The first two Paper Mario games are two of my favorite games of all time, period. I still remember playing the original for the very first time on a hotel Nintendo 64 in Florida. My dad payed seven dollars so I could play the thing for an hour, and I remember getting to the Goomba King and having the time of my life. The sequel, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, is without a doubt in my mind my favorite Gamecube game ever, and likely my favorite Mario game... hell, I'll go as far to say my favorite Nintendo game ever. I've beaten the damn thing 4 times, and am int the middle of my 5th playthrough, and I'm still having an insane amount of fun playing it. Super Paper Mario, while fun on its own, and boasting an incredible story, doesn't hold a candle to the first two. They are two games that I hold very closely to my heart, and yet they didn't get a true sequel since The Thousand Year Door was released back in 2004. So you can imagine my insane excitement when a brand new Paper Mario game was revealed to be coming to the 3DS. I literally bought a 3DS only in anticipation of this game. Unfortunately, the game fell so short of the first two, that for me at least, it's one of the most disappointing games ever.
Let's start off with the positives though. The visual style of this game is freaking amazing. Nintendo's graphical creativity really shines through on this game, giving almost everything in the mushroom kingdom a cool paper aesthetic to a degree far further than any other game in the series. So much so that when seeing the side of a rotating coin or heart, you can see that it's cardboard, I love it. Also, this new sticker battle system, which essentially replaced badges and the entirety of the combat system in the old games, is interesting for sure. In some boss battles, I had to get creative with how I used my stickers. The only problem is that you don't really have to ration them at all. They throw them at you like candy and they're also ridiculously cheap in the sticker store. Whether the combat system is better or worse than that in previous games is up to debate, I like both, but I feel the layer of strategy you can bring in is far higher in the old games than in this one, where I feel like I'm using the same few stickers to kill all of the enemies on the first turn of the battle. By far the biggest plus this game has going for it is its fantastic, absolutely rocking soundtrack. The battle theme is meh, but almost all of the other songs are so damn catchy and so damn good. Right now, I'm specifically thinking of the Decalburg theme, which is the funkiest damn song I've heard in a video game since Toejam and Earl. My god, I freaking love this game's music.
Now the negatives, and there are plenty. First off, and by far the most glaring issue of this game in my eyes, is the lack of any plot whatsoever. I can sum it all up with a few words. Bowser fucks everything up in the Mushroom Kingdom, and by god, you have to save everything. That. Is. It. I was to say the least infuriated at this. Especially following something like Super Paper Mario, which had such a fantastic plot, or something like the Thousand Year Door, hell, even the original, which essentially followed the Bowser's got Peach, go save her formula to a tee, threw a nice twist on it with Twink and the segments where you control the Princess. The worst thing about the lack of plot is that it takes all of the rest of this game's flaws and make them all the more apparent. Paper Mario and TTYD are far from perfect, but there compelling stories kept me going through it all, Sticker Star lacks that. It feels like with every new level I'm just going through the motions till I find the comet piece or whatever the fuck I'm looking for. I could seriously rant on about this atrocity for pages and pages of text, but for the sake of your sanity I'll move on. The combat, after only a few battles gets repetitive as all hell, especially because you don't get anything other than gold for combat. No star points, nothing. Just gold, and trust me, you'll have no problem with gold. At any point during this game I had 800+ gold on me. Combat felt pointless, and at some point, I found myself avoiding battles outright, something that would be a big no no in any other RPG, but in this one, it just doesn't matter. They basically took out an entire portion of the game. In any other game, I like to fight because it gives me a feel of progress in my character, I love to get guys to there almighty badass state. But I can't do that in this game.
Now think about it, the plot is nonexistant, the combat isn't rewarding at all, so why the fuck would you ever beat this game? A lack of a plot in a NSMB game is excusable because the focus is on gameplay and beating stages. So tell me, please, what the hell is the focus of Sticker Star? What is there that should be driving me through, making memories of a new Paper Mario game. I want to say that Nintendo wanted the stickers to be the focus, but collecting the damn things feels like a chore, and they all end up doing pretty much the same thing with varying levels of damage anyway, so why the fuck did I get relatively far into this game before quitting in disgust? The answer is that it's a Paper Mario game. The dialog and humor is charming, the look is charming, and the music is kickass. But for me, that initial high of playing a brand new Paper Mario game wore off when I realized that I wasn't doing anything of any real worth. They turned Paper Mario into a sidescroller with RPG elements (I swear to The Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster I didn't even think of Super Paper Mario when writing that) trudging along from comet piece to comet piece, going through the motions over and over again, screen after screen, and you know what? It's not fun. Fuck this game. You know what the worst part is? If this game had a story, if this game had some, ANY sense of progress, It would be a 4 or even 5 star game in my eyes, but no. It's a boring, repetitive mess that ruins my look not only on the Paper Mario games, but on Nintendo in general.
Stay Perky.
