Hardly any other game hero is as versatile as Mario: the mustachioed man runs and jumps in 2D and 3D, he drifts in a kart, swings tennis and golf clubs and is also a party animal. He has only become a little more unfamiliar with role-playing in recent years. Starting with the Wii adventure Super Paper Mario, the Paper Mario games became more and more of an adventure game, and the bankruptcy of developer Alpha Dream also put an end to the fine Mario & Luigi series.
But after a few lean years of RPGs, Nintendo suddenly seems to have rediscovered its love for the genre and, after the great remake of the SNES adventure Super Mario RPG, is now bringing Paper Mario: Legend of the Aeon Gate to the Switch. The GameCube role-playing game from 2004 enjoys an almost mythical status among its fans – and not just because of its previous GameCube exclusivity. It is actually the content and gameplay strengths of the second part of the series that make it one of the best role-playing games of its generation.
Nintendo and developer Intelligent Systems have now consistently transferred these strengths to the Switch, giving it a really stylish new coat of paint and adding a few subtle convenience features such as new abbreviations.
Just like 20 years ago, Mario ends up in the rough port town of Rohlingen: the missing Princess Peach was last seen there and now it’s up to you to find her again. The key to this is a legendary treasure: Peach has been looking for it and if Mario manages to track it down, he will also find the missing princess. To do this, the hero needs seven star fragments, and so he begins his adventure together with the clever Gumba student Gumbrina. The two of them don’t stay alone for long: all sorts of abstruse and therefore likeable companions join Mario over the course of the story and bring their own skills with them, which help him explore the world, solve puzzles and, not least, in battle.
