Support NeoGAF

[Drago]

Funnily enough, this was the PM that bored me to death. I just wasn't having any type of fun with it, and I HATED the battle system, constantly having to buy stickers and running out of room for stickers. And what the fuck happened to location variety and an actual story/dialogue, instead we get super generic NSMB locations, little to no dialogue other than Kersti telling you how wrong you are for using the wrong sticker, and Toads / generic enemies?

I just had to give up midway through the second world. I only played around the first half of TTYD but I had a much better experience with that one. I regret the purchase but at least I only paid $30 for it. Really hope M&L Dream Team doesn't get fucked over like this one did to me as well, because Mario & Luigi is one of my all time favorite series from Nintendo. Early footage seems to indicate it will stay true to series roots and not be generi-fied like PMSS was, so I'm happy.

 

[jacob armitage]

It's not a case of it making you feel hopelessly stuck, it's just stupid stuff like stickers that are off the main path being essential to progressing through the game. Given the way the game is structured, that's just incredibly stupid design. You could argue most of the game is stupidly designed, even.

Its was a game that rewarded exploration and thinking outside of the box. Its probably my favorite part of the design, but i cut my teeth on old adventure games which follow a very similar structure. The design of sticker star i found refreshing in this day and age.

 

[qq more]

Sticker Star was an alright game, I'm not just the fan of them removing RPG elements as I thought they were very fun in the other Paper Mario games.

I didn't like the lack of an actual story because it gives you less motivation... well kind of, at least there were sub plots that kept me going. I have no idea why they made the story so basic because the game could of have easily benefited from it since it's an RPG. I don't think Nintendo got why people complained Super Paper Mario was text heavy... it was a platformer+RPG mixed game (leaning towards platforming), so the idea of it having a huge story didn't work. But this game is nothing like that so removing the story made no sense. At least the charm is still there.

I love the battle system though, even if it's pointless most of the times (they should of have kept the level up system). It is so satisfying getting Perfect Bonuses, especially when the enemies are worth a lot of coins (like the

Spoiler

Shiny Goombas in World 4-1

).

If there's anything I absolutely love about the game that everyone can agree on is the music. It is so catchy, it gets stuck in my head a lot. Probably the best of the series.

But yeah overall, it's a fun but flawed game that needs work. It feels like it tries too hard at being different from the other games. I didn't care that it wasn't a TTYD2 (even though I would love that), but I do care that they removed some important elements that hindered the game for me.


EDIT: Oh yeah, Drago brought up a good point. The lack of creativity on enemies bothered me too. Every Paper Mario game introduced new kinds of enemies but this game only featured enemies from the 2D platformer games. :/ Also, why is it that almost every friendly NPC a Toad?

 

[noffles]

Its was a game that rewarded exploration and thinking outside of the box. Its probably my favorite part of the design, but i cut my teeth on old adventure games which follow a very similar structure. The design of sticker star i found refreshing in this day and age.

It rewarded exploration, sure, but it shouldn't really be hiding things vital to progression in a game with a level based structure. If the world was as it was in the older games (not level based), yeah I'd be completely okay with that, but it doesn't fly when you're hiding something necessary for a level in a completely different world. That just becomes overly frustrating.

 

[bart64]

Sticker Star is like a fine scotch. Not as popular as jack and coke, but for those with a mature palate and a taste for something new, it's a a pure treat.
Just feels really adult: less frills, more daring, no self-consciousness, no shame, and that beautiful jazz music takes you straight to the cigar room with Miyamoto and company.

It takes a little patience but it streamlines other things to keep delighting your senses as it rewires your tired and strained RPG logic cortex with every sip.

 

[WrenchNinja]

Sticker Star is like a fine scotch. Not as popular as jack and coke, but for those with a mature palate and a taste for something new, it's a a pure treat.
Just feels really adult: less frills, more daring, no self-consciousness, no shame, and that beautiful jazz music takes you straight to the cigar room with Miyamoto and company.

It takes a little patience but it streamlines other things to keep delighting your senses as it rewires your tired and strained RPG logic cortex with every sip.

Mature palate? I think I would rather keep my "tired and strained RPG logic cortex" and bust blade to blade in Fire Emblem, a much superior intelligent systems joint.

 

[Vitet]

I can't pass World 3, playing it's too meaningless to me without any RPG elements or even some reward. You can even loss coins if you use too many stickers

 

[bart64]

Mature palate? I think I would rather keep my "tired and strained RPG logic cortex" and bust blade to blade in Fire Emblem, a much superior intelligent systems joint.

Nothing wrong with jack and coke.

 

[Tuck]

Its was a game that rewarded exploration and thinking outside of the box. Its probably my favorite part of the design, but i cut my teeth on old adventure games which follow a very similar structure. The design of sticker star i found refreshing in this day and age.

Placing stickers that are necessary to progress through the game in arbitrary places throughout the game world, with little to no hints as to what sticker you need or where they might be is not good game design.

It doesn't make the game more "open." It doesn't make you "think outside of the box." Does it encourage exploration? Yes. But not in a smart way - there is no intelligent placement of the thing objects. Its frustrating. People use the excuse "Oh but thats how old games used to be. Luls gaming is so not hardcore anymore." Nonsense. Not all game design from the days of old is good game design.

EDIT: Personally, I just used a guide for those parts where a random sticker was needed, and I enjoyed the game far more because of it. The Thing stickers are probably the worst part of sticker star.

 

[Lord_Byron28]

I think SS was a decent/good but flawed title. The stickers was an interesting idea that wasnt fleshed out or didn't pan out as expected. The battle system lacks surprise/variety after the third world. The puzzles were cool but some were annoying just due to how vague some of them were. I also personally dislike trial and error gameplay that applies to most of the boss fights especially the last one. I did like the more open format of level selection but I think it couldve been more interesting had they fully taken advantage of it such as having to obtain a sticker or item from the ice world to complete the desert level or something to that effect to encourage exploration. Overall, I did have a good time with the title but it was a bit too vanilla where it had a mish mash influence of many different genres but failed to really flesh out any of those aspects completely. Also, this is coming from someone whose only real experience with paper mario titles is from spm and maybe the first 2 hours of the original pm. So I disagree when people say that its disliked because it isnt ttyd as I've never played it. Granted I don't dislike it, I just finished and was pretty meh to the game.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

The only thing this game did really well was the music. It's the only Paper Mario game I haven't liked, not just because it doesn't play like Paper Mario, but because it was just bland and repetitive all around.

 

[Semajer]

I couldn't disagree more. Sticker Star was a mess, and probably one of the biggest game disappointments I've ever experienced. TTYD was a charming, fun RPG which remains the best of the series, and the genre.

While Sticker Star looks great, and sounds great, the gameplay is garbage. You essentially don't get anything from the enemies so you avoid them throughout the levels. This means that the sticker mechanic boils down to filling your inventory with shells to one round the enemies that you failed to avoid. I feel I should also point out how UTTERLY MORONIC having to do a roulette for extra turns is in EVERY battle.

Having trial and error bosses is such a stupidly frustrating idea that I don't know how it can be defended. It wouldn't be half as bad if you could just beat them the hard way, but whenever I tried that I got whooped.

Paper Mario games were known for their simple stories with funny dialogue, and Sticker Star has no story. None, at all. Bowser, series bad guy, has NO text in the game, he was damn near the best parts of the other games.

 

[KU_]

Amazon has this for $20, and I had a $25 gift card from Christmas still, so I ordered it.
Been waiting since this game launched for it to go down in price. First Paper Mario game for me, so I'm pretty excited.

 

[RedSwirl]

It's too bad Nintendo made a Paper Mario game for people who don't like Paper Mario games.

Maybe that's why I enjoyed my rental so much and decided to take advantage of the $20 sale. I tried out Thousand Year Door once and liked the writing a lot, but there was way too damn much of it.

From what I can see Sticker Star seems to have a lot of the same charm but not too much text. Maybe it's just because this is the first Paper Mario I've tried for more than a couple hours. There's actually a Club Nintnedo deal for the original one right now come to think of it.

 

[Oceanwind]

I really didn't enjoy this game at all. The worlds were all generic and dull compared to the previous games. I really liked levels like the Glitz Pit and the train from TTYD and the Sammer Guy Kingdom from SPM, but in SS there wasn't really anything like that. There were just generic worlds like mountain, desert, forest, etc. My favorite level in SS was probably the Enigmansion (I think that's what it was called?). It incorporated the snow theme while also doing something interesting and different from the other snow levels. If there had been more levels like that, I probably would have liked the game a lot more. I remember every level in the forest world looking pretty much exactly the same.

As other people have said, the puzzles seemed a bit too obtuse. The Thing sticker needed for the squid boss really made no sense at all to me and I ended up having to look it up in a guide. Also, if you didn't bring the correct Thing sticker with you, you had to go get it and do the level all over again. Since I found most of the levels pretty boring, this ended up feeling like a chore.

The battles were okay, but nothing very interesting. I found the badge system in PM and TTYD to be more interesting. I was never in a situation where I didn't have the stickers needed to win a fight (except the Thing stickers needed for the boss fights). I just plucked off whichever stickers I found in the levels and used those. I never really had to give more thought to it than that.

The dialogue and characters were really boring compared to previous games. I thought Wiggler was pretty cute, but he's probably the only character I liked. Kersti was okay, but she seemed pretty generic to me.

I liked the music, especially in some of the forest levels (that was pretty much the only thing I liked about the forest levels).

Overall, I found the game really boring and tedious. There were some good things about the game, but they were really not enough to make up for the bad points. I spent $30 for this game, and I really regret it. I'm probably done with the Paper Mario series unless the next game is a significant improvement.

 

[VeryGooster]

Placing stickers that are necessary to progress through the game in arbitrary places throughout the game world, with little to no hints as to what sticker you need or where they might be is not good game design.

It doesn't make the game more "open." It doesn't make you "think outside of the box." Does it encourage exploration? Yes. But not in a smart way - there is no intelligent placement of the thing objects. Its frustrating. People use the excuse "Oh but thats how old games used to be. Luls gaming is so not hardcore anymore." Nonsense. Not all game design from the days of old is good game design.

EDIT: Personally, I just used a guide for those parts where a random sticker was needed, and I enjoyed the game far more because of it. The Thing stickers are probably the worst part of sticker star.

As okay as I found SS, I couldn't agree more with this.

 

[Mzo]

It's not a case of it making you feel hopelessly stuck, it's just stupid stuff like stickers that are off the main path being essential to progressing through the game. Given the way the game is structured, that's just incredibly stupid design. You could argue most of the game is stupidly designed, even.

But then again, some people who play NES/SNES games obsessively seem to love that obtuse shit so who am I to judge?

There were tiers of stickers that performed similar functions, and a lot of those were hidden away, but I don't think any necessary for progression were hidden away in secret locations or anything. I don't rememeber that, at least, and I'd love some specific examples to refresh my memory.

The hardest part for me was finding the invisible blocks needed to make a bridge of sorts to a shard in one of the poison forest levels.

 

[Lagiacrusty]

Loved it too. I'm not a big RPG fan, so the lack of story didn't bother me. The battles were as
"pointless" as in any other RPG, and the boss fights are pretty much always trial & error in RPGs (you don't know what equipment to wear/what party to use until you fight the boss once). I also find this complaint weird since you could also beat the boss with normal stickers. Level design was great, unless you hate exploration I guess.

Basically, it's biggest problem from the vibe I get is that it was called Paper Mario. Call it something else and 90%+ of the gripes dissapear.

The battles in the previous games were not pointless. They, just like other RPGs, are used for gaining XP to level up and improve your abilities. The battles in this game, however are entirely pointless. You have to use stickers, sometimes multiple, and your rewards for the battle are more stickers. You could just not waste your time and stickers on battles and skip through all of the non boss fights entirely with no penalties, whereas in the original paper mario, you would find yourself under leveled and not ready to fight. Although, I do agree that this isn't a bad game, just a bad paper mario game. If this game would've been named something else, people wouldn't be complaining nearly as much.

 

[peanutbutterlatte]

"I didn't like the older Paper Mario titles, I can't figure out why people who do dislike a game that's vastly different and mechanically inferior!"

 

[EvilMario]

The battles in the previous games were not pointless. They, just like other RPGs, are used for gaining XP to level up and improve your abilities. The battles in this game, however are entirely pointless. You have to use stickers, sometimes multiple, and your rewards for the battle are more stickers. You could just not waste your time and stickers on battles and skip through all of the non boss fights entirely with no penalties, whereas in the original paper mario, you would find yourself under leveled and not ready to fight. Although, I do agree that this isn't a bad game, just a bad paper mario game. If this game would've been named something else, people wouldn't be complaining nearly as much.

Coins actually have real value in the game, so there is a point. It's much tougher to fully explore areas in the game with enemies chasing after you as well.. and this game has a ton of secrets in its worlds. So you might miss out on some better stickers that way. And being low on coins means a tougher time rebuying any Thing stickers, or using shops. People do a lot more pointless time sink task in games than this, which actually has a point.