How do you tell a story about the dilemma of adoptive and biological family? Easy! Just let the player escape from all their problems, and give them a pat in the back. Because everyone will receive you with open arms after you betrayed their love. Everyone will accept your shitty decisions as if nothing had happened, and in fact the game will congratulate you for running away, because doing so is THE ZOMG TRUE GOLDEN ENDING!

But the world doesn't work that way. Your decisions have consequences. People get hurt. It's not the fault of some weird invisible dragon that conspires against your universe.

And the worst part, Intelligent Systems, is that you didn't do it because you believe in neutrality or equality. You did so because you wanted the player to bang everyone. You wanted the player to feel cool.

Intelligent Systems, do you remember when Marth had to put a face to his people to hide the pain he felt for the loss of his family? When Alm cried after he realized what he had done to his father? When Seliph and Leif went through a holy war to restore the tainted name of their families? Do you remember when there were heroes and being responsible to your family mattered?

People have complained about this game, about its garbage level design, about its story worthy of a fanfiction, but never at the contempt of its heart. And people have also defended this game, because "yooo, psycho, story doesn't matter in Fire Emblem". Okay, if you think that what you're watching on screen is acceptable and can be ignored, if you want to be complicit, you do you.

there have been so many bad games ive played. halo 4. nu thief. so forth. but i cant really bring myself to hate any of them--just a great distaste or disliking, i guess

but this shit right here. this is easily the worst video game i've ever played in my life, firing on all cylinders as a completely miserable experience to both established paper mario fans of old and approachers of new. an ugly art style plastered with generic, boring designs mixed with a soulless soundtrack and obnoxious dialogue all make for an ugly exterior, but all of this could be good and it still wouldnt save the baffling gameplay. who in fuck thought it would be a good idea to make a combat system where the only winning move is to not play? i think i treated sticker star like a stealth game with all the running past enemies i did, considering the combat consists of wasting your resources and giving you nothing but coins for your effort, a complete waste of currency. when you're not surviving these encounters, you're either solving puzzles that range from brain dead easy to "this is legitimately not possible without a strategy guide on hand unless i want to spend three hours wandering around aimlessly." this game will never fail to not make me angry in some way, and i feel even angrier knowing that, slowly but surely, a new wave of defenders is building for this shitty revival of paper mario.

i was pissed off back then, i'm pissed off now writing this, and i'll be pissed off forever. fuck this game to hell.