Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)

[JezMM]

I always thought it was a pop-up book thing. Y'know, fitting with the more story-driven experience.

 

Clearly they didn't think the story was papery enough.  So they made it paper thin!

 

*ba-dum-tish-sadtrumpet*

[Carbo]

Man, this game is pretty divisive isn't it, it's kind of turning me off from getting it.

I dunno, as far as I'm seeing the only people really shunning the entire game are people who haven't played it yet. The common consensus is generally "good but rather flawed" really. It's the kind of game that is only recommendable depending on how forgiving you are of it's shortcomings.

Or as ProJared put it,

[-Mark-]

The thing I find ironic is that all the people shunning the game without playing it are shunning it for reasons that don't matter much. As I said, by far the biggest flaws are the stage design and sticker puzzling, rather then the simplified battling or stage layouts.

[Conando]

I always thought the stage design was good, the bad thing was the obtuse puzzles.

[JezMM]

Honestly I'm fine with everything, it's just the lack of story that ticks me off.

 

Hell, even after I summed up the courage to finally play 3-2 (the forest maze one) it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be from your description Mark.  XD

 

 

I mean it was stupid but I found the exit after like 10-15 minutes.  And I thought "well that didn't take very long, but man maybe I got lucky and chose mostly the right way".  Went back to investigate every single unexplored path and they all lead to incorrect ones immediately, no additional areas filled with dud exits.

Edited December 27, 2012 by JezMM

[Danj86]

Man it is so weird that people are saying they are avoiding battles because they don't need the coins. I remember I had to grind hard in 4-1 to get coins, I dunno if it's because I was always putting all my stickers in the museum or what but I never felt like I had a ton of coins.

 

I do that too. I've never had more than like, 1500 coins and once I found the toad who sells those door stickers, I end up with even less. You can also buy back the current "things" you have found in a dark shop further from the thrower toad. I buy them when I can't be arsed to look for them in the actual levels the're located at. Although I don't know if they appear in the shop because I find them, "throw" them, or put them in the museum.

[Conando]

They appear in the shop once you've used a sticker of them. Whether that be through putting them in the museum or using them in battle. They disappear from the shop when you have them in your inventory.

[Pelly <3's U]

I don't know how anyone got lost in the maze. You can put up stickers on the sign to mark the correct path, so assuming you don't guess the right one right away it's just as easy as following the stickers you previously put up and then picking a different route on the one you missed. I breezed through it hella fast with no trouble.

[Conando]

I didn't even use Stickers and I blazed through it.

[Emperor Robrainiac]

The battle system of this game kinda reminds me of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories with its card/sticker collecting...  I freaking hated that battle system. Once you ran out of cards, in KH:CoM, you were pretty screwed and I'm not very good at strategizing.

 

Is it any better? I'm considering getting it if I ever get a 3DS.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Lyra the Red Nosed Unicorn

[Sean]

There was a 3DS kiosk at GameStop and there were tons of Sticker Star cardboard displays surrounding it. I go over to it to check it out and the game turned out to be NSMB2.

I was so disappointed I didn't even play it.

[JezMM]

I don't know how anyone got lost in the maze. You can put up stickers on the sign to mark the correct path, so assuming you don't guess the right one right away it's just as easy as following the stickers you previously put up and then picking a different route on the one you missed. I breezed through it hella fast with no trouble.

 

Oh yeah, it wasn't hard at all, but it's still stupid.  After about the 5th return to the exit I started sighing pretty much every time before rubbing my hands together with glee at the prospect of getting to walk in mostly straight lines for another 30 seconds to try again.

[-Mark-]

I don't know how anyone got lost in the maze. You can put up stickers on the sign to mark the correct path, so assuming you don't guess the right one right away it's just as easy as following the stickers you previously put up and then picking a different route on the one you missed. I breezed through it hella fast with no trouble.

 

I didn't get lost, I just think it's terrible game design to force trial and error upon the player. Yes, sure, you can signpost the correct routes with stickers, but that doesn't change the fact that you have to basically try every route until you find the correct one. They should at least put some kind of clue as to which is the correct path without forcing you to just try them all until you hit the correct one through process of elimination. Zelda games usually do this quite well, with subtle clues giving you an idea as to which way to go. Here? Nope.

 

There's nothing clever about it, there's no little trick to finding the right way, you literally just have to try everything. It's annoying and unnecessary. And then of course you find out there's actually a second secret route in there...

Edited December 28, 2012 by -Mark-

[Thrippa]

Haven't gotten to the forest yet.  I got as far as the patch of missing ground in the desert, with the oh-so-helpful advice from Kersti: that's a big hole, the paper must be around somewhere.    I looked around the level, clicking on everything, and repeated a few others in the hope that the missing pieces had appeared elsewhere; went back to town and slightly fixed the boat; and sort of ran out of interest.  At some point I'll go back and work on it some more (or look it up), but I'm dodging a lot of battles because they do feel pointless.  Spend 3-4 stickers to very occasionally get one.  Then you realize you're fighting four flying enemies and have only one sticker left that will hit a non-grounded foe, and all the stickers you're picking up are also ground-only.  Not a bad game, but more frustrating than it needs to be and definitely lacking in an interesting story to keep up my interest. And I've really got too many other games at the moment that are more interesting.

[Carbo]

The pieces are hidden in world 2-1, 2-2 and 2-4. In the beginning of 2-4 there's a vague hint as to how to get the one in 2-1 (sink into the quicksand between the two cacti in the area before the big pyramid) and to get the one in 2-4 you need the Vacuum and Tap sticker. You should have the latter and the former is found at the Surfshine Harbor. 2-2 is kind of easy to get on it's own.

Kersti is the only thing about the game I hate and I wish the game had a Merlon of sorts since this world was the only really frustrating part of the game for me.

[JezMM]

I will admit I was utterly stumped beyond belief at the tablet piece puzzle in World 2 at first, but then I did feel pretty clever for working out where they were on my own after putting the effort in (also found the piece on the Yoshi Sphinx first visit thanks to previously mentioned insistence on exploring everything I can see is explorable).

 

The only really dickish one was on that one 2D cave level, since it requires you to remember that the final sand slide knocks that route-changer-thinga-ma-bob (also trapping you on the route to the goal so you cannot go back to the top again to take the other route).  I did remember, but I can imagine that would trip a lot of people up assuming that such a thing would have reset when you revisit the level, if they even noticed.

Edited December 28, 2012 by JezMM

[MegasonicZX]

There was a 3DS kiosk at GameStop and there were tons of Sticker Star cardboard displays surrounding it. I go over to it to check it out and the game turned out to be NSMB2.

I was so disappointed I didn't even play it.

yeah, at target I normally see the advert for this game too only to find out its that imagine savvy game or whatever its called being played.

[-Mark-]

I will admit I was utterly stumped beyond belief at the tablet piece puzzle in World 2 at first, but then I did feel pretty clever for working out where they were on my own after putting the effort in (also found the piece on the Yoshi Sphinx first visit thanks to previously mentioned insistence on exploring everything I can see is explorable).

 

The only really dickish one was on that one 2D cave level, since it requires you to remember that the final sand slide knocks that route-changer-thinga-ma-bob (also trapping you on the route to the goal so you cannot go back to the top again to take the other route).  I did remember, but I can imagine that would trip a lot of people up assuming that such a thing would have reset when you revisit the level, if they even noticed.

 

I was raging so hard at that Sandshift Ruins stage. I was stuck there for literally two goddamned hours trying to explore everywhere and ACASBCSABCSAJCBSACKSABCHSA, haaaaaaate. D:

[Pelly <3's U]

While I never got very hardcore stuck in the game, one thing I did find later though that I really liked was the hint guide on gamefaqs, I basically feel like they wrote what would have been the perfect script to kirsty, making it just enough to point you in the right direction without giving away the feeling of having figured things out on your own.

[-Mark-]

Oh god, yes. So much that guide. D:

 

Seriously, more than anything else it's just how the game gives you no guidance whatsoever. You just end up hopelessly stuck, not because the game is hard, but because the game won't even give you a single breadcrumb to follow nine times out of ten.

 

I don't want a game to hold my hand, but at the same time it's frustrating as hell to be left feeling hopelessly stuck without any clue whatsoever as to where the hell you're supposed to go or what you're supposed to do next. That's not 'difficulty', that's just 'annoying'. As I said before, given how much optional hand-holding Nintendo have given in recent years, it's surprising that they left Sticker Star in such a user-unfriendly state.

[Autosaver]

Join in next time on the next Paper Mario game.

 

Game will now have a super guide active at all times with absolutely no story. It will be called "New Paper Mario Brothers" and will launch exclusively on 3DS.

 

~Miyamoto

[Your Vest Friend]

Bought the game earlier today so I can get a gauge of everything. My God, this game isn't really fun to play. 

[Doctor MK]

Finished the game last night, and I genuinely don't know what I thought of it.

 

(rest of post in spoilers due to... well, spoilers)

 

On first impressions, I was really liking the game. At the start, everything felt very right and getting used to the new sticker battle mechanics were a unique experience. There were jokes aplenty, and even within the first 10 minutes or so I was grinning away like an idiot at some of the things the Toads were saying or doing. And this genuine sense of wonder continued on through World 1, encountering the first lot of Thing stickers and tackling a few of the rather clever puzzles to progress, 

 

And then, about halfway through World 2, it hit a bit of a slump. The puzzles started to become more of a chore. The lack of signposting to tell you where to go or what to do next became frustrating. And the stench of unoriginality really began to reek like a carton of week-old milk.

 

I think that's the game's main problem, really. It's trying to be revolutionary with all the sticker shenanigans, yet it refuses to break from tradition in other areas - in a sense, this is basically New Super Mario Bros but with Paper Mario slapped all over it. The world tropes are all very predictable (grasslands, desert, jungle, snow, volcano, castle) and the absence of even a half-decent story becomes painful towards the end when the final battle comes around. It's just so anti-climactic. Unlike in the original two games, where you may have actually felt a sense of dread at having to face off against Bowser or The Shadow Queen thanks to them being built up as formidable foes throughout the adventure, here it's just "Bowser shows up, you hit him a number of times, the end". And even after that, the game manages to feel even more inconsequential when the ending cutscene is essentially a repeat of the opening one, complete with Bowser showing up, only to be bitched at by Kersti and then everyone has a jolly old laugh. Erm, why? Bowser's just been fucking everyone's shit up for the last however many hours of gameplay time, getting his minions to literally rip his enemies to shreds (poor, poor Wiggler), and now everyone's just chortling it off as if it was nothing? Dammit, I want my deep and meaningful Paper Mario narratives back please.

 

Despite all the apparent negativity in that last paragraph though, I still did enjoy the game. For every moment of blandness there was a moment of pure genius. World 3 was a real pain in the backside but the hilarious Hit It or Snifit quiz show saved the day. The Enigmansion in World 4 was absolutely superb, a nice little homage to Luigi's Mansion and in my opinion the best level in the entire game. Fleeing on a raft from a giant Cheep Cheep in World 5 was pretty nifty, too.

 

All in all, I'm left with mixed feelings. When Sticker Star got things right, it did them wonderfully, and as a handheld title it generally serves its purposes well enough. When it got things wrong though, I began longing for the good old days of The Thousand-Year Door. I think it's going to go down in the series as a game a bit like Super Paper Mario - not particularly memorable, noteworthy of a few cool ideas and features, but generally just there. We acknowledge its existence, and that's about it.

 

Right then, roll on the hypothetical Wii U installment featuring classic Paper Mario RPG action akin to the first two games...!

 

A man can dream, right?

[Your Vest Friend]

Miyamoto: Hates big plots, loves creepy mural Koopas.

 

Up to world 6-2, don't feel bothered to finish it, especially since you can't do anything afterwards. 

[Echidna Adventurer CC14]

Just started playing the game myself and enjoying it so far! Battles are quick and addictive, sticker system is interesting, and the emphasis on exploration gives it a pretty fresh feel. Script has also been hilarious for what little there is and the localization team did their usual bang-up job of making even every minor character ooze with personality. Definitely looking forward to moving on to some of the later locales.

 

Also, I think beating Kamek to death with a sandal may be one of my favorite Mario RPG moments now just for the sheer hilariousness/ridiculousness of the whole situation.

Edited January 8, 2013 by Lone CC of the Apocalypse