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Visually, Super Paper Mario has some room for improvement. The 3D world, in addition to forcing you to maneuver in three dimensions with two-dimensional controls, is barren and dull compared to the rich, textureful 2D world. If this isn't annoying enough, Mario is the only character who can flip to 3D, thus taking some of the fun out of playing as the other characters. And while SPM's deserts, ruins, castles and alien planets are vibrant and brilliantly-designed, their cutesyness is somewhat contradictory to parts of SPM's plot. As inconceivable as a "serious" Mario game sounds, if you strip away Super Paper Mario's stick-figure townspeople and non-violent head-stomping, there's some genuinely heavy themes of love and betrayal apparent throughout.

SPM's biggest drag is arguably the endless dialogue, which while continuing the Paper Mario tradition of being clever and witty, also slows the game down significantly. I don't need a different character reminding me what my mission is every five minutes. Nor do I need every Pixl to give me a questionnaire before joining me, or every enemy making five-minute soliloquies. Moreover, much like the deceptively silly characters and levels, it's ironic that Nintendo would overstuff a game with text which is targeted primarily towards kids. SPM's script is laced with pop-culture parodies that will get lost on most kids' heads. Most people under 21, let alone under 13, won’t realize that Nastasia talks like Bill Lumbergh from Office Space, for instance.