I don't think that's necessarily true. The first game was great and stands on its own. Thousand Year Door is great but I don't think it would of been as good as it is without them making the first game and have a starting place and something to improve upon. I doubt they intentially half assed the first game just to get it onto shelves, they were just working within the limitations of the 64.

Can I ask though, did you play Thousand Year Door first then go back and try and play the 64 one? That may explain why you weren't as into it. I played the 64 one when it first came out and had nothing to compare it to. I do think Thousand Year Door is the better game because I already loved the 1st and felt they improved upon what made that one great.

Edit* @arch8ngel, Mario RPG is the better game but they had Squaresoft working on it in their prime. Kind of unfair to compare the 2. RPG should really stand on its own.

I have to say that I prefer PM over TTYD. Both games are amazing for sure, but the story for TTYD is a little more bland to me. While I like the idea of an original villain (instead of just rehashing Bowser), I still find the X-Nauts to be pretty boring. I've also found the Princess Peach storyline to be really boring in TTYD while I enjoyed the Peach levels in PM. I've also found the side quests in TTYD to be a lot more generic than PM. With that said, I really like the new paper "curses" in TTYD and the audience watching your battles has started to grow on me (I didn't like it at first). The puzzles are definitely more fun in TTYD and I also prefer the partners having their own HP.

It's not an unfair comparison, at all, given how Paper Mario was promoted back-in-the-day.

They were definitely trading on the popularity and name recognition of Super Mario RPG... at least based on how it was presented in Nintendo Power at the time.



I didn't play the original PM until fairly recently.  But played through TTYD when it was released.
Basically, I have no nostalgia, whatsoever, tainting my view on PM.

If you played TTYD first then PM just feels half-finished, in terms of features.  
There is nothing about the limitations of the N64 in play, either, in terms of what they could have done better in that regard.
They just didn't make as much game as they could have, and it shows.

 

At least I can say that my first play through for PM and TTYD were within a month of each other. So while I still played PM first, I can say that nostalgia has nothing to do with my preference for PM over TTYD. My opinion has been based on which installment has given me more enjoyment as far as overall gameplay goes.

That kind of makes me think you might have just been slightly burnt out on the concept while you were working your way through TTYD
 

I figured you might say that.

There are obviously dozens of variables that could play into which game you think is better.  While I can easily see why someone would say that TTYD is better than PM, I cannot understand even a little how one would consider the first one to be "half assed."  I know it's all just opinion, but we couldn't be further appart on this one. 

Well, I'm not the one that used the term "half-assed".  

I just think they left a lot of eventual features out that they weren't technically restricted from implementing, and somehow that dragged the sum-total of the game down in a way that if you'd played TTYD first, the whole game felt like a lesser version of what was to come.

 

Sorry, I didn't check to see who used it (athought it seems you at least agree with it).  To me "half-assed" implies that they wanted to implement the features but didn't in order to get the game realeased sooner or cheaper, and I don't feel that is what happened.  I believe most of those features were added to TTYD in a way of saying, "how can we improve, or what can we do different?"

Pretty much a "Imma gunna hold my breath till I get what I want even if it won't help" video. 

My agreement points was how Nintendo isn't what it once was, and puppets are still creepy, and finally how I wish Zelda WiiU would come on out already.
 

Mehhh looks like a bunch of chores to me. Why would I want to waste my time painting every single little thing in this game? I can see that getting old really fast. There hasn't been a good paper mario game since Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door, and that game is a true masterpiece. They have royally screwed over the series, first by taking out the battler system in super paper mario, and then restricting you were stickers that you have to find to use as weapons in battle, (not to mention there's a part in the game where you can easily get stuck, and even the guides online aren't very helpful). Now you've got this new one, where the battle mechanics look similar to sticker star. Just go back to the formula you had in Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door.

When I was playing sticker star, I was like why am I doing these unnecessary batltes? Its just wasting my stickers. They dont give you enough. You have to plan
 

Yea, and that was extremely annoying. It just felt like a huge chore to have to do that. Not that fun. I absolutely love the badges in PMTTYD. That, and the option to choose what you upgrade every time you leveled up, and then there were the star powers, and various items, and partners who each had unique moves. Very fun game, and the story was great, there was lots to explore, you had a cool tournament with a ranking system where you had to work your way up seedwise. I could go on and on about that masterpiece. I need to play the one on the N64 because I've heard that one is close in style to PMTTYD.

 

If it's anything like the Wii version, count me in! I didn't like the 64 or GameCube version and the 3ds was okay, but the Wii version was by far my favorite game on the Wii. Even passing Other M which for some reason, many hated.

The 1st one I played was TTYD. I 1st thought a paper mario game was like a "plateformer in paper". Didn't know what an RPG game was at the time so I hated the combat sequence when I ran into enemies, thought I wasted my time. All I wanted was to go through the story. Then it grew on me and I loved so much the game. Combat sequences with theatrical scene and audience, partners, story was amazing, I loved everything. Then I played PM on the 64, loved it too, it was overall a bit less deep then TTYD, but was a really great game. Over the time, I've been told that SPM didn't had the RPG elements of the 1st 2 installments, I thought at first I'd liked it since it was my 1st vision of a Paper Mario. It ended being more blank than the first 2, it missed something, classics partners + the way the connection was made in the worlds is so weird, it felt like a downgrade of the first 2. Didn't played Sticker Star but from what I see it seems to lost all the great elements that make a Paper Mario what Paper Mario is. I really hope they return to the old formula of the first 2. Yes they can evolve but the direction they are taking now is not the directions I'd like to see.

Yeah sticker wasn't near as good but occasionally you will see it on sale for $10 and it's worth that IMO.