Paper Mario: Sticker Star

At the annual Sticker Festival, an event in which citizens gather to view the passing of the Sticker Comet (which is said to fulfill wishes), Bowser and his troops intercept the commemoration and successfully heist the comet. After an intense struggle, Bowser is flung onto the comet, causing it to scatter into vi individual pieces across the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario attempts to duel Bowser merely is inevitably overpowered.

Mario afterward re-awakens after the devastation and is entrusted to observe all six pieces with the assistance of the sticker fairy Kersti. They start off in the boondocks of Decalburg and travel throughout the land to defeat Bowser’s underlings and obtain the pieces.

The game focuses on Mario traveling the overworld and battling enemies to progress and collect coins. Outside of boxing, Mario collects a variety of stickers (which are essential throughout the game) and items and overcomes obstacles, such as bypassing a behemothic Wiggler or navigating a pyramid with multiple splitting paths.

During a battle, Mario can either jump on his enemies or attack them with his hammer, too as use stickers, items, and ability-ups to subdue them. Boxing stages have too been given a more than three-dimensional depth than seen in the first two installments. Some elements of the game are set in a two-dimensional platform, similar toSuper Paper Mario.

1. Mario
   based RPGs oftentimes have well written plots with fleshed out characters, merely the story in
   Sticker Star
   is virtually as generic as a normal platforming
   Mario
   game.
2. Bowser and Peach don’t even talk for virtually of the game; Bowser but gives out occasional roars and Peach doesn’t even speak at all, allow alone full sentences until the catastrophe.
3. Kersti (Mario’south partner) is very unlikable even for a character in any
   Mario
   game. She forces Mario to clean up the mess created past
   BOWSER,
   collect the pieces of the Sticker Comet,
   AND
   collect the Imperial Stickers. Plus, she’southward pretty hot tempered, fifty-fifty wrongfully accusing Mario of touching the Sticker Comet. And you thought Merlinus was harsh to Roy.
   • In fact, the game tries to make us feel sympathy for her when she sacrifices herself, which at kickoff
     SEEMS
     emotional, but then becomes pointless when she returns.
4. Original new enemies and characters are rather sparse; unlike all other
   Mario
   RPGs, the merely friendly NPCs are Toads (which while functional are forgettable), while new enemies are simply uncreative variations of older enemies.
5. As the title suggests, the main focus of the game is stickers, which while absurd on paper, are your
   
   only
   
   method of assault, pregnant you constantly accept to keep collecting stickers otherwise you run the take chances of running out of them in the middle of a boxing. If you
   do
   run out, y’all are
   
   completely
   
   unable to attack, significant that if y’all run out of stickers in the middle of an inescapable dominate battle, you are forced to helplessly watch equally the boss pummels Mario until his HP is depleted.
   • While on the subject of the title, The titular Sticker Star never even appears, it’s only mentioned.
6. At the kickoff of each battle, there’s a slot machine that volition determine how many stickers y’all tin can use per turn, which only serves to force you to pay up more than coins to get 3 slots so you can attack all of the enemies. Keep in listen that you cannot choose which enemy to attack.
7. Levels oft accept objectives that are nigh impossible to figure out without a walkthrough, often involving placing very specific stickers in certain areas but without any hint of what sticker you need. It’s made worse when if you apply the wrong Sticker, zippo happens and you lose said Sticker/Thing, causing you to go back and purchase a new one. At that place’s even a scene where you have to jump downwardly a pitfall that would impale you to detect a tablet piece
   just to go on the game.
8. You don’t get any feel when clearing battles, instead you merely get coins. Instead you have to rely on HP Hearts to increase your stats and they can be hard to find. This takes abroad any incentive to battle regular enemies, equally you’re better off saving your stickers for required battles. You lot don’t even accept to battle for coins as you lot are rewarded with lots of coins for clearing a level.
9. The second and terminal battle with Kamek is abrasive since he turns all of the stickers that you have into flip-flops, and information technology can be like shooting fish in a barrel to lose a sticker you lot wanted since the flip-bomb icon is all the aforementioned bated from their size.
10. Main bosses are significantly harder to crush unless you use a very specific Thing Sticker against them, which y’all won’t know unless you look it up, or figure information technology out through trial-and-error, which can go on for
    hours, as you have to collect each Thing Sticker multiple times just to see what works where, and what doesn’t. Gooper Boner for example forces you to use the Sponge Thing to cake his poison set on and reflect it back at him, which is outright ironic when Gooper Blooper is weak to his own poison.
    • When you do utilise the specific affair against the boss, most of them volition go pathetically piece of cake to defeat, with some existence possible to defeat in just i plough if you use the correct set of stickers against them.
11. The endgame unlockables, the galleries for enemies, music, and Stickers cannot be used for free, as you have to pay coins to apply.

1. To be fair, about of the bug can exist attributed to the developers trying to take the series in a new direction, and declining in execution.
2. The grapheme designs are good.
3. This game does the paper gimmick the best.
4. While not as good as the kickoff iii games, the soundtrack is great and tricky (such as Princess Peach’south theme, Mizzter Blizzard’south theme and Bowser Junior’s theme) and is 1 of the more underrated soundtracks in the series.
5. With the exception of non leveling up, the game does play like a plow-based RPG.
6. The “Things” are pretty creative.
7. There are post-cutscenes afterwards beating a boss in a earth, explaining their backstory and how they got the Imperial Sticker in the first identify.
8. The graphics, for a 3DS game, are really actually proficient, peculiarly this early on into the systems’ lifespan.
9. Kersti is redeemed when she sacrifices her ain life to defeat Bowser at the terminate of the game, although Mario revives her later on.