Droppin’ this here. This is the only place on GAF where I can say what I want/be unhinged/not held back, so the new members will have to excuse my bluntness. The running joke in this thread is that I hate video games, which isn’t true. Regardless, I don’t care if you agree or disagree. Again, this is the only place on GAF where I—or anyone else—can post impressions/reviews willy-nilly because, like, we’re all bros and sises in here. I just get edgy about posting criticisms about Mario games in here sometimes. I mean, y’all don’t give a shit that I said after playing FF13 JP, it made me hate RPGs for a year. Or that I don’t care for the DKC games at all and that Segata was right. Or that I don’t like Kingdom Hearts, period.
So… thanks for making me feel comfortable. It’s not wrong to want more out of the games I’ve played at all.
Just as a reference, this is one of… what, 3 RPGs I’d put aside from 2012/early 2013: Sticker Star, Tales of Xillia 2, and Ni no Kuni. I put them aside because they were boring the heck out of me. I felt that I needed a few months away from RPGs to clear my head, but nope. I was pretty accurate in saying that if I wasn’t going to like it then, I’m not going to like it now. To be honest, I feel like I was re-writing my Final Fantasy XIII review in some spots because I just hated the game design in this thing and ended up repeating the same criticisms.
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Paper Mario: Sticker Star – Incredibly Flat and Flimsy Paper
I started with Paper Mario incredibly late. I didn’t play the first entry on the Nintendo 64 until my late teens when I’d luckily stumbled on a copy for $10. I didn’t have a GameCube, so I played The Thousand-Year Door after I’d gotten my Wii. Simply put, I’m not really a Mario fan because I hadn’t had very much exposure to the series as a preteen and thereafter (for example, I’d only played Super Mario 64 on this year). I liked the NES and SNES games when I was a child, yes, but not really the games afterwards due to underexposure.
With that said, because my genre of choice is RPGs, the Mario RPGs should appeal to me. I don’t like Super Mario RPG, and I think it has aged poorly. Both the Paper Mario games and the Mario & Luigi games are markedly better than their predecessor, and narratively, visually, and mechanically, they’re both incredibly stellar series. While the Mario & Luigi games are generally consistent, Paper Mario seems to have gotten stuck in a rut after the highs of TTYD and the lows of Super Paper Mario. Unfortunately, the rut continues with Paper Mario: Sticker Star. With that said, I’m not necessarily comparing the game with its predecessors, but rather, I’m evaluating it as an RPG in general. I’m all for RPGs taking a fresh approach and using another formula as opposed to using the same thing time and time again. Provided it has good execution of that formula.
Essentially, Paper Mario: Sticker Star does not seem like it is purely an RPG. It is more of a platformer with very loose RPG elements, if we can call them those (ie: battles, battles on a separate screen, hit points, money after battle, some skills). It is not the game I had wanted. Sticker Star eliminates the drive for the player to stick with the game in general. Without the base D&D-esque elements, there is little desire for the player to be enticed with respect to their stats on a level up, which skills they will learn, or which stat they should allocate extra points into for statistical changes. Personally, I get a kick out of that sort of thing, and since this game had not provided that satisfaction, it immediately fell short of expectations. There is no means to manage the character which you are role-playing as other than choosing which/how many abilities he uses or keeping his HP up, nor is there any sort of quasi-micromanagement in terms of equipping armours or weaponry. You are no longer “role-playing”, but rather you are simply controlling a character’s movement like a platformer. The role-playing involvement is of little-to-no consequence. You increase your HP by finding health upgrades on the field. You find different skills (not “new skills”
littered throughout the environment with little regard to field cohesiveness and background cohesiveness.
With respect to skills, I truly do find it irksome that there is legitimately a lack of significant growth to the skills you acquire. By significance, I mean “meaningful”. For example, you would find the worn-out jump in the first town in addition to the regular jump. But then you would also find the Shiny Jump, the Iron Jump, and the Hopslipper right after that in World 1-1/1-2. Regardless of the fact that the Iron Jump and Hopslipper are their own categories, why would you give the player mid-level and stat effect-esque jump right off of the bat instead of introducing them in terms of character growth or a compelling fashion to make the player experiment with it? Not to mention that the Jump and Hopslipper aren’t necessarily that different in terms of damage-dealing outside of their execution (ex: max 5 vs max 10 (and this one is halved)). This isn’t necessarily strange balancing, but odd design which leads to these attacks feeling somewhat insignificant to the player. Especially when you can use these stickers only once per battle. However, I completely understand that a lot of people would find this issue nitpicky, but in terms of skill progression and growth, the lack thereof
bothers me.
Regarding battles, while the structure, pace and design of the battles seem like a good idea on paper, in terms of execution they are a bit lacking. In battle, you may use one or more stickers per round. These stickers may only be used one time only. Post-combat, you are only rewarded with money, which are used for
goods and services more stickers. In turn, you fight more enemies in order to be rewarded with more coins in order to purchase more skills for your player character to use. This is just strange design in an RPG because there is very little compelling need to attack enemies. There is no need for your character himself to participate in battles because it doesn’t factor into your character’s experience and increasing hardiness for battle. Without having to manage equipment, skills, BP, FP, etc. the combat becomes incredibly rote and unrewarding.
Due to not having many RPG basics to manage at all, this effectively becomes a platformer with the RPG elements of encounters and purchases. Even then, the player is not required to partake in these RPG elements unless desired. In particular, the game is designed as a slower-paced platformer with purchasable power-ups to use within battles that act as slower-paced platforming experiences with timed-button presses. There is little challenge to this system, and your character’s stats matter very little (in fact, there aren’t really apparent stats outside of the base power of the stickers, which I legitimately find disappointing because I like doing the math for things like this).
The puzzle-esque boss battles are actually not too bad, and the final boss wasn’t bad, either. I just wish more fights in the game were like the final boss as opposed to being the way they were. I do feel disappointed that enemy variety was lacking, but this seems to adhere to the concept Miyamoto had of only using characters that are part of the platformer games as opposed to original concepts to drive an RPG forward. The Mario series has a plethora of characters to utilize, and thus it’s a perfectly fine idea to stick with these characters…
provided that they are utilized properly. I’m a little surprised with the poor execution here, because the writing can definitely carry these heroes and villains forward. Instead, we get a sub-par drive to defend the good (all those toads who are almost indistinguishable) and fight enemies (who seem to have little personality).
For those who find narratives compelling, Sticker Star applies some lacklustre storytelling, or rather, a bare-minimum with respect to the narrative. Outside of gathering comet fragments and stopping Bowser, there is little drive to push you further towards your goal. There is little tension-building and tension-release. This is facilitated via the lack of multiple towns, the lack of a variety of NPCs, shallow settings, and just having a paper-thin objective for the player to aspire towards. The problem here is that the world itself consists of setpieces that Mario and his adversaries must dash around in. None of the areas feel significant to the plot, not enough for the player to learn much about them. The lack of characters leads to a lack of character development. No one necessarily develops because there generally isn’t anyone to develop. Mario is a silent character, and in typical silent character fashion, his emotions or actions are played off of another character. This is why partner characters, other party members, or NPCs in general make silent protagonists work extremely well. Kersti doesn’t seem to cut it, nor does she seem to work well with Mario in general. This, in turn, makes the atmosphere of the game rather weak.
With respect to the dialogue, this is executed quite well. I generally love the PM/M&L localizations. The humour and wit always shine through. I just wish dialogue were more abundant.
Let’s balance this out with something I did like: The visuals. I can’t talk about 3D because due to my eyesight, I cannot see 3D very well (or even at all in some circumstances). Outside of that, the visuals are rather spectacular. The gyro control in this game for the shiny stickers is quite a nice touch. All of the field and battle assets are very nice to look at, and the UI looks very lovely. The animations (ex: knock around animations, scene animations, etc.) look great, and the framerate is rather consistent.
The music is also great. I get the feeling that it’s by Masanori Adachi and Kiyoshi Hazemoto. It sounds like their style. I appreciate the bass and brass instruments throughout the entire soundtrack, and the melodic nature of the soundtrack was a bit of a drive to keep me going. Music like Boo Night Fever, the second phase of the final boss, and the credits theme were peppered with the right amount of percussion (and right mixing on the percussion), elegant and melodic bass, and beautiful brass.
Thus… Paper Mario: Sticker Star is more of a spectacle-based and slower-paced platformer with semi-RPG elements than a full-blown RPG. While it has its ups with the presentation and dialogue, that is not enough to save it in my eyes. It definitely isn’t my cup of tea at all.
Am I faulting the developers for experimenting? Hell no; I love Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, don’t I? Am I faulting the execution? Yes. Some of this stuff is okay to good ideas on paper (though to be fair, I was initially skeptical when I’d heard about the game’s mechanics in the first place), but in terms of execution, it makes a lot of missteps in terms of essentially following the basics of the basics of RPG construction in D&D roots, inadequate tension-building and release, making battles essentially meaningless, cultivating a dull atmosphere, reducing characterization to a nonfactor, lacklustre character writing, reducing the amount of player agency with respect to character customization, and essentially making its world structure rather boring due to a lack of worldbuilding and adequate NPC characters to carry it. This game simply lives out its welcome before it has a decent chance of sinking in and finding its pace.
It’s quite a shame, because I generally love IntSys’s work. They know exactly what decent balancing, stat factors, and game mechanics work and what don’t. It’s disappointing that they did not use all of the knowledge they possessed with respect to these qualities in full-force in a Mario RPG.
Pros:
+ The final boss was good! I love how the game gave me the game I’d wanted at the very end of the game.
+ The music is excellent
+ The game looked good. Gyro for shinies.
+ The dialogue/localization was superb.
Cons:
-Lack of adherence to general RPG basics
-Feels more like a platformer with loose RPG elements than an RPG at heart (Personal con)
-Battles are too easy and are forgettable
-There is little to no reason to participate in battles at all
-Stickers are strewn about willy-nilly, disregarding area aesthetics
-Little to no character development due to a lack of significant NPCs or varied NPC/PC characters
-Due to the overworld design, field areas feel a little small and disjointed
-The overworld itself feels rather unimaginative.
-Lack of player agency with respect to character customization; cannot equip new gear and result in it affecting your character’s potential in-battle
-There is little to no reason to utilize the money you acquire because many of the stickers strewn about the world are more than necessary, and because the battles are not that difficult.
Neutral:
o Feels more like a platformer with loose RPG elements than an RPG at heart (Personal con)
o Poor excuse for skill progression (this is a personal
con)
o The puzzles aren’t that difficult to figure out (but this is a personal stance)
o Puzzle bosses were alright.
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Man, I've missed making these kinds of posts.
I also finished Conception 俺の子供を産んでくれ!, but I'm not going to post a lengthy review on that. I'll just say, I think the story in that game is fucking dumb, but the mechanics are extremely solid. It's just too bad that it's repetitive.