There’s no denying the need from the populous to scratch the Paper Mario itch. For years, even the Nintendo developers have tried to recapture the feel without retracing their steps, but that is how we got Sticker Star, Color Splash and the almost but not quite right Origami King. The JRPG-adjacent experience is so desired that Nintendo just threw up their hands and decided to rerelease The Thousand Year Door for 2024. But that hasn’t stopped developers from wanting to emulate that lightning in a bottle, and it’s the road that brings us to Born of Bread.

In spite of the cheeky attempts to label the game as “yeastpunk,” Born of Bread is a 2.5D adventure RPG that hits all the Paper Mario posts. You play Loaf, a literal bread boy, who was brought to life by complete accident by your baker father. After a whirlwind startup quest of the castle being plundered and pastry papa getting the blame, you dive into a storyline of an ancient civilization, some evil entities awakened in the present timeline and a race against the clock to stop the collection of Sunstones, a seemingly magical talisman that can only spell disaster if gathered. Will Loaf outsmart Jester and his purple cohorts? Will Loaf ever be a real boy? Are 5G floating routers really the best save points? Get the answers to just a few of these questions!

It’s pretty obvious Dub the dragon has gotten his brain scrambled from the 5G waves.

As mentioned before, here is what you can expect from Born of Bread: 2D movement in a 3D world. questing elements, a specific set of skill trees, a leveling system that doesn’t actually add levels and turn based, quirky combat. Loaf and his companions will venture to different areas and seek out the Sunstones/fight the bad guys while also being asked to find things for the locals in some way, shape or form. You’ll get items and clovers (clovers being the currency of the game) through hitting everything with your trusty frying pan and jumping around like a maniac. If you had told me that Loaf originally just had a Mario sprite as a placeholder as they designed the world, I wouldn’t even bat an eye.

The tentpoles that hold up Born of Bread are the land, the fights and the storyline. Arguably, the land is the weakest of the three, and I mean that in the best way. There are clearly areas of Born of Bread that were well crafted with secrets and pathways, but then seem to get blown out of proportion. It felt, at times, like the developers wanted to make the game seem larger and so the map would meander in ways that didn’t make sense other than to waste your time. The Forest of Roots, one of the early boss areas, stands out to me because it seemed to constantly have forks that just lead nowhere except for places to fall and lose health. It caused me to go against my instincts and keep to the main route, which blows because there are secrets EVERYWHERE and you need to find them.

Since leveling is a clever little system build on only leveling up particular stats you need to get creative to unlock further character abilities. This is where the hidden lizards come in, whom you need to catch in pairs and deliver to a spooky magic person to unlock more skills. In theory, you can go the whole game and never find a lizard: the base attacks you have plus what Loaf and company unlock through game progression are enough, but those additional skills are a must have in many situations. Being able to upgrade your basic attack (that only costs zero) to something that hits every enemy (and costs a few WP) is positively worthwhile.

Thus begins the importance of min/maxing in an RPG about bread.

The combat of Born of Bread is massively influenced by the aforementioned Paper Mario with enough of its own cleverness to stand alone. Turn based combat that either uses WP or RP to execute attacks, with the former being for most skills and the latter for special, limited skills that are not great until Papa Baker gives you your first upgrade. I highly recommend using your first few levels to add more WP because that’s the lifeblood of combat, way more than HP. Attacks and defense use a timing system to mitigate or even negate damage, and choosing to defend instead of attack means successfully timed blocks actually restore some WP. This is a game where level dumping into combat attunement equals success way more than “playing it safe.”

Adding a “modern” twist on combat, you also happen to livestream all of your fights to an audience somewhere in the ethos, and this element is exceedingly hit or miss. On the one hand, I enjoy the fact that we’re taking the audience aspect of certain other games and turning into something that makes more sense than setting and striking a stage for every fight. On the other, the idea is to have running commentary on the screen for what other people thing about your melee (which, okay), and to occasionally have them make requests for you to do something. These requests can give you rewards like charging your WP or RP, but I never felt like they came in fights where I needed the assist. It was always in some inconsequential skirmish that didn’t help me one way or another.

Having said that, I did enjoy the encounters, especially as the game progressed and things became more complex and exciting. The attacks all used different ways to try and make getting perfect damage more challenging (mashing the A button, joystick rocking, button timing) but it never hit a level of difficulty that took away the enjoyment. Once you feel like you understand the timing for things (and an early boon item you get helps to assist with timing), everything is butter and you just flow from one fight to another. The only downside is when you get to places where enemies are too weak to really give you any benefits and you just spend time trying to avoid them as best as you can.

Excellent timing means ending the butt whooping that much faster.

When combat and exploration combine, Born of Bread then balances on the knife’s edge of the bugs, and this is where things start to get hairy. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve already had one patch for the game even before the release and yet I found myself getting frustrated by small bugs everywhere. Some are just silly, like characters disappearing behind others, items popping into frame suddenly or my raccoon buddy needing to do a lap around the stage before digging in a specific spot. But others were gamebreaking, like a moment where I was playing as Jester (gasp) and then the game just locked up. Playing this on my Switch meant serious disappointment when my gaming progress was suddenly lost, even if it was just a couple of minutes.

But glitches and bugs and even meandering exploration doesn’t completely dampen the joy of Born of Bread. The devs of WildArts Studio have done a delightful job of baking a wonderful set of characters full of sincerity and and charm that keep you engaged as the story progresses. It’s essential to talk to NPCs multiple times not only to get the full story but to get better quips, one liners and gags to help add to the atmosphere of it all. There’s a cute throughline that you can follow as the game progresses, from obvious bread puns to homages to various moments in pop culture and literature, and it’s always fun to experience.

Here come the Disney lawyers, with their suits, like always!

That same silliness, though, makes it a bit difficult when the game takes a hard right turn at certain moments. It’s not long into the game that the antagonists become sympathetic characters crafted from loss and devastation, and now you’ve got this uncomfortable balance of wacky gameplay with some real emotional touchstones. How on earth can you side with quirky bread boy who is just bopping along, literally born yesterday, versus tragic villains with their own set of ethics and virtues that are just trying to get their lives back? You can’t, it just sits with you and feels WEIRD until things take another unexpected turn later on.

My kids love Spam, unquestionably, even though they’ve seen it slide out of the can. When we have Spam for dinner, they rejoice because I’ve failed to culture their palettes. If I end up buying knockoff Spam – called Rich Meat – they can tell, instantly, even if I don’t show it to them. It looks right, it smells right, but there’s something in the texture that they can sense on a visceral level. It’s not the meat they love, and they will eat it because they don’t want to grow hungry, but it’s not satisfying on the level they want.

This is such a fantastic set of characters and yet I’m forced to spend most of my time as LOAF.

Born of Bread is all the ingredients of Paper Mario put together in a different construct, and yet there’s something there that just doesn’t gel quite right. If someone had told me it was akin to Bug Fables or Costume Quest, I’d feel differently and mark it higher. But the constant hammering that this is supposed to be akin to the games of the Nintendo 64 and GameCube makes a high water mark that simply cannot be reached. It’s a lovely title, of that there’s no doubt, but the final product just doesn’t rise to the occasion: it’s just a bit more than half baked.

Born of Bread is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Born of Bread was provided by the publisher.