Best Mario RPG on Nintendo Switch

With the recent announcement of the first brand new entry in the Mario and Luigi series in over 9 years since Paper Jam for the 3DS, it got me thinking, what is the best Mario RPG on the Nintendo Switch? With three incredible games, the answer might not be what you think, but we will explain why.

When it comes to Mario RPG’s, Nintendo Switch owners have it good. Most Nintendo consoles and handhelds get about 1 or maybe 2 entries per system. Nintendo Switch owners were fortunate enough to get three different Mario RPG’s thanks to some great remakes, original entries and with the upcoming Mario and Luigi: Brothership, that will bring the total up to 4.

Nintendo have a history of just doing simple ports of their back catalog, but both Super Mario RPG, and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door went beyond the basic HD upgrade. Both featured a lot of love, attention and smart quality of life changes worthy of your money, especially if you never had a chance to play them the first time around.

With three great Mario RPG’s to play on the Nintendo Switch at the moment with Paper Mario: The Origami King, The Thousand-Year Door, Super Mario RPG and never enough time or money, which Mario RPG on the Nintendo Switch is best?

Having played and finished all Nintendo Switch versions of these three fantastic games, which is very important to say before we get into the list, here’s how we think it shakes out in 2024.

THIRD PLACE

Super Mario RPG

We all can understand and appreciate the importance of Super Mario RPG. Paper Mario as well as the Mario and Luigi series also likely wouldn’t exist had it not been for Square transplanting their RPG expertise onto Mario and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom.

The importance of this collaboration cannot be understated!

Not only did it pave the way for Nintendo to delve into the RPG market after this release on their own, but it undoubtedly played a big role in shaping many gamers tastes who grew up in this era. Without a doubt Super Mario RPG was a gateway RPG for many gamers of that generation and without Mario, might not have discovered a love for role playing games.

Now that we have given Super Mario RPG its flowers, it is definitively the weakest on the list for a few reasons. For starters, it’s the shortest experience on the list by a large margin, which isn’t indicative of quality, and personally I always prefer a shorter more succinct game, but if you had to pick one Mario RPG on the Nintendo Switch, length becomes relevant when all titles are great and 10-15 hours compared to 30-35 is a big difference.

The other reason is that even though the remake on the Nintendo Switch looks great, the gameplay mechanics are still rooted in the mid 90’s. Trying to combine RPG and platforming, although done very well for 1996 standards, can be somewhat cumbersome with a lot of depth perception problems in certain areas.

Then you have sporadic difficulty spikes, which are completely random. Even if you did everything right you might die, but try the same boss again and depending on RNG, you might win barely scratched. It felt less about skill and more about luck during some fights. Having to retry the more difficult fights usually occur after long cutscenes and there is no way to skip these, which was frustrating.

Due to Super Mario RPG being developed by Square and not Nintendo, there is just something about it that never feels quite right. The world has some weird locations, the enemies are odd, friendlies are even more odd. All of these are weird choices when the Mario franchise has such a breadth of elements to use. Super Mario RPG might have started the trend of having quirky writing, but it lacks Nintendo charm unlike the other two Paper Mario games on this list.

It’s important to reiterate, we are not taking anything away from what many to be one of the greatest and most influential RPG’s of all time, but if you are trying to decide which Mario RPG to buy on the Nintendo Switch, I think most people would agree there are better options.

SECOND PLACE

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Since its release back in 2004 on the Nintendo Game Cube, the common sentiment is that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was the best entry in the Paper Mario series, and arguably the best Mario RPG of them all. Every Paper Mario game that has released after was always judged against The Thousand-Year Door for obvious reasons. We just reviewed the remake and came away extremely impressed with the love and care that went into the remake and scored it a 9.

However, I think there are some weaknesses when it comes to The Thousand Year Door and trying to determine the best Mario RPG on Switch. I think the majority of the sidekicks weren’t that memorable, the world and the story didn’t always feel cohesive, it had some pacing issues at the beginning, the bosses lacked excitement, and the game constantly has sections that felt dragged out ultimately not respecting the players time.

I dreaded finishing a chapter and then having to endure the Peach and Bowser sections. In my opinion, they didn’t add much to the story and they didn’t need to be added after every single chapter. Then the game also forces you to do lots of backtracking, or tedious tasks like working your way up 19 ranks in a fighting league or saying I Love You 100 times or having to go back to every single level near the end just to try to find where a certain character went to progress the story. Cutting out a lot of the backtracking and a majority of the Peach and Bowser sections would have tightened up an already excellent game and maybe we would be having a different discussion.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is an excellent game with loads to do, even after you finish the main story. There is the pit, which has 100 levels of combat, which can test your battle acumen, but if you attempt it after the game the reward wont be the prize you get, but more about a sense of accomplishment. In the Switch remake, there is the added incentive to return to find all of the star bits and star sprites. Doing so will unlock an art gallery and audio gallery, respectively, from the original and the inclusion of things like this is a rarity for Nintendo.

FIRST PLACE

Paper Mario: The Origami King

Even though Paper Mario: The Origami King doesn’t feature traditional Paper Mario RPG elements like levelling up your HP, FP and BP like in The Thousand-Year Door, it still features many elements that make it a RPG: Turn Based Combat, Allies, Gear, Weapons, Environmental Puzzles, Upgrades, NPC’s, Long Quests, Side Quests, Epic Boss Fights and many other things.

Maybe by definition, it goes a little outside what people have come to expect from a Paper Mario game, but things need to evolve. A prime example of this evolution is how Nintendo has handled their hardware over the years. Without change, taking some risk and evolution, we wouldn’t be where we are today, which is possibly experiencing the greatest Nintendo console of all time, which might end up being the best selling console of all time.

Everything about Paper Mario: The Origami King is excellent. Despite getting an 80 review average, which most games would be happy with, it undoubtedly was not judged on it’s own merits, but unfairly reviewed by many fans of the series who came in with predetermined expectations and unbiased opinions.

The characters felt more memorable in Origami King. Olivia and Bobby were head and shoulders better than any character from TTYD as you could easily swap them out. If you removed Bobby or Olivia, there would have been a noticeable gap. The story was more engaging with writing that not only made me laugh out loud from beginning to end that started in the first few minutes with Bowser walking on his face, but there is even a moment that tugged at the heartstrings a bit later on in the game, which was a first for a Mario title.

The world was visually stunning, which isn’t a surprise for Paper Mario, but it had loads of little Origami touches. The locations were extremely varied and still somehow felt more cohesive than TTYD by having a world that felt like one unit and not disjointed parts connected by a magical pipe . The music was incredible, and one of the best parts was finding all of the hidden Toads around the world. Not only was it fun, but it also added to your battle audience, which. serves purpose down the line.

Finally, the boss fights, which should be a highlight for an RPG were a spectacle and every single one was memorable, but most importantly, they pose an extremely different challenge than the rest of the game. In the other games on this list, the bosses were just enemies with bigger health bars that didn’t present new challenges.

As for one of the main points of criticism of the game, the combat, I thought the new system provided an interesting challenge every battle with trying to line up the battlefield right every time for bonus damage. The battles also rewarded you depending on how proficient you were in battle. There was also the items that you could find or purchase for combat that made big differences and degraded over time. As someone who enjoyed the breakable weapons in Breath of The Wild, this scratched the same itch.

Verdict

If you have the time and money, you should absolutely buy all three of these games on Nintendo Switch, but in the case you can only pick one, it realistically came down to The Origami King and The Thousand Year Door.

Both Origami King and The Thousand-Year Door take about 30 hours to finish and longer to complete. What is paramount is that they both are excellent games that have different strengths and weaknesses, which is great because they don’t feel like each other and offer two great experiences, which is why you should play both.

If only one entry on the Nintendo Switch could be chosen, it would be The Origami King. It’s less of a traditional, by the numbers RPG of yesteryear, but more of a modern adventure RPG hybrid of today. It still hits all the notes that the series has become known for, but most importantly, over the 30 hours, there was never a point in Origami King where I felt that my time as a player wasn’t being respected. You never knew what was around the next corner with The Origami King with the setting and the story, which lead to a sense of joy and discovery as the journey unfolded, which is exactly what you want from your RPG.