I love Paper Mario. In particular, I love the first two games, Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. With the recent announcement of the Origami King, I can say I’m at the very least cautiously optimistic. I’ve been burned before after all. Super Paper Mario, Color Splash, none of the later entries in the series scratched that same turn-based itch that I started to get post-Super Mario RPG. Apparently the team at Moonsprout games felt the same way since their new title Bug Fables is a truly unapologetic clone of these classic Mario adventures.
Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling (Switch, [Reviewed] Xbox One, PS4, PC)
Developer: Moonsprout Studios
Publisher: Dangen Entertainment
Released: May 28, 2020 (Switch, Xbox One, PS4) November 2020 (PC)MSRP: $24.99
Bug Fables keeps Paper Mario’s papercraft aesthetic, though it doesn’t have any reason to explain it. This world of bugs isn’t canonically made of paper, but that’s okay; the art is still vibrant and eye-catching. Sure, it might seem strange that the characters are paper-thin, but that is hardly the weirdest thing in a kingdom full of insects.
The narrative is standard RPG fare. You play as a trio of bugs, Kabbu, Vi, and Leif, who all have their motivations for becoming explorers. The Queen of the ant kingdom is always welcoming adventurous insects into her court to search for treasures that can lead the way to the Everlasting Sapling, an object rumored to grant everlasting life. As your little team, dubbed team Snakemouth after the first dungeon they conqueror delves deeper into these requests, they find themselves making friends, enemies, and getting swept up in an adventure spanning multiple kingdoms of bugs.
The similarities to Paper Mario don’t end with visuals. Anyone who has played that series will find themselves at home almost immediately as the combat system is nearly identical. The turn-based combat gives each character a basic attack, special moves that use the parties TP ( team points) as well as the ability to use items. Every action save for using items has its own timing-based minigame to keep you engaged that, if done successfully, results in the action dealing more damage. Accurately timing a button press when being attacked can also result in your party members taking less damage.
Along with unlocking a wide breadth of new moves and combo moves by leveling your team and progressing through the story, you can also boost your teams effectiveness using medals. These work identically to another Paper Mario mechanic, badges. Your team has a certain amount of medal points that can be increased via leveling that allow them to buff stats or even add status effects to attack, or create new attacks altogether, There’s even a hard mode medal that makes combat tougher but grants more experience and better item drops.
Another addition new from Paper Mario is the ability to allow a character to sacrifice their turn to another party member at the cost of the attacking player dealing less damage on their extra turn. This becomes a vital strategy late game once the difficulty starts to ramp. With the exception of a few frustrating boss fights, combat never feels too punishing. There were more than a few occasions where I just barely scraped by in a fight but I never felt a need to add in any grinding to level my party, though it is probably worth noting I did almost all of the vast count of optional quests.
When you’re not fighting there’s a vast world to explore full of interesting characters and varied locales, From a treetop Bee kingdom to a sprawling desert filled with bandits and sandcastles. Dungeons make use of character’s unique abilities like Leif’s ice magic and Vi’s boomerang for some clever puzzle-solving, though the fixed camera angle can on occasion make some of those boomerang targets frustrating to hit.
I mentioned earlier that I ground through most of the optional quests, it’s important to indicate just how much optional content this game has. Some of it is simple and admittedly dull fetch quests, but the optional bosses and handful of minigames are delightful. Particularly Spy Cards, an easily missed side quest introduces you to a pretty well fleshed out card game built around collecting cards from the enemies you fight. This series of quests take you all around Bugaria, searching for card masters to gain entrance to an esteemed card tournament.
Bug Fables isn’t trying anything new, but it’s a well designed and pretty big JRPG that unapologetically emulates a series myself and many others have missed. It feels perfectly at home on my Switch, and after roughly thirty hours in Bugaria, I hope the team at Moonsprout sees fit to take us on another adventure their somewhere down the line.
Verdict: A homage to a beloved series unabashedly wears said influence on its sleeves. A simple but effective story and memorable world and characters make Bug Fables well worth your time.
Buy it
Author: Rich Meister