game ends. One thing I remember about the N64 Paper Mario: when the plot ended, the game ended. That's a huge problem in a wonderful little world like this one, full of sidequests and collectibles. So I'm trying to complete as much of the extra stuff as I can, just in case this Paper Mario also bails out on me.
So today was spent mainly in Rogueport, the wretched hive of scum and villainy in the Mushroom Kingdom. At first I was concentrating on fulfilling some Trouble Requests and buying up some missing badges, but soon I dived into the game's obnoxious recipe collecting. If a game goes to the trouble of giving me an empty inventory grid, I feel obliged to fill it.
The Chef Shimi trouble mission was giving me fits. He wants a Mystic Egg, a Golden Leaf and a Keel Mango. The egg is easy; the punie girl back in the tree hands them out. But I had never seen the other two before. The Chef is only sparingly helpful: the leaf is found in the Creepy Steeple and the mango is (obviously) found down on Keelhaul Key. I explored both worlds and couldn't turn up either, so I had to research through an online player's guide. There is no way in hell I would have found the magical Golden Leaf tree of Creepy Steeple by myself. The path to it is extremely subtle and requires Mario to go paperthin to enter it. The mango I should have found... it's in a tree, duh.
Anyway, once I found all the ingredients, it occured to me that I might use some extra leafs and mangos in discovering Zess T.'s hidden recipes, so I grabbed plenty of doubles so I wouldn't have to come back.
The recipe thing is a major headache. I can't imagine any player figuring all 50-couple out through trial and error, given how many food and food-related items are in the game. The way it works is you give crotchety old Zess T. one or two items, which she then cooks. If you're lucky, you'll uncover a new combo-item and the game will fill in one of the empty slots in your recipe book. If you're not, you'll waste perfectly good and useful items as Zess T. cooks them into crap.
Some are easy: Mystic Egg + Mushroom = Omelette Meal. Cake Mix = Cake. But to expect an Icicle Pop out of Honey Syrup and an Ice Storm? The Ice Storm isn't even food! I pulled up a FAQ page on the iBook (then switched it to the Hiptop when the iBook battery drained) and set about running all over creation hunting down rare foods. That was pretty much my 7 hours right there.
I still have a handful to finish, but I know exactly what they are and why I haven't cooked them yet: the ingredients are expensive. I need to buy a couple more Jammin' Jellies and Ultra Shrooms to complete my recipe book, and both of those cost 200 coins apiece. Note that the game refuses to register coin amounts over 999 and you'll have an idea what these items mean to the Mario economy.
Man, it was game enough just finding all the ingredients and trying to spend my money as efficiently as possible. Most of the final results I sold back to replenish my cash supply. Without a player's guide, you'd easily go through 10x as much money and time finding all the recipes. It makes me wonder who Nintendo thinks is going to accomplish that task without outside assistance.
