It’s the Thing stickers, sadly, that represent the greatest weaknesses of Sticker Star’s design. At a basic level they sound like a great fit for the game's puzzles. You lay down a fan sticker to turn the arms of a windmill, a bowling ball sticker to knock down some pins and a scissor sticker to cut a rope. Now, that’s fine, but there’s often no room for experimentation, so if you need to, say, melt some snow, a lighter sticker won’t work, nor will matches. Nope, you have to use the heater. Don't have it? Too bad, you'd better find it. When it’s relatively clear what the right object is things are straightforward enough, but I’m willing to bet you’re not going to work out when to use the goat without either a) a whole lot of frustration or b) a playguide.
The reality with these puzzles is that you either have the right sticker or you don’t. And the game is designed so that the right Thing/sticker could be hidden anywhere. When you reach a roadblock – which you inevitably will – it means scouring levels you’ve already beaten in case you missed something. Finding secrets and fully exploring levels is fun, so in principle I don’t mind the fact that players basically need to find every secret on every level to avoid dead ends. What I object to is the game’s refusal to tell the player when they’ve found everything of significance in a level. This small, simple change to level notation would have made a world of difference. Similarly, if the hint system was in any way helpful, that would also have gone a long way towards making Sticker Star less frustrating.
The bosses in Paper Mario are absolutely loaded with hit points, and the game practically requires the player use a very specific Thing sticker to beat them or face churning through their entire sticker collection. It won’t hint at what that specific sticker is until the player’s on their second attempt, either, so the most efficient way to get through each boss battle is to face them three times. Get killed as quickly as possible the first time, fight until you’re given the hint the second time, then come back to actually fight a third time with the right sticker in tow. Ridiculous, right? It’s a shame too, because these enemies absolutely tower over the player and could have been a blast if the game didn’t attempt to shoehorn in a ‘puzzle’ element.
I don't get off work til 8.