I had such a rough start with this game. I played this game on the N64 after beating its successor and had such a hard time with this: the enemies seemed to crush me (even had trouble with the Goomba King and especially the Koopa Bros.) and the lack of HP for your partner seemed odd to me. I never got far. Years later I played it again (this time on emulator) and stopped playing it after failing against the Anti-Guy and losing 30 minutes of progress. Fast forward to 2022 and I played this game with two other people online and I could finally overcome the difficulty (I guess it makes more sense to increase HP at first, unlike Paper Mario 2 where I'd almost always increase Badge Points). It's such a great game, actually. I mean, it's not as great as The Thousand-Year Door since there are some restrictions (Mario's level caps at 27, only 30 Badge Points maximum etc.) but it was really fun and lovely. I especially liked the enemy designs and the amazing soundtrack. Again, it doesn't beat the successor in that regard, but damn is it good.

This game has also shown me once again how low Paper Mario has fallen with the last few entries. Origami King was absolute garbage from start to finish. Color Splash had weird game-play (and no OCs) and I quit Super Paper Mario after 1 hour because of the annoying 2D / 3D switching. I really don't get why they felt the need to change the game-play, it was literally perfect before with the first two entries. It really makes me mad, actually, because it could have been something amazing. Instead, Paper Mario as a series is pretty much dead these days. What a shame. What a fucking shame.