Is Paper Mario: Sticker Star really a bad game?

Is it?

  • Total voters
    43
I wanted to find a thread so I can share my feelings on this game. I'm well aware that nobody posted in this thread in over 9 years, but I should talk about how I feel about the game.

I got this game in March 2013 (one of Mom's friends got this game for us, along with Mario Party 4, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Mario Party DS). It was the first Paper Mario game I've played (Shocker!) so I didn't know what to expect.

Long story short, With my 9-year old mind I simultaneously played the game AND looked up the answers at the same time. Believe me, there were LOTS of times where I got stuck and had no idea what to do. I got annoyed by all the enemy fights and my brother remembers me saying "Why is there a fight every time I run into a Goomba?!" (Keep in mind I haven't played the other games before this one). When Kersti sacrificed herself at the end I got teary eyed (yes, really) but didn't cry. It wasn't like when Bobby died in Paper Mario: The Origami King where I cried for 10 minutes (I can't believe I did), but now I'm over it.

Everyone said it already. The fights are pointless and they're just for wasting stickers with no reward but coins. Boss fights are much worse because they're difficulty spikes with vague hints about how to beat them. You can fight them for a LOOOOOOOOONG time and still win, so at least it's possible to beat them without using the required "Things". I recently played this game in January of last year and now that I'm older I can see and understand the hints about how to beat them (Megasparkle Goomba has dotted lines at one part and Tower Power Pokey is fought in a baseball stadium for example).

Puzzles are also hit and miss. You need the right "Thing" to solve them (this means they aren't really puzzles) with more subtle hints. Once again now that I'm older I understand them. I remember having to look up the solution to the volcano level (with the refrigerator) and just remembered how absurd it was. I can see an outline in the shape of the fridge now.

Everyone hates Kersti and I can see how she's annoying, but I don't hate her as much as other people do. Now that I think about it, she's like a more arogant and rude version of Rarity.

The story is just Bowser kidnapping Peach. Do you see the problem here? The previous three games have unique stories, I don't need to elaborate.

About the levels… most of them are good/decent though there are some bad ones (the waterfall level with the Cheep Chomp for example). Thankfully there are some amazing levels (more notably Stump Glade and The Enigmansion). Levels with lots of "puzzles" are not as good obviously.

The music is absolutely fantastic and I find myself listening to it occasionally (the Enigmansion, Goomba Fortress, Kamek Battle, Bowser Jr. battle and Bowser Battle themes are the best ones in my opinion). That's something everyone agrees with.

But, I have lots of memories of this game and I say it makes this game OK for me. Having played the game lots of times over the years, I know of the bad moments and therefore enjoy the game more than my previous playthrough. The last time I played this game was January 2023 as I said earlier, and I enjoyed the game honestly.

So I find this game OK. I think Color Splash is worse (but then again I haven't played that game in over 5 years). I know of all the flaws and of the hate surrounding this game. The funny thing is this game's article is featured on the Mario Wiki!

Thanks for reading this. Hopefully you don't hate me for somewhat enjoying this game.
 
This game is certainly impossible to complete on the first playthrough without having to use a guide mostly because you could get so far in a level only to discover you'd need a certain Thing for a puzzle so you'd have to go all the way back both ways for it.
Color Splash at least did handle that better by having the trash can Toad give you a hint on what Thing you'll need next.
 
I didn't mind it. The boss design is head-scratchingly bad and there's a lot of tedious backtracking involved in 100% completion, but other than that, kinda fun, really. Had I paid for it full-price I probably would have felt like I wasted some money on it, because it's not *that* fun; luckily, I got it from the bargain bin, so I can't say it was that sour of an experience for 15 euros.
 
It's not a bad game but it's probably one of the most soul-crushingly disappointing Mario games in the entire Mario series, probably right next to Mario Party 9.
 
Yes it is. Not only is it pretty uninteresting, but gameplay is just really tedious with all the backtracking you have to do.
 
It's just (the Paper Mario franchise is) not nearly as good as normal classic Mario. And all the characters being paper feels really-I guess, flat, in more than just a literal dimensional sense.
 
Ray Trace said:
It's not a bad game but it's probably one of the most soul-crushingly disappointing Mario games in the entire Mario series, probably right next to Mario Party 9.
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Off-topic, but how is Mario Party 9 disappointing?
 
Anglefish said:
Mario Party 9 introduced the stupid car mechanic and relied way too much on luck.
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Mario Party has always been luck based bullshit. Don't blame 9 for that.
 
Anglefish said:
Mario Party 9 introduced the stupid car mechanic and relied way too much on luck.
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As a person who got into Mario by watching Mario Party gameplays, I know nothing about 9's car mechanic but if it's like 10's I see why people dislike it. But god, whoever came up with Step-It-Up is the smartest person on this planet.
 
To attempt a measured response:

Even divorced from genre labels, other Paper Mario games, or the whole… Miasma of Despair That Lingered Over the Series Until Last September… situation, I still think that Sticker Star has many glaring problems in game design, puzzles, and pacing, and has little else of substance to make up for it. I don't dislike a lot of the game's ideas, the programming and performance is solid, and (though I hate to say it) there are a handful of places and music tracks that I feel a bit nostalgic for—but I would still call it a bad game in the sense that it doesn't accomplish what it presumably sets out to do. For example, I'm sure the battle system wasn't intended to feel like a waste of time and resources, but it failed to incentivize a lot of players to engage with it if they could avoid it. YMMV on whether that's an "objective" flaw but I do think it's at least quantifiable under some sort of theory of game design. I don't want to beat the horse so I'll leave it at that.

To go with my gut feelings:

yea
 
Dunno, me personally, I've seen an RPG where running decreases your HP, blowing on the mic causes you to run away from battle, if you win a battle you have to choose EXP or items (not both), equipment constantly breaking, and that entry just outright killed a franchise, so I'm like "Sticker Star can't be all that bad" that's why I didn't call it "bad".
 
I remember I didn't have high expectation knowing it wasn't a major title from the start, like the previous three Paper titles and it was the first and only handheld entry, I think it's overall performance was okay. On the other hand, Color Splash would just be much more underwhelming since it isn't supposed to be as simple as the handheld counterpart. Sure if you own 3DS and you expect story, M&L title had better performance in general.

I agree that force collecting all the "right stickers" around the map as the main puzzle for the entire game is kinda boring. There is no proper story to tell how the stickers relate to a specific event in an entirely different place, and also no enjoyable story during the sticker hunting progress.

I actually like several tricks for map and scenes. There is some potential and it could had been utilized in better ways.
 
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Not sure how sticker star was any less a "major title" than the previous ones...which I wouldn't even call all that major to begin with.
 
Mcmadness said:
Not sure how sticker star was any less a "major title"
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I say this more because of the routine of past Mario games: most handheld version of the home console releases did not have the same budget and input.

But sure you can say as independent project, we do have M&L titles as well as Fire Emblem for 3DS, so there is no reason for Sticker Star to have poor performance by the general standard of handheld RPGs.
 
Dorayakiss said:
But sure you can say as independent project, we do have M&L titles as well as Fire Emblem for 3DS, so there is no reason for Sticker Star to have poor performance by the general standard of handheld RPGs.
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Yeah I agree with you; there's no excuse. It should have been done better than it was. As far as my opinion on Paper Mario in general I think it's kind of "meh". It's not that good, but not that bad either.
 
Dorayakiss said:
I say this more because of the routine of past Mario games: most handheld version of the home console releases did not have the same budget and input.

But sure you can say as independent project, we do have M&L titles as well as Fire Emblem for 3DS, so there is no reason for Sticker Star to have poor performance by the general standard of handheld RPGs.
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But this wasn't a handheld version of a game. It was a game built specifically for the 3ds, a machine that has specs about on par with anything a (at the time) previous paper mario game had been on. Just because it's on a handheld that doesn't make it any less of a "major release"
 
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