Paper Mario: Sticker Star

Okay, let's talk about this pile of shit.

The first three Paper Mario games had a large, unique, and memorable cast. This game has toads.
Bowser has always been one of the most memorable and well-written characters in RPGs. He is a mute in this game. Ditto for Luigi.

The game world is no longer just presented with a paper aesthetic. The paper world is now a plotpoint and gameplay gimmick. Bowser tapes toads to walls, enemies fold themselves into points to prevent you from jumping on them, and so on.
This sounds neat at first, but you get tired of the paper jokes and gimmicks really quickly.


The main problem with this game is the abysmal gameplay. The concept itself is absolutely ridiculous.
Every single attack in this game is a single-use item. The most basic jump or hammer swing is impossible without the proper sticker. Since these items are single-use only, there is no incentive to go into combat against lesser enemies. There's no experience system, and you're actively penalised for trying to fight.
There are other types of items called "things" which can be turned into large stickers that take up a lot of space in your sticker album. These are powerful attacks, but to use them a second time, you need to backtrack to where you originally found the thing, pick it up again, return to Toad Town, and sling the thing to turn it into a sticker. Everything in this game is pointless and/or needlessly time-consuming.

Every boss in this game is a massive wall of HP unless you find the proper object in the overworld and make it into a sticker. If you use this sticker on the boss, they become trivially easy.
If you decide you'd like a challenge and don't use the game-winning sticker, the game calls you stupid.

I paid $10 for this game while it was on sale and I felt ripped off.

Look how they massacred my boy…

At first glance, Paper Mario: Sticker Star seemed like an exciting return to form for the skinny, subversive offshoot Mario RPG series. Super Paper Mario’s only significant crime in the eyes of the fervent Paper Mario fan was that the standard 2D platformer direction compromised on the substance that the accessible, yet buoyant RPG brought to invigorate the tired Mario brand. While the more meat and potatoes platformer gameplay in Super Paper Mario was relatively lacking in certain aspects, the straightforward meal being served was surely decorated with some snazzy garnishes and exotic spices to amplify the flavor and presentation to a wild degree. Super Paper Mario was akin to drinking light beer out of a clear, glass top hat that glows in the dark; approaching a beverage that comes by the barrel full in the most unorthodox and quirky manner possible, so it still fits the oddball Paper Mario identity like an oven mitt. With the announcement that Sticker Star was reverting to Paper Mario’s turn-based roots, the devil’s advocacy for Super Paper Mario is almost completely blown back to utter excitement. With the return to RPG gameplay, we can experience another abstract Mario adventure with a concise world map, badges, and proper partner characters with robust personalities and combat abilities. Our son is returning from college, and it's a delight to see him in person after settling for digital communications for a solid three months. However, even with the promise of RPG-facilitated splendor, Paper Mario: Sticker Star is a downright tragedy. Sticker Star is the equivalent of the son from the college analogy dying in a car accident on his way home, and playing it is like watching the medics and coroner peel his bloody body out of the tarnished vehicle. It’s so unpleasant that it's revolting.

For some reason, modern Mario games like to present themselves with a festival of some sort coordinated by Princess Peach. Sticker Star’s event of inane frivolity is gathering around for the annual occurrence of the almighty Sticker Comet that has the power to grant everyone’s wishes. Naturally, Bowser jumps at the opportunity after hearing about this cosmic Macguffin, so he crashes the party with all of his minions and absorbs the divine energy after obtaining the comet for himself. While the festival grounds are in ruin from Bowser’s upset, all hope is not lost. Kersti, a floating silver crown that is the embodiment of the Sticker Comet’s essence, promises to assist Mario in reclaiming the falling star’s power from Bowser before he uses it to dominate the Mushroom Kingdom.

Besides rehashing an overdone plot catalyst from the mainline Mario series, several other concerns arise just from the opening cutscene. For one, has the cat got Bowser’s tongue? Why didn’t he monologue on how awesomely righteous he would be after taking their precious comet, laughing devilishly at everyone is doomed as a result like he normally does? Where is his assistant Kammy Koopa, hovering right behind the Koopa King to humble him with her advisory input? In Sticker Star, the snarling, practically mute Bowser from the mainline series and the immature, comically inclined one we’ve come to adore throughout all of Mario’s RPG spin-offs are now unfortunately interchangeable. Also, every single Goomba and Koopa seen in the introduction is acting as enemies causing a commotion in the quad, which means that these two species of Mario foot fodder are now simply relegated to positions as grunts in Bowser’s army. So much for erasing the stigma with non-partisan Goomba and Koopa citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom. Having other species that roam the Mushroom Kingdom sure would’ve spruced up the heavily homogenized Toad Town hub of “Decalburg” considerably. Not only are Peach’s shroomy denizens the only ones that reside here, but their designs are the commonplace Toad model with little color variation. There are no toads with glasses and mustaches, no elderly toads, no preppy celebrity toads, no toad martial arts masters in uniforms: only the most basic of toad designs scanned thousands of times on a paper copier. Paper Mario’s characters and their dynamics are now indiscernible from the ones found in the mainline Mario series, and this is really Sticker Star’s most fundamental flaw. Mainline Mario can skate by with one-dimensional characters because the player will constantly be focused on the fast-paced platformer action, requiring tighter concentration on every momentary leap. In a slower-paced, character and dialogue-driven genre like a JRPG, the dynamic nature of the eclectic cast and the NPCs, regarding their appearances and personalities, can either make or break the experience. They really couldn’t have formulated a more literal translation of the typical Mario experience in the RPG realm, making what was deemed as more traditional narrative fare in the first Paper Mario seem like an avant-garde depiction of a Mario story by comparison. Because mainline Mario is arguably the least narratively rich franchise in gaming, Sticker Star’s story (or lack thereof) suffers completely.

If the blank characters are any indication, Sticker Star also extends its skin-wearing symmetry with the mainline Mario series with its levels. Mario’s range of level themes is the archetype for all platformer motifs, using base elements to diversify the handful of areas on display. Because Mario established the blueprint of elemental themes that all subsequent Mario games and derivative platformers followed, their prevalence became exhausting. This is why chapters in Paper Mario set in raucous wrestling arenas, poshly-decorated commercial trains, and the fortresses of sweaty, stuttering uber-nerds are highly refreshing deviations from the simple layouts found in the mainline series. Even the first Paper Mario that stayed loyal to the Mushroom Kingdom setting at least used the RPG format to let the tired topography breathe to the extent of livability. Sticker Star and I’m not shitting you, not only features the bare bone essentials of the standard elemental themes with its six worlds but the progression is also conducted via a grid-based map like the one in Super Mario Bros. 3. Progression is but a means of trekking to the end of a level as one would in a standard platformer-centric Mario game, only halted by the turn-based combat at several occurrences along the way. Overall, most of the worlds found in Sticker Star act as less lively versions of the environments from the first game. The desert area does not have an Arabic toad plaza, the Boo mansion isn’t creepy in the slightest, and the tropical jungle does not have a single Yoshi in its wild grasses. The developers couldn’t have approached this facet of the game with a more by-the-books method if they tried.

Mario’s leisurely trajectory through the Mushroom Kingdom will also be detoured often by the game’s main collectible and namesake: the stickers. From the hub of Decalburg to Bowser’s fiery domain in World 6, stickers will be plastered all over the land like a daycare center. Fortunately, Mario does not need a razor blade to procure these collectibles, for they simply tear right off with a moderately forceful pluck. Firstly, I must delve into a tangent with the absurd emphasis Sticker Star puts on paper and paper-related products like stickers. Modeling Mario’s world out of paper was strictly a pleasing and quirky visual aesthetic that compliments the storybook aura of the whimsical Mario RPG. The few special paper “curses'' inflicted onto Mario in The Thousand-Year Door were presented with a tongue-in-cheek sense of irony, a novel idea of actually warping Mario’s thin anatomy into paper objects as a jokey afterthought when the first game forgot to utilize it. The developers here seem to be convinced that paper itself is the selling point of Paper Mario, with the constant crumpling of characters like refuse and weightless floating moments. They think Paper Mario will inspire players to pursue a career at Staples. Eye-rolling paper gags aside, I start to audibly groan when the paper initiative is instilled on the field as a mechanic. Sticker Star heightens the tearing of the small stickers to ripping the foundation of the foreground, leaving behind the molecular substrate of the architectural bearing. It's an interesting mechanic in theory, but leave it to the developers to botch its execution. Filling in the required patch to hurdle over an obstacle is merely a matter of finding a suitably sized construct and placing it over the impediment. This mechanic could have warranted some intriguing puzzles, but even Sticker Star’s new properties are painfully streamlined.

The sticker mechanic is boring and condescendingly easy on the field, but how they are used in combat is bafflingly flawed. There is a reason why most of the stickers are shaped like boots and hammers, Mario’s primary attack options one will recognize from the first two Paper Mario titles. Each sticker equals an allowance to attack, one per sticker collected that is displayed in a sticker album along with the healing items that Mario must peel off the walls. If Mario does not possess any attack stickers in his inventory, the only option he has at his disposal is to scurry away like a yellow-bellied coward. I could understand that the developers implemented this bizarre system to supplement the already bland digression of Paper Mario’s turn-based combat, but this is a horrendously miscalculated decision. The basics of combat should NEVER be relegated to a disposable item, regardless of whether or not it has been watered down to the point of melting. Coaxing the player into meticulously searching for stickers to stand a chance even against the wimpiest of Goombas just enforces long bouts of tedious grinding to pad the game. Or, at least it would if the player doesn’t realize that there is no incentive to fight enemies because Mario cannot gain experience points from battle. All Mario receives is a sum of coins, used to buy more stickers I might add. No, I am not kidding. The sticker system that the developers coordinated as this entry's specific gimmick can be eluded almost entirely.

Upon hearing this revelation, one might ask themselves that if combat can be avoided entirely in Sticker Star, how will Mario fare against the game’s bosses? Well have no fear, fellow gamers, for the developers have thought ahead for this predicament, and what they’ve devised is of course, really fucking stupid. In each world, Mario will stumble upon a “thing,” a notable domestic object of interest whose conspicuous nature is highlighted by its size and sharper, rounder graphical rendering. These series of sore thumbs can be used by Mario once he converts their state of solid matter into stickers and uses them on the field to bypass obstacles (ie. the vacuum in the desert world). Where they come into play with the bosses is that these household apparatuses are exclusively the keys to conquering each boss, their Achilles heel that will bring them to their knees. Naturally, this connotes that all Mario has to do is use the “thing” item during a boss battle without any supplementary damage to it from regular attacks, but it's also the only way to subdue the boss at all. Imagine the cricket sound badge from The Thousand-Year Door as not only Hooktail’s weakness to give the player an advantage but if it was just a pass to automatically win the fight. “Winning” the fight is simply a reward for collecting the badge at the end of the day. Did they overlook this, or were the bosses intentionally this cheap and effortless?

Super Paper Mario is looking pretty good right now, isn’t it? Paper Mario’s former less-than-favorable effort on the Wii was an odd duck that took some wild liberties with the gameplay and pissed off some series veterans like myself at the time, but it is a goddamn masterpiece compared to Intelligent Systems follow-up to Super Paper Mario when they decided to appease fans with another game revolving around turn-based combat. Sure, it technically returned, but at what cost? At least Super Paper Mario was funny, creative, irreverent, and offered something outside the capabilities of typical Mario procedures. Paper Mario: Sticker Star is not a return to form: it’s an aggressive deviation in every shape and form. It’s generic, bland, pointless, broken, tedious, and mind-numbingly boring, all negative characteristics that do not match its Paper Mario brethren. It offends me in every way imaginable. Perhaps the biggest offense is that the process of sizzling all of the taste out of Paper Mario was a calculated effort on the part of the developers thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto’s “guidance.” If this isn’t just a grapevine rumor, it's time to put Nintendo’s patriarch in a rest home.

Paper Mario Sticker Star, to this day is the only game I adamantly hate. I did not even close to finishing it because it aggravated me so much. The combat is annoying. The story is terrible. There are no partners. This game may be tolerable in another timeline, but it fails because it is a Paper Mario. A fantastic series to this point which did not need this garbage put together mess of ideas. Every change made to the Paper Mario story and gameplay made the game awful. This is the only game I have thought about physically destroying. Do not play it unless you are curious about how terrible it is.

I usually don't write reviews when i dislike a video game unless it really is able to piss me off, and oh boy did this one hit the mark! I was so excited for this, I remember anticipating and anticipating the hell out of this and being genuinely intrigued at how they would get the stange battle system to work, and it genuinely ruined the entire game. Stupid stupid stupid, rock bottom STUPID idea to change the battle system in the way it was. Having all of your attacks , especially the normal and standard ones, be fundamentally limited is just a fucking stupid idea, straight up. It causes so many headaches. On top of that, the locales are some of the most boring and soulless in any paper mario game, some seeming like straight up deja vu from previous ones. And the puzzles are also just not fun and so simple they make you feel like a really dumb kid. I genuinely couldn't finish this because the game itself battles you the entire way through you trying to complete it with genuinely atrocious gameplay design choices. Who wanted this? Super Paper mario was at least a really nicely put together game despite it also being not what anybody really *wanted* as a followup to two of the best RPGs of all time... this just feels like a joke. Seriously one of the straight up worst games I've ever brought for full price at retail. If I was more dramatic I'd say that I got scammed, but it is *technically* a functional game... it just isn't the kind of game I think anybody would want to play. Bleh.

It's a game that spits in the face of not only one of the best Mario spin-off series, but one of the best RPG series of all time. Miyamoto is a skilled guy, and he's clearly got an eye for design in a lot of games, but his insistence on platforming-like intuition and simplicity turned this game into a boring, bland, soulless, shell of an RPG.