Solving Puzzles
In addition to stomping on Goombas and collecting the Royal Stickers to progress through the game, you will have to solve puzzles. The way puzzle solving is laid out in the game is through what stickers you need to use in order to advance. Since at some point in the game Goombas or any other enemies will try to rip out part of the pages in the environment that prevents you from accessing a specific area. Your job is to find the ripped pieces and stick it for the path to show up. Since there are a lot of these kind of puzzles to do, you can expect to revisit levels a lot of time, thus making sure you fit the right pieces.
NOT
Stripped Out RPG Elements
While Sticker Star still manages to be a RPG, it strips out a lot of its core-elements to make it a full-fledged role-playing game. This time in Sticker Star, there will be no one to join Mario as he will be the one fighting through the Goombas and Bowser till the very end. A leveling system and gaining experience aren’t visible in the game and the only way to increase Mario’s HP is going through the game, which makes it a linear progression for Mario. For anyone who wishes Sticker Star to be more of an RPG game will be slightly disappointed.
Too Much Backtracking
Solving puzzles is sure fun in Sticker Star, but it gets frustrating when you keep on backtracking for the sole purpose of solving the puzzles and making sure the sticker fits. Throughout the game, this will be a common issue that players will find and it can get annoying. The puzzle difficulty can randomly spike up as the more stickers you have, the more trouble and a lot of thinking you will do figuring out where in the levels will it fit right. Also, while the level design looks phenomenal, it has some flaws where you can easily miss paths that leads to the next area and it will lead to frustration to anyone who can’t figure it out. With many levels that you will go through, I must recommend to search every part of the screen to make sure you don’t miss anything.
Story Isn’t Engaging
As mentioned earlier, one of the things that RPG fans shouldn’t expect in Sticker Star is a good story. Those hoping to have a ‘good’ storyline will be disappointed as the story in Sticker Star has the same similar pace in other Mario games and that is to chase down Bowser and restore the balance. Although the story is not really engaging to any hardcore RPG fan, what will engage you are the funny scripts that you will encounter along the way.
VERDICT
Paper Mario: Sticker Star feels like it’s a new game as it introduces some new ideas that we might be able to see in future Paper Mario games, such as the simplified battle system and the use of stickers. While it may be disappointing to see that the story is once again subpar and the amount of backtracking players will have to do, it makes the game not the perfect Paper Mario game you will play. However, fans of Paper Mario longing to play this game will still not be disappointed as it’s still good, fun and charming from beginning to end.
[Editor’s Note: Paper Mario Sticker Star was reviewed on the Nintendo 3DS. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]
