Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)
Feb. 23rd, 2020 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroEveryone in the Paper Mushroom Kingdom looks forward to the coming of the Sticker Comet, which showers the land with fancy stickers. Of course, Bowser tries to steal it (and the princess) and the very-important Royal Stickers end up scattered everywhere. Mario to the rescue!
This is even less of an rpg than the other Paper Mario games. It’s broken up into stages, and you don’t have any infinite-use attacks—every single action you take uses up a sticker. To be fair, this is a Nintendo title, so they want it to be fun, so there are plenty of stickers just there for the taking. Also, everything repawns and it appears that nothing is lost forever (not even the special “thing” stickers). But even so, this fights my gaming instincts at every turn AND also fights my need to hoard special stickers for some nebulous future time when I might need them more. (In practice, I hoarded all of my best stickers for boss battles, because I apparently didn’t “get” how to use the special stickers to beat bosses quickly, so I needed to use up almost my entire sticker book to beat them.)
Anyway, this is an action/adventure/puzzle game. The only “rpg elements” are turn-based battles (that are heavily dependent on timed hits) and that you can collect items to increase your health bar. The hammer sticker will always do the same amount of damage on an Excellent hit, whether you use it in stage 1 or stage 5; and whether you’ve beaten five enemies or five hundred. For that matter, there’s no tutorial or practice area (like the Mario & Luigi games are generally good about), so you just have to guess at the timing for stickers and keep trying until you get it right. I don’t think I ever figured out what you were supposed to do to make POW Blocks useful.
The special thing stickers, incidentally, are what gate off most areas—and this game is NOT nearly as linear as it looks. Reaching bosses is often a matter of finding secret areas or exits and using special items (that you stopped into town to transform into stickers) from much earlier areas. As a kindness, there’s a not-very-secret shop in town that will re-sell any special item you’ve used, so you don’t have to hike back to wherever you originally found it. But I found myself relying heavily on an FAQ, because I would never have figured out (for example) where you find the three “tablet fragments” in Area 2 that unlock the boss stage.
Overall: I ended up playing three of the six worlds and declaring that sufficient for my tastes—I enjoyed that play time, but the battles were already starting to get frustrating (because, again, I couldn’t grind Mario any stronger and stickers are limited) and it’s not like there’s any real depth to the story. I don’t think this is a bad thing, though: I had fun and feel I got my money’s worth.
This is even less of an rpg than the other Paper Mario games. It’s broken up into stages, and you don’t have any infinite-use attacks—every single action you take uses up a sticker. To be fair, this is a Nintendo title, so they want it to be fun, so there are plenty of stickers just there for the taking. Also, everything repawns and it appears that nothing is lost forever (not even the special “thing” stickers). But even so, this fights my gaming instincts at every turn AND also fights my need to hoard special stickers for some nebulous future time when I might need them more. (In practice, I hoarded all of my best stickers for boss battles, because I apparently didn’t “get” how to use the special stickers to beat bosses quickly, so I needed to use up almost my entire sticker book to beat them.)
Anyway, this is an action/adventure/puzzle game. The only “rpg elements” are turn-based battles (that are heavily dependent on timed hits) and that you can collect items to increase your health bar. The hammer sticker will always do the same amount of damage on an Excellent hit, whether you use it in stage 1 or stage 5; and whether you’ve beaten five enemies or five hundred. For that matter, there’s no tutorial or practice area (like the Mario & Luigi games are generally good about), so you just have to guess at the timing for stickers and keep trying until you get it right. I don’t think I ever figured out what you were supposed to do to make POW Blocks useful.
The special thing stickers, incidentally, are what gate off most areas—and this game is NOT nearly as linear as it looks. Reaching bosses is often a matter of finding secret areas or exits and using special items (that you stopped into town to transform into stickers) from much earlier areas. As a kindness, there’s a not-very-secret shop in town that will re-sell any special item you’ve used, so you don’t have to hike back to wherever you originally found it. But I found myself relying heavily on an FAQ, because I would never have figured out (for example) where you find the three “tablet fragments” in Area 2 that unlock the boss stage.
Overall: I ended up playing three of the six worlds and declaring that sufficient for my tastes—I enjoyed that play time, but the battles were already starting to get frustrating (because, again, I couldn’t grind Mario any stronger and stickers are limited) and it’s not like there’s any real depth to the story. I don’t think this is a bad thing, though: I had fun and feel I got my money’s worth.
