A game that's uniquely terrible in that it isn't unfinished and it doesn't fall short of what it aims to do; it's a decently polished game and its ideas are all there, fleshed out to a fair degree

The problem: its ideas are just terrible and not good! Anyone just watching the game being played can tell you it's a really bad idea to make an RPG where getting into fights yields no rewards at all and actively hinders your progress by forcing you to expend your consumables

Clearly this series needs more than action commands to have an interesting battle system, and the whole game certainly needed more than obtuse puzzles and bosses that can be beaten by timing an A button input 100 times in a row, 5 times in a row

Wow, the average score on this game is low. I realize that I’m going to be a bit controversial with some of the things I say here, but I do believe that this game in general takes an unfairly harsh criticism from the community for simply being the first to majorly screw up the paper Mario formula; I think it’s a genuinely better game than color splash, which tends to see at least slightly less scathing reviews.

For one, I think the sticker mechanic is far more fun and engaging than the color card mechanic from that game. Peeling unique attack stickers from the overworld is just such a satisfying thing! And I think the graphics look good on the smaller screen, whereas I find color splash to be far more bland visually. Obviously, this game is entirely lacking story. It’s simply a ‘collect all the pieces’ game without nearly anything else going in. Even so, there are some interesting set piece moments to enjoy even if they’re kind of moot without a story, such as losing Kersti (stupid name) and your hammer to the poison big forest and wiggler’s antics that ensue, or climbing an ancient desert tower, or the haunted mansion. I also think that the ‘Things’ have the best implementation in this game compared to any other paper Mario game that has used them. A lot of the game is lacking though, in intrigue and variance compared to paper Mario games past. The bosses are generally uninspired, typically being a regular Mario enemy enhanced with the power of one of the sticker crowns.

Though, I think if you can get past how much of a step back it is from the other predecessor games, you can actually find a decently fun time in this game! Don’t let all those hate reviews bring your perception down; and that’s coming from a diehard Super Paper Mario fan.

Beating on a dead horse huh?
You heard talking bad about this game for ages: too many toads, no personality, bowser doesn't talk, bad rpg, dumb story.... theses criticism, while totally valid if you consider the reputation of the series, are heard over and over again from Nintendo fans and fans of the series.

The thing is; whenever I played this game for the first time, mostly hyped by a lot of titles that were coming out of the 3DS, I didn't feel this emptyness at heart. The only title I tried at the time was SUper Paper Mario for the Wii, which was a title that already took away from the other Paper games to experiment a new weird take. This to say that I knew the series was focused on experimentation. Also I was like, I was thinking "maybe their are doing something simpler because they are working on a 3DS, so a more linear and smaller adventure more akin to 3D Land is a good call".

And for the first hours of the game I was excited: the 3D spaces were fun to explore and the music and vibes were simple, but nice.
and ngl, after the werdness of the MS paint design in SUper Paper mario, I was kinda charmed by seeing the classic mario enemies and worlds with this paper aesthetic. it gave the title the same charm of a Wooly World or a Kirby Epic yarn in a way: taking an existing universe and re-crafting it with this hand-made aesthetic. The use of giant fans, soaps, scissors and other objects used for collge was kinda neat and I was curious to see how they evolved the concept in later worlds.

Then I went after world 1 and proceeded for the desert..... and I got stuck in a pyramyd level, whichapparently required to find a secret exit to proceed. After a bit of experimentation I checked a walkthrough to see how to reach it and yeah I did it and in the next level you get to use a giant object to fight the tornado. I tried everything I had in my inventory (I thought another fan would have been good, since wind beats wind I guess), but it wasn't the case. searche din older levels for a bit, tried everything in the black market in town and found absolutely nothing... so here comes the guide again... apparently the object I needed was in another level that felt kinda optional..... ok fair, let's go grab that... and then I needed to go back to grab another one that helped recreate the oasis.... f-fair enough game.
then I had to build the pyramid/tower or something to fight the giant Pokey boss, and apparently I had to collect some pieces. I missed one so here for the back tracking again.
The boss was kinda tedious, but then I read that the baseball bat is the most useful item to deal with him so I went back and turned to one I found into a sticker, made a bit of a management with the menu to have more useful stickers and came back to fight a cakewalk of a fight.

The thing was kind of annoying but then I said "ok but world 3 maybe is better" and oh my god Iw as wrong.
I can't believe that the chapter made me hate a character like wiggler. THe amount of backtracking, weird level design and tedious forced replayability made me quit the progression of the game for the longest time. I remember trying again years later, but I wasn't never able to go past the blooper boss fight for how boring and annoying it was to just progress.

In retrispect I guess world tree was kind of an reinterpretation of the Forest of Illusion from Mario WOrld..... but even then, at least SMW levels finish quickly, so you feel kinda incentivated to jump back there to check the secret... her it is just dumb and I feel no shame is saying again that I had to look up a guide to not waste time.... also the wiggler parts running away is a joke that became old immediately after the second piece walked away.

Like people often complain of how much linear the first tree titles were in terms of world exploration... and honestly if this is the alternative I wanna go back.

In terms of the combat, at the time the only RPGs I was able to remember playing where Golden Sun, Mario & Luigi Partners in time and Bravely Default (I just recently started jumping into these games that I never truly tried), and even at the time I found the combat system a bit too weird: without the choice of choosing the order you wanna attack the enemies, or giving a regular attacks that doesn't spend the stickers. Now that I played more jrpgs, this mechanic kinda rmeinds me of how Shadow works in FF6, and even he has an option for a regular attack that spends no items.. not to mention that the menu is kinda cramped and the way the game forces you to bring pecific stickers for specific bosses and puzzles without giving you hints about the specific puzzles (with the extra that those big stickers occupy like triple the space in your messy menu) makes for a really tedious process.... but hey at least you can skip combat entirely since you get no exp.

THis is to say that, even without the context of "the game that ruined the franchise" in my head, I didn't really enjoyed this one a lot at the time..... now with time, after giving all of the context behind the behind the scenes and the decisions behind the ddesigns, I can totally see why so many people want this thing crucified.

Is it the worst thing in the world? Ehhh honestly I played worse. I feel you can still have fun with this one and I don't feel clean into giving it a worse rating since I didn't played it to the fullest.

But when you get to actually play it and see how many weird decision went into its creation, not just for its writing but for the game design an dprogression... it's just not fun.
I get it was an weird experimentation.... but honestly there is a reason why I wasn't interested in trying the sequels to this.

Look, I don't mean to parrot what people on the internet, and especially THAT subreddit (you all know which one I refer to)....

But yeah, this is flat-out awful, flat like the characters themselves.

Also, whoever says Sticker Star has the best music (i.e: Youtube comment sections)...have you ever actually listened to the OST? It's a mix of let-down or just plain bad (sans Kersti's theme)