If you want to skip this review and read a more concise one, check this out: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/9370904/

So how about them Paper Marios, yeah? I dunno about them, but I do know there's a lot of talk about wanting something more classic. No really, I don't know about them; the Mario RPGs I've played are Super Mario RPG, the first two Paper Marios, and that's it, so honestly I can't really comment on whether or not any of the last four Paper Marios are good. I have mixed feelings: On the one hand, I think people (my generation especially) are too all about the classics making a return, but on the other hand, when modern stuff just isn't doing it anymore, it's normal to want to back to what we know works. But I can't speak well or ill of the post-Thousand-Year Door era because I don't personally know it.

But I do know that Bug Fables has everything I love from the Mario RPGs I played, and then some. It's got Badges I mean Medals, Star Pieces I mean Crystal Berries, a seven-chapter format, a mostly lighthearted but also surprisingly deep story, sidequests everywhere, cooking recipes (and three chefs!), an enemy/area/person-you're-talking-to Tattle system, you name it.

As usual for my reviews, I'll start with the best part of the game, and where the game shines most is the story. I could go on about how the overall story is good in general, with a great balance of lightheartedness, humor, and drama. I could also go on about how this game adds a ton of personality to the party with a Tattle ability that lets you hear their thoughts about whatever area they're in or whoever they're talking to. There're some characters I didn't care for at the beginning but came to appreciate a lot more by the end. There's even its share of trope subversion, something I always appreciate, especially when I didn't expect it. But there are two things I want to draw particular attention to.

First, something this game does that I find quite rare for RPGs. The whole game, I felt like there are three main protagonists, not a group of characters with one as the main focus. Because you have only the same three characters in your party, all of them have their own field abilities that are needed to traverse the land and solve puzzles, and all of them are present for the entire story, it really doesn't feel like there's a particular main character. In almost every situation, every party member has a part to play. They still each get time in the spotlight, and even then, one or both of the others still has meaningful things to contribute. This is one of the most likeable trios I've seen in a long time: Their personalities are so different but compliment each other so well, and when your story has such good main protagonists, you've got a strong cornerstone right there. There are so many times I wish GOG Galaxy had a screenshot button (and from searching around, I don't think it does) because there's gobs of memorable dialogue with these three.

Second, the worldbuilding. I was completely unprepared for how much worldbuilding there is in this game. A quest that spans almost the entire game involves gathering over two dozen lore books that each give a snippet of the game's past and present, even with a bit of mythology thrown in, and I call it mythology because it has to do with unproven and not-scientifically-understood creation theories and myths that the in-game writers know that nobody knows the answer to from either a mythical or scientific standpoint. Talking to people both during the course of the story and just to chat with random NPCs reveals that the area in which the game is set is just one of at least three other such lands of talking, sentient bugs...and that's just the lands they know of. And they aren't even the first generation of civilized bugs. There's a lot of plot breadcrumbs sprinkled in the story that aren't resolved but I very much got the idea that the writers want to show that there isn't just a lot more going on in the world than what the main characters go through; there's a lot more that happened before any of them were born, and the bugs in this world want to know about it as much as the players do. Much like us in our real world, they don't know everything about who lived here and what happened before them, nor do they know everything about what happened before that; they can only use the same tools we do, and again much like us, that's another way of saying "we weren't there, we don't know, we can only take best guesses, but we want to improve the accuracy of those guesses." I, personally, am rather curious about several things, not the least of which is how such a diverse assortment of bugs from around the world got here in the first place. This is a world with scope and history.

But now, one place the game is just "all right" is the presentation, particularly the graphics. They're cute and colorful. Some parts of the game are quite scenic, and I enjoyed the journey through them as much as the destination. I always liked movies like Toy Story and A Bug's Life and such that show the world as seen by something the size of an insect, and this game does that well. There's a fair amount of variety in the bugs themselves, both the sapient bugs and the wild bugs, which is pretty important with how much variety the insect kingdom has. But overall, I just found the graphics, as I said, all right. They aren't bad at all, and they were designed to look like nice papercraft, not to push the limits of any engines, but when I compare them to Thousand-Year Door's sprites and world, they feel a bit bland and unpolished.

The audio is better: This game has a pretty good soundtrack. Every song is at least "good" with some "great." If there's one thing that would have pushed the quality up, it's if the songs themselves were longer, because I just want MORE of them. The OST has plenty of songs, yes, and I love it when games give each boss has their own theme music, but I'd like it if some of the individual songs were longer. That said, one thing that shortness does well is the very short tunes: There are different sound effects for acquiring different items, which is a detail that made getting stuff feel a little more rewarding, and in particular, the victory jingle after you win a fight is about three seconds of triumph that feels as good to hear near the end of the game as it does in the beginning. I also appreciate that there's two battle themes for the early and later game, and the second is better and more intense to show off that the stakes and challenge are rising. The sound effects themselves are pretty simple, sometimes they play after they should have stopped, and I think a few of them were just made with one person making noises into a microphone, but the smack from hitting enemies never really got old, and despite talking in little "blip blip" sound effects, they're varied enough that the character "voices" have more variety and personality than I would have expected.

But now, let's talk about the combat, which is another important thing to nail in an RPG. If the paper aesthetic didn't instantly clue you into the fact that this game is Paper Mario-inspired, the combat will. That was one thing that made the early Mario RPGs fun and, more importantly, KEPT them fun: Timed attacks/defenses that kept you involved in combat instead of the usual "mash A to win" tactic. Also much like Paper Mario, your level up boosts and Medals play a huge part in how you fight. Maybe it's because I actually did some research when I played Bug Fables and not when I played Paper Mario 1 and 2 (and Mario RPG is not complicated enough to "need" combat research), but if you ask me, Bug Fables actually had me making more thought-out decisions on how I wanted to build my characters and play them. And I found out I wasn't alone: There are lots of actual BUILDS in a game this deceptively simple, and it's surprisingly easy to break the game.

Somewhere around halfway through the game, I suddenly noticed my Medals had gotten more useful and I found myself being choosy on which ones to use in certain situations (some for common battles, some for bosses), my strategic options were more complicated, and my enemies were getting tough enough to make me actually need what was being given to me. I also suddenly noticed that not only was I thinking strategically even for common enemies, I wasn’t always THINKING so much as FEELING. I had enough time in battles to know that I shouldn’t just throw the characters at their targets or think “have character 1 do this, character 2 do this, and character 3 so this;” I needed them to do those things in a certain order, while the party is arranged a certain way, AND have an idea of what to prepare for on the enemy’s turn. Sometimes I stopped to weigh my options, while other times it was second nature. In other words, I already liked the combat system, but that was when I realized it was even better than I thought.

And when "our job's done"...it's still not done. Beat the game without Hard Mode, at least most of the time? Do it again with Hard Mode the whole time. Heck, add the Hard Hits and Exp Booster Medals for even more challenge if you're into that. There's codes for what you can name your saved games to mess with the game mechanics even more, like unlocking Hardest Mode or requiring near-perfect timing to block attacks.

But you know the real reason your job's not done? It's because there is so much sequel/prequel/DLC potential. Like I said in the story section, it's obvious there's a ton going on in this world beyond the land this game takes place in and a lot happened before the events of the game too. Some people dislike vagueness and unanswered questions in stories. But when the rest of the story is so good, all I see is potential ready to be fulfilled, and I have total confidence the makers of this game can do it again.

Having said all those good things, there are two big bugs (a lot of things come in twos here, don't they?) that kind of ruined my mood more than a couple times, and by "bugs" I mean problems. The first is that this game froze on me a lot. Any time I opened the pause screen, I estimated there was something like a one to three percent chance the game would freeze. It could also happen when I entered or exited a structure that causes a "see inside cutaway" effect (not a "fade to black, then fade to a new area" effect), though maybe only four or five times in the entire game. I got used to it and both saved more often and made sure to never pause after doing something like beating a boss until after I saved...but that didn't stop it from wiping the smile off my face a few times. I remember one time in particular early on in the game that it took me about ten minutes to get through about two or three minutes' worth of content because I kept having to do it over from my game freezing.

Now, it's important to note that I think that problem was on my end. I did several searches to see if others had similar problems and came up with nothing, but still, my games really don't tend to glitch like that. Not to mention, freezing is something that happens in the context of the game since one of the main characters uses ice magic, so searching for stuff related to "Bug Fables" and "freezing" is way more likely to bring up stuff related to that character and not, you know, the game freezing.

Then, something worse. One day, I started playing only to notice there was an update to the game to download (and no, it wasn't the version 1.1 update). I closed the game and opened it again, only to find that the very worst glitch of all happened: MY SAVE WAS GONE. I was more than halfway through the game at that point and was seriously wondering if I wanted to start over or not, but after a little research, I found what had happened: My save data somehow got moved out of the folder it had been in and into the parent folder of that folder. Copying it back into the save folder was all it took to work again, but there was a 36-hour period when I was feeling immensely pissed off. I don't think that was exclusive to me, either: As I understand, over the last few months, people who played this through GOG (like me) were talking about cloud saves being implemented (which, I kind of figured that was standard in games these days, especially when you play them on a service like Steam or GOG). I caaan't help but wonder if they were implemented and didn't go how they should. I will say that...I probably would have started over if I had to. I wouldn't enjoy it, and I'd manually back up my saves, but I'd have done it because the game is that good.

Something else that is minor but very curiously missing even after the version 1.1 update (which came only about four days after I started playing) is that there's no way to sort your inventory. You have very limited space for consumable items so you're not going to be digging for one of them for long, and you can sort your Medals by showing a page that reveals who's equipped what, but the Medals are only ever arranged one way and that's it. It'd be really nice to be able to sort your consumables in some way other than putting them in item storage and then taking them back out in the order you want, or to sort your Medals and key items based on what you consider most useful to least useful, and I don't understand why you can't do either of those things, or at least I never found it. At least the Medals are automatically grouped by name and similarity of function.

My final thoughts?

I know comparing Bug Fables to the Paper Marios is selling it short, but it's hard not to when the game pretty much specifically welcomes those comparisons. Even Miyamoto himself basically said, "Bug Fables does a good job of doing what Paper Mario did, but it really needs to be judged on its own merits." But if this game grabbed your attention because you have many fond memories of the earlier Mario RPGs, like I do, it's not for nothing that comparison is done as praise. Don't play this game "because it's Paper Mario 3," because it isn't. For all the inspiration it takes from Paper Mario and as much as it rides the wave of "that's not the Paper Mario we want!", it's too unique to deserve being called "indie Paper Mario and that's it." Play this game because it deserves to be seen for what it is: A return to form in a good way while still standing out in its own right.

My final score: 8.5 out of 10.

And you know I'm willing to buy it for the first person who asks for it.

Tips
* Probably the main tip to give is regarding rank-up benefits. At first, I was going to get HP, then TP, then MP and cycle between them evenly, much like when I played the Paper Mario games. But then I thought maybe I should do things differently this time and did a little looking around. I ended up taking HP twice, never touched that benefit again, and never really needed it. For a while I boosted TP and MP equally, then most of mid-game I boosted TP exclusively, and finally boosted MP exclusively when medals started getting really good. That all felt like the right decision when bosses on Hard Mode were tough but enough to give a fun challenge and I didn't just obliterate them in a few turns.
* Speaking of ranking up, you can re-spec your party's HP, TP and MP benefits from leveling up...albeit late in the game. And you probably will. After beating the game, I re-specced everything into MP to fight the rush modes and endgame content, and Team Snakemouth went from tough to nearly unstoppable.
* Another common tip for RPGs: How do you make money? It's easy. The earliest way to easily grind money: After chapter 2, a certain bee gives you a quest that's repeatable for a risk-free berry reward that also happens to be good for grinding experience for that point in the game. Money and ranks all in one. Then, once you get your bank savings to 500 berries, your interest rate goes up to 6% every 30 in-game minutes...so just take a day to leave the game on and let the clock run up (or keep doing that aforementioned quest while you do to be constructive). Remember also that interest is still building while you're out, you know, playing the game and furthering the story. If you can get to the end of chapter 3 or so with a thousand berries in the bank, you'll probably be set for the rest of the game.
* Speaking of money, don't go to Metal Island at least until you get the ferry price down to 90 berries, and even then, don't do it until you reach a point in a certain "trade this item for that item, then for that item"-type of quest that requires you to go there so you can definitely get something out of the trip.
* If you're not sure whether or not to play on Hard Mode (which is unlocked in the very first room of the game), I at least recommend turning it on for boss fights, for the achievements, the rewards, and the challenge. You can usually tell when a boss fight is coming up and equip it then, but if you don't, you can always lose on purpose and try again with a different loadout (which will give you the added benefit of at least a preview of how the boss fights).
* Speaking of Hard Mode, if you're achievement hunting, none of the content is permanently missable. You can try getting it when the opportunity first comes up, or you can wait until later.
* Spy Cards: I don't know if I recommend looking up guides because spoilers, but if you want some good deck ideas that have never lost a game for me, check this out: https://www.reddit.com/r/BugFables/.....ard_decklists/
* Speaking of Spy Cards, here's a good spoiler-free and deliberately vague deck that you can make as soon as you unlock Spy Cards, with credit due to a poster on that Reddit thread: Boss Card – Chapter 2's boss / Mini-Boss Cards – A praying mantis, and the mini-boss you defeated to unlock Spy Cards in the first place / Common Cards – One Seedling, one very special Seedling, two acorns, two spike-headed tunnelers, three bulky ladybugs, and three talking pink flowers.
* Other than the bounty quests, it's usually a good idea to do quests as soon as they become available. Sometimes the rewards aren't worth it, but even early on, they can pay off surprisingly well. Two early pieces of advice on this note: Do the chef-related quests ASAP to unlock some items that will keep being useful for the rest of the game (in particular, the TP-related item is almost overpowered in terms of what you get out of it for how much it costs). Also, do the quest "Requesting Assistance" as soon as possible. It's probably going to involve the toughest battle you've fought yet, but it unlocks a lot of things that will be useful both at that point and in the future.
* Give the Bug Ranger Plushie to everything whenever you can. It will get some laughs out of you.
* Zasp is the king of the simps, but he's the simp you wish you were.
* All the queens give off a "hot mom" vibe, but the Bee Queen...mmm...
* There's a well-hidden room in a certain flooded area of the game that's very much worth looking for. Once you find the entrance, it may not seem like you're getting anywhere, but keep at it and you'll get there. It gave me goosebumps...and once you're there, maybe just...hang out for a minute or so. Watch some TV. And watch closely.