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Why Everyone Hates It: By popular opinion, the Paper Mario games are overly simplistic hybrids of RPGs and platformers, not offering enough on either front to be worth playing.
Legitimate Issues With the Game: While these games actually offer a little more challenge than typical console RPGs of the last decade or so, that is a low enough bar that one can reasonably label them as fairly easy.
Why I Like It Anyway: Super Mario RPG received high praise from many sources, being a fairly innovative RPG, developed by Square in the days it seemed they could do no wrong. When looked at objectively though, it really doesn't feel like much of a Mario game. Most of the major characters and enemies made a showing in some form, but they were largely drowned out by a huge number of original characters, including two party members, none of whom really seemed to fit. While a good game, it was really just some quirky fanciful Square game with some Mario characters shoehorned in.
Later, when the itch to make a Mario RPG for the N64 struck, there was a bit of bad blood between Nintendo and Square, making a true Super Mario RPG 2 an impossibility. Instead, the reins were turned over to Intelligent Systems, best known for Fire Emblem and Advance Wars series, neither of which had been released in the U.S. at the time, but having existed since the days of the NES in Japan (the latter being known as Famicom Wars, making for some awkward nomenclature here). While they ran with some conventions from Square's attempt, (namely keeping the Donkey Kong inspired hammer as a primary attack and combat bonuses for precise timing), and added their own unique gimmick (literally two-dimensional "paper" characters in a 3D world), an astoundingly good job was done of making the whole affair feel like a Mario game. Towns are populated by mushroom retainers, or friendlier than average versions of traditional monsters. In-jokes abound on topics like koopa troopas having become more human-like over the years, and the modern characterization of Luigi as something of a creepy weirdo, disappointed at how often he's overlooked began with the first Paper Mario. More importantly, the layout of the world in general screams platformer, with long horizontal stretches of rolling hills containing the occasional jumping challenge.
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The real genius of Paper Mario however comes from the fresh take on combat. RPGs at the time were beginning to slide into ridiculous, giving characters thousands of HP, and attacks dealing tens of thousands of damage, with less and less emphasis being placed on equipment management or varying tactics from battle to battle. Intelligent Systems meanwhile is a developer known for extremely unforgiving tactical games, leaving very little to chance and forcing the player to carefully weigh strengths and weaknesses or suffer heavy permanent losses. Obviously they weren't going to run with mechanics as involved as Fire Emblem's for a game designed to introduce new players to a genre known to be rather overly kind to begin with, but it wouldn't be an Intelligent Systems game without forcing the player to put thought into every battle. In compromise, they implemented a system of extreme minimalism.
At the start of the game, Mario has five HP, and two basic attacks. Monsters can either hit with a hammer for one point of damage (two points with proper timing), or jumped on for one point of damage, followed by another single damage jump with proper timing. Early monsters have only two HP, and deal one point of damage with their attacks, although proper timing can drop this to one. After throwing out a few of these to help players learn the timing to drop one every round, monsters begin appearing with wings, making it impossible to hit them with the hammer, or spikes on their heads, making jump attacks hurt Mario instead of the monster. In both cases, it's immediately visually obvious that one attack or the other is a bad idea. Later in the game, items will be acquired to increase the base damage of each attack, making jumps inherently a better option on anything lacking spikes (doing two damage twice being better than than three damage once), but some monsters (which are clearly heavily armored) will reduce all damage from a single attack by their defense value, making the single hit suddenly more attractive. As the game proceeds, more and more complex variations on this concept arise. High defense monsters with wings, needing a jump to ground them, followed by a hammer blow to finish them off, or whose defenses can be cracked, exposing them to a more efficient attack later. A few later in the game will actually be immune to both jumps and hammers, requiring the player to either spend MP on fireball attacks, or rely on an attack from their partner (one of several friendly versions of common enemies which can be swapped out in a Pokémon-like fashion). The strategies can eventually become surprisingly complex, with the numbers involved staying in the single digits even at the end of the game, with only bosses having double-digit HP, and creative combinations of accessories required to be able to deal for than six damage in a single round.
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This approach is sheer brilliance. The small but important numbers and clear visual representations of a given monster's strengths and weaknesses make it extremely important, but also extremely easy, to do the math and work out the most efficient means of dispatching every enemy in the game. This was originally one of the selling points of the entire RPG genre, which had been completely lost by the time of Paper Mario's release. In a more perfect world, the industry would follow Paper Mario's lead. Sadly, beyond the Gamecube sequel, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, which improved on the original in every way, the only RPGs to embrace this mindset were the portable offshoot Mario & Luigi games, and recent games in the Persona series.
The level of customization available is rather impressive as well. At each level up, the only benefit gained is a choice between a slight boost in HP, MP, or additional slots for accessories. While it's entirely possible to put everything into HP, and brute force one's way through the game, or focus on MP, blasting through special defenses with fireballs, it is entirely possible to get through the entire game without upgrading either, remaining at just five HP, and compensating with an impressive variety of accessories, giving conditional bonuses, removing the normal liabilities of attacks, and either negating or reversing certain types of enemy attacks.
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The only reason anyone should go without playing Paper Mario is that The Thousand Year Door is available as both a clear improvement across the board, and a game which doesn't require one to dust off a Nintendo 64. Either way, you have a game which excellently re-examines and rejuvenates a stagnating genre while at the same time fleshing out the rather abstract world of the Mario games with some very effective humor, and without weighing things down with any strange plot baggage. The Mario & Luigi for the GBA and DS do a reasonable job of following in their footsteps but aren't quite as enjoyable. Then of course special mention must be made of the Will follow-up. Super Paper Mario is somewhat confusingly a straight-up platformer with a barely perceivable dusting of RPG elements. It places a huge emphasis on the humor of the Paper Mario games, satirizing the original Super Mario Bros. with things like a koopa troopa grabbing a star and becoming an unstoppable force that must be fled at top speed. While a case can be made for it based solely on the gags, as a platformer by a developer of RPGs and tactical games, the actual gameplay leaves much to be desired.
