Thread by @fawfulfan

Going back and looking at it now, it's almost offensive how bad Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam was.

Seriously, like, how do you manage to create a crossover between Mario & Luigi and Paper Mario and provide ZERO fanservice to players from either series?

There's no plot. There's no callbacks or references to anything from either series. The battle mechanics aren't fun. The exploration isn't fun. It doesn't even feel like an RPG, it feels like a bunch of Toad-rescuing minigames with an overworld.

The entire premise of how the worlds crossed over feels contrived. None of the unique characters from either series are included. You never get to go into the paper world. There are no unique villains. You can't even play as Paper Luigi, which makes NO sense.

Just spitballing, I can think of a more interesting way this game could have been executed.

What if the book holding the Paper Mario universe was stored in an ancient temple under the Mushroom Kingdom, guarded by an immortal Magikoopa librarian for millennia. Then, one day...

...the Dark Lord of Books persuades Bowser to help him break into this library, so he can seize the Paper universe's power and reshape the world in his image. The librarian rips the book into pieces and scatters it over the world to keep it safe, but as a consequence...

...the Paper characters are scattered into the real world. Learning what's going on, Mario and Luigi team up with their paper counterparts and travel to a bunch of locations from past games, like the Beanbean Kingdom, Star Hill, Plack Beach, Pi'illo Castle...

...and at each of these locations they meet characters from the first three Paper Mario games and dive into the pages, which contain locations from those games, to seize the artifacts that will let the Lord of Books harness the paper realm's power.

Now tell me, isn't that more interesting than "Oh no, both Bowsers have kidnapped both princesses, both Marios have to rescue them!"