The Mario RPG series began in 1996 when Square and Nintendo developed Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars for the SNES. While a true sequel never surfaced, Intelligent Systems - developers of Fire Emblem - picked up where Square left off and delivered a successor: Paper Mario. This developed into its own series spawning a sequel, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, are often lauded as the series' best games.

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The question now remains of what is the best Mario RPG. Could it be Super Mario RPG or is it Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door?

10 Super Mario RPG: Soundtrack

While Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has a fine set of tracks, Super Mario RPG's defining musical point comes in delivering consistently high-quality tunes throughout the entire game. Themes like the Forest Maze, the boss themes, and the Factory stand out as highlights. Most notably, however, is that this game's music was composed by Yoko Shimomura.

Super Mario RPG was so noteworthy that Yoko Shimomura listed it as a turning point in her musical career. Notably, Shimomura would later go on to composer more works for Square, later Square-Enix. Among those works are Legend of Mana and Kingdom Hearts.

9 Paper Mario: Writing

Super Mario RPG offered clever dialogue but came with translation issues. While enemy names deviated heavily from the Japanese translation, the game still delivered a noteworthy script. However, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door showcased clever writing not found in most contemporary JRPGs. The dialogue involved real-world situations, such as dating and romantic problems. Luigi got to embark on an adventure and narrate it. Even the NPCs offered interesting tales of their own life.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door utilized various techniques to achieve its effect. Shaky dialogue, giant dialogue, and different colored text boxes were all emphasized the story. But the sheer quality of writing that went into the game made it stand out among the entire series.

8 Super Mario RPG: Pacing

Both Mario RPG titles offer a fairly linear adventure. Super Mario RPG progresses forward throughout the entire game. Meanwhile Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door always connects to the central hub, Rogueport, with interconnecting paths.

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Perhaps the only time you need to revisit an area in Super Mario RPG, however, is after you rescue Peach from Marrymore. The game will automatically take you straight to Mushroom Kingdom. Besides that, you could explore for hidden treasure chests later. On the other hand, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door ranges from dungeons to train cars where you're exploring and not battling at all. Near the end of the game, it even commits a fetch-quest crime, forcing you to hunt down a white Bob-omb. Super Mario RPG never interrupts the pacing of the adventure while its successor does this several times.

7 Paper Mario: Battle System

Super Mario RPG invented the action commands battle system. Hit a button, or rotate your pad, and power up your attacks. It felt like the perfect way to engage the player with a turn-based mechanic.

The original Paper Mario capitalized on this with multiple variations. Its sequel took this a step further with stylish moves. Using these boosted the crowd's engagement which, in turn, boosted your star power. The game featured different action commands, based on the characters you used, to find new and creative ways to engage the player.

6 Super Mario RPG: Level Design

As mentioned earlier, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door takes you on quiet train rides and fetch-quests. While many of its dungeons are good, a few parts of the game disrupt the story's pacing. Super Mario RPG, however, is full of creative dungeon levels. Pipe Vault has you warping through pipes and playing mini-games.

Meanwhile, Land's End features a canyon, sand whirlwinds, and an underground temple. The Sea lets you jump slowly through the water and leads into a Sunken Ship, which has passwords and giant squids attacking you. Even Bean Valley leads to a new path when you must head up into the clouds.

5 Paper Mario: Badges

Super Mario RPG offers you basic weapons, armor, and accessory equipment. The accessories are special due to various stat boosts or status-ailment nullification. Paper Mario and its sequel, however, offer badges.

You can equip multiple badges to give you new attacks, boost your stats, boost a partner, and more. The variety improves on the standard equip systems featured in most RPGs. The customization possibilities were endless and allowed the player multiple strategies as well.

4 Super Mario RPG: Creativity

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door built on its N64 predecessor with overhauled visuals, new characters, and new puzzle mechanics. It served as a sequel to an already fantastic title and still managed to make improvements. Super Mario RPG was the first to blend a platformer with a turn-based RPG. Its own foundation served to introduce memorable characters and a revolutionary battle system that would influence games like The Legend of Dragoon. Mario's first foray into this genre became many players' first RPG.

Paper Mario has the benefit of at least three games released in the 2000s. However, while the Mario & Luigi series carried the torch that started from Super Mario RPG, the games were still fundamentally different. To this date, nothing plays like Super Mario RPG, which still maintains its status as a top JRPG from its era.

3 Paper Mario: Challenge

Super Mario RPG offered a standard JRPG level challenge. The right party alignment and preparation allowed you to beat most bosses. You could also boost Mario's attacks with items, or with Geno Boost, then finish them with Super Jump. You could even defeat Culex, the game's superboss, with a party around Level 17.

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Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door offered some more challenging enemies with creative setups. Your partners, all of whom were useful, had HP and could be KO'd, forcing Mario to fight on his own. Perhaps the most pressing challenge of all was the optional Pit of 100 Trials. You entered a gauntlet with 99 battles leading up to the superboss, Bonetail. At this point in Mario RPGs, he was by far the hardest boss in the series.

2 Super Mario RPG: Easter Eggs

Super Mario RPG offered a ton of Easter Eggs. Among them included a cameo by Link from The Legend of Zelda, Samus from Metroid, an Arwing from Star Fox, an enemy resembling Donkey Kong, and the Blue Falcon and Fire Stingray from F-Zero.

You can bother a Toad leading you through the castle until he reacts with annoyed dialogue, you can find invisible chests with rare items, and even fight a boss inspired by Square-Enix's Final Fantasy series. While Culex never appeared in a Final Fantasy title, the fight included Final Fantasy IV's boss theme, the trademark victory theme, and even played the series' prelude at the end.

1 Paper Mario: Puzzles

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door got creative with its puzzle design. Stages like Hooktail's Castle had you exploring the castle, searching for keys, and using partner abilities to cross gaps.

These tested your ability to adapt to a level structure that consistently changed through each chapter. What Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door lacked in pacing, with some levels, it made up for with its clever dungeons. Plus with over half-a-dozen partners, the game consistently found creative ways to test your puzzle-solving skills.

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