When I talk about something I love, I always fear to be way more verbose than I needed to be, you know? I love this thing, and I need to talk about every detail, every little thing that makes this special. A good example will be talking about Paper Mario, a RPG released for the Nintendo 64 you may have heard about. It was my first RPG, the acronym that my parents always said that was a devil's work in children's lives. (I love my parents by the way, and I know they were only trying to protect me with the information they had at the time, so I'm not mad...) but the cute and heroic Super Mario was OK for then, so Paper Mario became this starting point for me.

And I LOVE IT. I played non-stop for days until finish the game, struggling with walkthroughs because I didn't really knew English at the time. The action commands were a game changer for me: a turn-based battle system with them was not boring, but fun, and dynamic! And the plot, the characters, everything in this game was so cool! It was because of Paper Mario that I discovered RPG Maker, and then online communities, and then coding, and then computer science... OK, I just got verbose again. I love Paper Mario, and I know Paper Mario a lot, and that's what you need to know.

Because, just as it's hard to talk about a thing that I love, it's also hard to talk about a new thing that was inspired by something that I loved. For some months of my childhood, my small boy version was obsessed with Paper Mario, and now, even this is the review of Born of Bread, a NEW game made in 2023, I'll compare both, down to the smallest details.

This time, however, is not my fault. I'll explain.

Understanding the recipe

There's nothing wrong with creating a new game using a structure that even Nintendo abandoned for years. You may have heard of the "Paperverse", a cute name for a Paper Mario-like RPG. The most common features that are borrowed from the original game are, mostly, (1) a blend of 3D scenarios with 2D character sprites (as they were walking paper sheets); (2) a focus on simple exploration of the maps, using the character's abilities to overcome obstacles; and (3) a turn-based battle system using "action commands", small QTEs that can be use to power attack and defense. You can easily see this recipe on 2019's Bug Fables and future's Escape from Ever After, for example.

Born of Bread, created by the WildArts team and published by Dear Villagers, is a Paperverse game, of course. The star, instead of the red plumber, is Loaf, a bread golem that gains life during a riot at his kingdom by creatures from the past. His job is to find friends and save the world recovering pieces of a special gem, that was broken into pieces and long forgotten.

Everything that I listed before is in the game. The visuals are exceptionally gorgeous, with some detailed animations and really cool scenarios — I don't think if this justify the "next-gen" compatibility on Xbox and PlayStation although. The maps are small, but you are invited to explore them using Loaf (or their friends) abilities. And even the action commands are there, to press buttons at the certain times and do more damage. The recipe is there, and it's cooked.

But the devil are on the details, and as I said, I'll talk about details. There's a LOT of Paper Mario in Born of Bread, more than the usual Paperverse inspiration. It's not plagiarism by any means: all the content here is original and you can't patent game mechanics. But I couldn't imagine other way this game was made instead of a big list of "things that Paper Mario does and we need to do too".

Loaf's primary (and world map) attack is the same as Mario's Hammer. In the battles, you have a resource for health, one for special attacks and a third for even-more-special attacks (like Star Power). Those even-more-special attacks are unlocked in a plot basis, like the Star Spirits' abilities. You can collect boons to get passive abilities (like badges), and more spaces for them can be get in level ups. If you want to include The Thousand-Year Door: the partners also have HP and there's an "audience" that can recover some points if you succeed in the QTEs.

Even the "bad" things about Paper Mario are here! You can only save in specific points of the map (at least, my little dragon Dub — that I'll protect forever — is better than a rainbow block). Your item inventory has a really small limit, so you'll constantly will throw useful items away. The map in the menu it's still useless, and you still need to open a context menu to change partners. I really wanted a hotkey to change partners, for real.

I was playing a new game, with a new plot, interesting characters and a beautiful world, but I was still bothered by the same details that my 10-year-old self was too. They didn't need to be full on board with this "list", specially having less resources and a smaller scope. Because the list was not enough: there's a LOT of original ideas here, and that's other part of the recipe.

Flavors in quantity, not intensity

What I did wasn't fair: Born of Bread is NOT ONLY a rehash of a 2000 game. There is so much original ideas and concepts here, mixed together with the intention of creating a mechanic identity for the game. But if you use all the seasoning you have in your kitchen, it's not guaranteed to create a powerful flavor. If nothing stands out, your food will be a little bland.

A good example is how you can personalize the character's builds, including attacks. In the original Paper Mario, it was really simple: Mario can get new abilities by badges, and the partners finding special blocks in the overworld. It's straight to the point, and cannot offer a lot of strategies if we can be honest.

Born of Bread just goes over the top. Loaf has a backpack mechanic like a Resident Evil inventory, where every equipment is a shape that needs to be put inside a square to be available for battle. Each friend, in the other hand, has a full, exclusive skill tree, that can only be unlocked using Skill Points — THAT YOU NEED TO EXCHANGE to special souls you find in the overworld. Unlocking a full row in the skill tree (whose only one ability can be equipped at a time), that partner gets a HP bonus. And as I said, boons are also a type of equippable thing that can give passives.

The problem with having a lot of those systems is that no one is deep enough to allow for cool strategies. It's like juggle three different mechanics and they just don't stick. The backpack puzzle is too simple, the skill tree is grindy, the boons are way less interesting than Mario's badges. A part of me just wanted the backpack, but for every character. Just include more pieces in the puzzle (like adjacent bonuses? or put one-use items in the mix?) and it would be an important, dense and well made flavor for a game so inspired by others.

Another example are the action commands themselves. I was already tired of the same 6-8 QTEs when I was at the middle of the story, because a lot of good abilities just ask you to press a random sequence of buttons in order. The same QTE would appear in every character's build, sometimes multiple times.

BUT, at the same time, Born of Bread tries to be Pokémon and has a DOUBLE-LAYERED WEAKNESS SYSTEM. There are "attack types" in a rock-paper-scissors fashion, and every enemy has a type and ONLY resistance for one of them, but there also "elemental types" that uses a round robin diagram to allow ONLY weaknesses in enemies to double damage. You can't see those types during battle, you haven't a lot of those types until way later in the game. Confused? Me too. I just considered then random for the most part, because it was ONE MORE system to understand in a relatively easy game.

There's so much original ideas in Born of Bread, and I just cited some of them, but the lack of focus just undermine those cool flavors. If you can feel everything at the same time, and they don't harmonize together, you just feel "something" — and "something" is not that memorable.

A good package, undercooked

Why I would bother to write that amount of text just to say the game is kinda OK? Because I think that Born of Bread has a really good flavor in the middle of this bad-inspired dough. The plot is fun, some characters are cool, the backpack system is clever and play feel is on point (until the QTEs became more repetitive than they needed to). If I wanted to play more Paper Mario, I would play Paper Mario again. It's even available on NSO to be even easier. I was expecting to play a new thing, inspired by the adventures that I loved with surprises that I would remember afterward. Some of it is here, but not enough.

You want a pretty, funny and easy Paperverse RPG? Born of Bread is ready for you to eat and can be served in any digital store of your preference. But the strong flavor that only well-made and focused mechanics can give isn't in the menu, unfortunately.