I want to temper expectations before we get into this: I am not a fan of the Paper Mario franchise. Now, I know that's weird, why do I own Bug Fables if I don't like Paper Mario? Even worse, why do I own a physical copy of it from Limited Run Games? So for a long time, I did consider myself a Paper Mario fan. I've talked before about the circles I used to run in online before and Paper Mario was pretty central to those circles. I had watched numerous playthroughs of the first and second games, as well as a couple of the third and that compelled me to want to play these games myself. I even actually preordered Sticker Star because, in the leadup to that game's release, I was that excited about a new Paper Mario game. I didn't get very far, I think I only actually beat the first Paper Mario though that's in question. This blog was founded on my Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door playthrough, which caused me to adapt a sort of "gaming diary" format I had been doing on Discord for a while into an actual blogpost. I digress.
The point is that when I finally got around to playing the second and third installments in this series, I had been over it. These are RPGs for children, I am not a children, I'm not particularly interested in engaging with media as I did when I was a children, and I don't think it is healthy necessarily to try and enter that mindset every time you play a game. See "i don't like banjo-kazooie" for more details. So I played them and I found them to be pretty mediocre. Super Paper Mario has some interesting narrative ideas but takes too long to get there, has a pretty dull midgame in my opinion, and its attempt to adapt the RPG elements into a more traditional platformer makes it worse than the sum of its parts as its lacking in both the fun snappy platforming of Mario games and the more slow, methodical, puzzle driven platforming that defined the Paper Mario series. Thousand Year Door, meanwhile, I find just to be repetitive and dull, it has a pretty solid plot for a Mario game but the actual gameplay is so uninteresting at points that I find it hard to really care about the parts of it that are good. I was kinder to it in my blog post about it than I am in hindsight, if that should tell you how I'm currently feeling about TTYD.
Now , this is not to say I'm going to be negative about Bug Fables. While its obviously useful to understand where a game's inspiration comes from and judge accordingly, especially if you haven't already bought it, every game is also its own individual work of art. And a lot of them may surprise you. I don't really like the N64 era of Rare platformers, but I adore a Hat in Time, a game ostensibly inspired by them. It's even made my top 50 games. I don't particular like most Sonic games, and especially find the 2D games more frustrating than rewarding but I love both Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Mania. Bug Fables can, and likely will, surprise me. I'm just saying that if I go into it and I'm kind of grumpy, overly critical, and just in general if I'm quick to go "I made it to the end of the third play session, I'm tapping out", this isn't an actual statement of Bug Fables quality. That just means I was never going to like Bug Fables in the first place. So with that out of the way, let's get into it!
Review:
I will simply be honest with you: I do not think I am equipped to talk about Bug Fables. Not only did I, spoilers, not finish it, but playing it was just not a good time for me. I tried to give it its fair shake and the conclusion that became apparent is that Bug Fables doesn't seem interested in being its own thing using the structure of Paper Mario as a launching off point to be its own thing, it's primary goal is to be Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door but indie. Being an honest critic is acknowledging when you are ill-equipped to talk about something and I am so about Bug Fables. As I said in the preamble, me not liking Bug Fables is not a statement of Bug Fables' quality, which I do think is rather high. I can see why people who love Paper Mario and would want more games like it hold this in such high regard. It is simply confirming I was never going to like it in the first place. If you are at all interested, my score is 6/10.
Diary:
3/19/26
I made it through chapter one and most of chapter two in this play session. This is probably not going to be a surprise given my preamble for this diary but I'm not having an amazing time. It's the gameplay, is the thing. The thing I most dislike about Paper Mario is the action commands. I don't know why this is the system I take so much ire with, I love turn-based combat, I love real-time combat, I even like ATB combat, which is usually what people who like the other styles of RPG combat take ire with for being the worst of both worlds. And I even like action commands, I love the Mario & Luigi series a ton and think the combat there is excellent. For some reason the way Paper Mario handles action commands just turns me off it, and Bug Fables is trying to emulate Paper Mario, so it has a lot of these same issues.
I think maybe it's that the action commands for everything you do are different? Like, in Mario & Luigi, you are only ever timing your A and B button presses, so everything is very intuitive. It's a combat system you can get good at very quickly and feel like you can master it to the point of being second nature. In both Paper Mario and Bug Fables, every action command is an entirely unique input, and as such I feel like no matter how much I progress in the game, I'm still having to watch the action commands because I never really learn them. But this issue is especially exacerbated for me in Bug Fables because of how it chooses to adapt action commands. Like, there is an entire character whose action commands are all randomized inputs meaning that I never get that satisfying feeling of "I've learned what to do in the combat and so now it's second nature", I am always having to be on with them. The combat is a worse experience for me than the games that inspired it.
That being said, I think in every other way I'm liking Bug Fables more than the duology it takes the most from. First of all, I just like that your party is a consistent set of three, meaning you have access to their overworld abilities at all times and don't have to switch in and out. And choosing to upgrade what the party can do as the journey progresses rather than introducing new party members to fill new niches either in combat or in puzzle solving is nice, it allows you to actually get attached to using them. I feel like in Paper Mario, party members have a bad habit of being the most important character in the world for exactly the chapter they are introduced in and then only ever showing up to solve a handful of puzzles as the game progresses. You could replace most of them with items and the game wouldn't be any different. Especially in TTYD where 90% of the time you're using Vivian in battle because she's just better than everyone else. But here, these are pretty established party members with legitimate roles.
I also just like this party? Like, they aren't going to become some of my favorite characters of all time or anything but I do enjoy following this trio. Kabbu is weirdly the standout for me so far, I really like his seasoned samurai vibes and how he seems to have a story for every occasion. It plays off Vi pretty well too, this hyper and energetic young explorer who is quick to sass people and is in exploring ostensibly for the rewards. They're a good duo, and it's nice seeing them become actual friends over the first two chapters. And then there's Leif, who admittedly I kind of feel like gets let down by the tone of the game. Leif is kind of this engimatic figure, a moth that went missing decades prior only to re-enter into a changed world. They speak very bizarrely, referring to themself as "we" and sort of having this "man out of time" quality where the way they speak and act is very old school. But Bug Fables is also irreverent, it's a very light-hearted adventure, and so Leif has a tendency to tell jokes and riff in a way I feel like doesn't fit their character? But there's also a lot of intrigue surrounding them that I find compelling.
This world is also just really strong. I really like games starring bugs and I'm glad that more and more people are getting on board with bug games. It's just cool what you can do with a world at this small a scale, and I think Bug Fables does a great job of using the familiar to build a small scale world. Like in the main town you go through, there's a theater there for bugs to put on plays and musicals and stuff. The entire theater is inside of an organ grinder. The first dungeon you go to is called Snakemouth and the entrance is literally a fossilized snake skull. It's just fun to look around in this world, see what little details are in it. And I think it does a good job of justifying the paper aesthetic because of this. It's like all the characters being made out of paper in this world comprised of a mix of structures built by the bugs and discarded items from humanity just feels right, y'know?
It also feels like a world with a deep history and mythology, if you want to delve into that. I hesitate to truly get in deep with it because like, I still don't know if I'm even going to finish it, obviously. But I have been trying to read the lore as I find it and like. Leif being kind of this man out of time does mean the history is present regardless. The juxtaposition between the queen he knew, a kind, humble ant queen who was so loving to her people that she refused to build statues in her honor at their kingdom, instead honoring the ant who stumbled upon this land as a true hero; and her daughter, the current queen, an arrogant, militaristic warrior queen who holds a tighter grip on her people is a recurring conflict in the narrative. A major sidequest is about finding all the lost books on the world's history scattered about the world. And reading them, they are interesting, you get a lot of insight into how this world came to be and how people reacted to their own history. It makes this world feel so much more alive, even if the histories are sometimes just a few sentences long.
Also, a lot of the characters are really fun designwise. Like I love the designs in this game. There were so many times where I looked at a character and went "oh you're cute" or "oh you're sick". More the former than the latter admittedly. The super sad, super anxious musician who got ousted by the theater when a major singer came into town has my heart. I enjoy in particular how they've adapted the bug traits to communicate things about the characters. One of the recurring antagonists, a fellow adventurer of not great morality named Zasp, is a paper wasp who always looks sleek and angry, signing to the player that he's dangerous. But his partner, the diva Mothiva, is instead designed to deceive you into thinking she's chill, with her soft wings and warm appearance, while also highlighting "she thinks she's better than you" by having the wings give the appearance of a fur coat. Character design is my favorite part of this game easily, they're very good at implying a whole lot with very little. Which is good because these characters often have a couple lines and then you never have to talk to them again, meaning their character kind of has to be entirely in the design.
Like I said, I'm most of the way through chapter 2 and like. I'm liking the story, but I'm also worried about it. I like the setup so far, I like that there's this grand mystery around Leif and why they seemed to have been in stasis for decades. I like that we're not sure if we can trust the intentions of the kingdom we've sworn our loyalty to. I like that everyone is racing to find the artifacts our little adventuring trio has been sent to find, implying a bigger conspiracy going on than what we're told. But I also worry about the episodic nature of the game so far. I worry that this is going to be like one of those games where the story comes in bits and pieces until suddenly, in the final chapter of the game, it's like "here is the entire plot all at once". Hopefully the fact that we keep running into other entities who are trying to beat us to the artifacts is indicative of a more present story, but I'm cautious about it right now.
3/20/26
I didn't really get a lot done in this play session. I ended up doing a bunch of sidequests after fighting the boss because I genuinely can't resist a sidequest list. It's a serious problem, if/when I do the Fallout games for this blog (Fallout 4 and New Vegas are on my list), you will find out how much I can't resist a sidequest. I will go for so long without ever advancing the plot in those games because I'm like "I should clear out my sidequest list first". But then, as soon as I'm told "hey, you can fight the final boss now", I'm just like "sidequests? What sidequests? I never agreed to do any sidequests!" This literally happened when I played TTYD a year and a half ago, I did like every sidequest except for the ones that only opened up between chapters 7 and 8. If I choose to finish Bug Fables, which is a pretty big if at this point, you will see me just suddenly and decisively leave all my sidequests unfinished right before the ending.
So, we met the goddess Venus on our quest to find the artifacts. Venus is a giant, sapient flower whose roots spread across the world and who is always watching for interesting people because she's bored and lonely. Upon beating her construct to prove ourselves, she hands over the artifact and agrees to answer Leif's questions to the best of her ability. While she doesn't really know how or why Leif managed to survive for so long in the spider's web we found him in, she can confirm to Leif that his former partners made it out of Snakemouth safe and sound. She also drops an incredibly interesting tidbit about Leif: her roots detect the people of Bugaria by some sort of sixth sense, as they have no eyes of their own. This entire time, Venus could not sense Leif being here and only knows he is present when he speaks. Even as she looks upon his face, Venus still has difficulty believing he is truly there, as she cannot sense him.
After returning to town, we meet up with the other adventurers of the guild and get informed by the Queen that our next mission is already set. Unsurprisingly, these artifacts are all designed to work in tandem with each other. The artifact we received in the first chapter, a mask, is actually something of a cypher that when used translates the gibberish on ancient tablets left behind by the roach sages into roach script. No one alive knows how to read roach script, but its progress. When the roach script is translated, it will reveal the location of the Ant Queen's true goal: the Everlasting Sapling, an ancient tree that is said to grant those who eat from it immortality. It was her mother's goal to find it initially for the good of her people, but given the colder nature of Elizant II, her intentions are probably not so noble. This brings us to our next mission: to head to the home of the Ant Kingdom's ally, the Bees, and trade for their artifact. But first, we have an opportunity to sidequest.
There's only like one sidequest I really want to highlight. Most of them are fine, mind, but again, this is kind of a simplistic style of RPG and so the sidequests tend to just be "go to a place, talk to an NPC, find their lost item, return it to them", y'know. It's the same way that its inspiration handles sidequests and its fine for what it is, you know. Gets the job done, especially given the intended audience for those games is young enough to where this would probably be their first experience with sidequests. But the Monsieur Scarlet sidequest is actually one I want to touch on.
A request appears on the Quest board from fellow adventurers Levi and Celia, a pair of adventurers that our party is on good terms with and who helped us out in the last mission. When we ask them what is needed, they reveal that they have tracked down a mysterious criminal named Monsieur Scarlet, an eccentric serial killer who posts requests on the board pretending to be a helpless man named Rogu who lures people into his lair only to them drain them of their life force. Upon defeating Scarlet and running him out of Bugaria, Levi and Celia grant the crew access to an underground tavern, the single place in all of the Ant Kingdom that isn't under Elizant II's eye. This tavern's patronage is made up of, primarily, criminals, but it's also a place where those distrustful of Elizant II (read: anyone with a brain), can find comfort knowing that for a little while, they aren't having to speak about their dissatisfaction in hushed whispers. It's also a place to finally trade in your collectibles for prizes! And there's a card game! Hey, indie game devs, listen. I know we all love Triple Triad. I know we all love Gwent. Please stop putting card games into your games, actually. Not every game needs an in-depth CCG side mode. I'm doing King of Cards soon, can you tell?
After this, we head out to the desert that expands from the Northeast of the Ant Kingdom, connecting it to its neighbors in the Bee and Wasp Kingdoms. Two things. First of all, this is where we unlock the ability to go fast, as Kabbu suddenly remembers he can dash. I really wish they had given this to us sooner, because even though this game tends to be pretty small, moving around the world tends to be very slow and that becomes obvious as you backtrack. You don't have to necessarily backtrack, mind, if you are just trying to make it through the story you can just fast travel back to the Ant Kingdom. But if you are sidequesting, you're probably backtracking through areas, and the part moves really slowly. I would've really appreciated having the dash prior to this for those instances. But this also totally makes sense why they would give it to you now, the desert has a lot of very big, open screens to dash across and it really sells the increase in scope compared to the previous areas.
The second thing is that entering a giant desert area with a kind of confusing layout just really made me realize how little fun I was having with this game. Like, this area is so reminiscent of the desert area from the original Paper Mario that I kind of had a Ratatouille moment but not in a good way. Like if the critic tasted the ratatouille and it reminded him that his mother couldn't cook. Going through this area confirmed my worries about Bug Fables; that this game isn't going to be a Shovel Knight or a Hat in Time. That it's truly not a game taking inspiration from games the developers love to create its own fully unique thing. Bug Fables feels like what it appears to be on the tin, at least to me, a derivative work of Paper Mario in the most uninteresting way possible. I feel bad because like, I'm just so over this game after 7 or 8 hours in when I've finished much worse games than this which are just as long, if not longer than a full Bug Fables playthrough would be. See, Revelations: Persona. But Bug Fables just isn't doing anything for me. I like a lot about it but I also can't get over the parts of it that I find detrimental. It's been a boring mediocrity instead of an interesting bad for me and so I'm kinda over it already. Sorry y'all, I gave it a shot but my total indifference for Paper Mario is winning out.
That is not to say that I'm uninvested in what's happening though. While the gameplay and general structure are definitely turning me off of it. I do still like these characters and there are some plot/character developments that I enjoy For instance, in this section I made it to the Bee Kingdom, the Hive, which has kind of been this sort of shadow over the journey thus far. Vi has yet to really talk about her past, just that she ran away from home because she wanted to become an explorer and the hive treated her poorly for this ambition. But as we enter the hive, Vi admits that they didn't really do anything to her. She's been trying to avoid coming home because she was a brat, that she took some teasing about her ambition, blew it way out of proportion, yelled at both the Honey Factory's Overseer and the Queen herself, and stormed off. She's been avoiding coming home because she knows she's in the wrong but her pride won't let her be the first to apologize.
But when she arrives at the Hive, no one hates her. Well, that's not true, because Mothiva is there, but no one from her home hates her. It's not like a warm welcome, tension is still present after what Vi did, especially after shouting at the Queen. The queen herself greets her with kindness, not saying she forgives Vi but saying that she's proud of her. That the stories of the spitfire explorer bee who has done what most other explorers couldn't are a point of pride for the hive now. It's not the welcome she was expecting but immediately she's in higher spirits, agreeing with her friends that the best thing to do would be to apologize to her family and community after their mission is done. It's a nice little arc and I'm glad I stuck with the game long enough to experience it. Though I'm still not done with Chapter 3 so for all I know this is about to go horribly wrong.
I'm not going to sugar coat: I am unlikely to continue Bug Fables longterm. I'll see how I'm feeling after one more play session, I like to at least give most longer games 10-12 hours to win me over. If I had left out of Hollow Knight in the first couple play sessions I would've never gotten to City of Tears and grown to really like the game. I want to make this clear, I do not think this game is bad. If you like Paper Mario, this is a must-play, I could easily see this game being among your favorites. It's just so not for me. It wears its inspiration on its sleeve to a degree that I find both uninteresting and off-putting. Even if I liked Paper Mario to some significant degree, I would be unlikely to like this, is the thing, this isn't just "oh you didn't like Paper Mario so of course you didn't like this". It hasn't helped but like. I don't really want to just play games that fill in a niche I feel I'm missing and don't really do anything else. I would just simply be thinking this game is a 7 rather than a 6 and be more likely to finish it.
3/22/26
I have made the decision after finishing Chapter 3 to put this one on ice. This is not a surprise, I imagine, I have made it no secret that I don't enjoy the actual game part of this game. I do have to say, though, this is always an outcome I hate. DNFs aren't something I shy away from doing, I feel very strongly about the idea that a game is done when you are done with it. But at the same time I'm always sad when a project goes this way. Especially one as renowned as Bug Fables is, I know it probably doesn't seem like it based on how immediately I was like "I don't like playing this" and how critical I've been of the game since, but I did and still do want to like this game. I enjoy the story and the characters especially, a part of me wants to see the mystery of Leif unfold. Not finishing this isn't an easy decision. But it's the right one. I got through Chapter 3, did a couple sidequests, and was not having a good time through any of it. This game really did capture Paper Mario, and it is no more apparent than in its worse moments.
Real quick though, I do want to highlight the soundtrack. I haven't done it so far and I always want to do it at least once for any game I play. Bug Fables sounds like Paper Mario, which is also not my favorite thing, I'm not super fond of the Paper Mario soundtracks. But I would be lying if there weren't some incredible tracks in this game. I'm a big fan of Snakemouth Den, it's an excellent dungeon track that sells the tense atmosphere without losing the lighthearted nature of this game. The One Left Behind is a great character theme, it encapsulates Leif so well. In the Court of the Ant Queen is an excellent castle theme, being very regal and kind of church-like while also being just a bit sinister, implying Elizant II might not be all she says she is. Golden Lands is a great flower field theme, Harvest Festival is an excellent festival theme, Defiant Root is an amazing desert town theme, High Above, Bee Kingdom is a fantastic theme. I especially love that last one, it's like very regal and classical but it keeps having notes of electronica in it, communicating the Bee Kingdom's technological superiority. There are a lot of very good songs in Bug Fables, it may not be a soundtrack I think is always amazing but I like a number of the tracks I've heard. And there's a cute little anxious butterfly with an ocarina in game you can hear the music from! I love her so much.
Whoever made the boss of Chapter 3 need Vi to hit it twice for the other party members to do anything when characters only get 1 move per turn, have to give up their move for Vi to move a second time, AND have it so that enemies get up from being knocked down at the end of the turn they are knocked down; I want you to know you are why I'm not finishing your game. What were you doing. The boss of Chapter 3 is so unnecessarily tedious. It's a boss fight that is bound to outresource you not because you lack resources but because your actual damage output is so slow that the boss is bound to just war of attrition your party down. It's such an annoying boss fight given how limited your options are, made even moreso by the fact that it gets a massive power boost about halfway through the fight. And the fact that, because Vi is the only real damage dealer in your party, she's going to be doing the most in the fight, keeping her alive is paramount, which is difficult because she has low HP. There were multiple times in the fight where I got into a situation where it looked like I was going to just lose because the boss had killed Vi and Leif and Kabbu was just sitting there, doing nothing. I understand that Bug Fables is designed to be a little harder than the game that inspired it, since it's for adults, but I don't think that this boss was hard so much as it was tedious.
There was one final thing I wanted to do before I stopped playing the game. Vi's drama with the Hive was one of the things I was invested enough in to highlight in the previous section and, since I was able to, I wanted to see a resolution to that story. So before I ended off, I decided to reconnect Vi with her sister, Jaune, and have the two of them make up. The nature of the sidequest ended up being frustrating, unfortunately, it's your classic trading quest where you have to go all over the world talking to random NPCs to find the next item to trade for until you eventually find the end point of the quest and work your way backwards. But it was very sweet and I'm glad I saw it. Despite the fact that I'm pretty sure what Vi did to her sister was the equivalent of calling her a slur given how Kabbu reacted to it, and also how upset she is that her sister, in trying to protect Vi from the dangerous life of an explorer, tried to stamp her dreams down, the two sisters make up and forgive each other. Jaune, the Hive's best artist, even makes a painting in honor of the moment, a painting so good that she says even the portraits she has made for the Queen pale in comparison.
I shouldn't have played Bug Fables. You know, I did the thing I tend to criticize others for, picking up a game you know you're probably not going to like, playing it because you "want to give the game a fair shot", and then being like "wow, I didn't like this". I'm sorry, y'all. DNFs aren't fun, me not gelling with a game is not fun. I want to be clear, I don't think Bug Fables is a bad game at all. While I don't think I would ever love it the way others do based on my own opinions on this stuff, it's obviously a very good game if you're into this style of RPG. It's not for me, and I probably could've and should've recognized that fact before I even tried it. It is pretty embarrassing that this game, which I do acknowledge is a good game, is going on the DNF list but Revelations: Persona, one of the worst RPGs I've ever played, was finished, I'm very sorry about that. 6/10, though I wouldn't be surprised if it makes the worst list this year after I've sat on it for 9 months either, I tend to rate things higher when I play them and am thinking about more "objective criticism" and then my subjectivity overtakes in the subsequent weeks or months.
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