Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)

[Hero]

It was number 2, but I finally found him last night. Made that floating brick bridge in Loop Loop River show up, but shit all there was no telegraphing of its existence.

The more I play, the more torn I am. They have specific goals and (using the interview as a measure) they're accomplishing them. I just don't know if it's altogether a compelling game to use as an example for the series. Granted, I've always thought Mario & Luigi were the more "real" RPG, but Paper Mario has had RPG stuff, really good writing, and interesting worlds and characters. Limiting NPCs to mainline Mario characters feels like a bad restraint to have, the writing is still amazing, and the RPG-lite is even lighter...

It's great to play but can be downright frustrating sometimes. Not in the way that a good puzzle game like Layton can be. You feel like you figure things out more by accident than observation & application. But the combat is great, the stage layouts really clever, the writing is fun, and the music is phenomenal. There's no pile of negatives that outweigh the positives...it's just the negatives can be glaring and grating when they crop up.

[Mzo]

You feel like you figure things out more by accident than observation & application.

Can you give me an example? I kind of don't feel that way about the game at all.

[Hero]

well, the bridge thing in the spoilers was the most recent thing I could think of. I like finding hidden blocks, but if one is necessary to progress (and not to an optional area, but to drive the story on) it's really frustrating when it's not at least shown a little differently.

In boss fights, apparently there are solutions to each that do the most damage. The second boss was obvious with the bat, but the first one? I don't know. Kersti just said that the fight could've ended much sooner than it did, but there wasn't an obvious sticker that would've done it...I only had the scissors and fan at the time, so one or the other I guess...

The castle in the first world also has a bit of this, where the wind pushes Mario off the bridge. The camera swivels to show the vents, but there's also a hidden door. So I read the reveal wrong (that the important thing was the door), and thought it had something to do with progression. Or that if I ran just right, I could cross the bridge. It wasn't until I was out of ideas that I paperized it...

I guess it's not as bad if I think about it, but it has been a bit more frustrating than engaging. Maybe I just to get smarter.

[Mzo]

I don't remember your spoiler moment, but I'll take a quick look at the stage in a sec and see if it fires up any memories.

The answer to the first boss is that both of those work.

I felt like the fight was taking too long and died to redo it. It didn't feel right and I didn't want to lose all the stickers I had wasted so far. The second time through Kersti gave me a hint right away... kind of weird.

For the second boss did you use the bat right away, or after all the sections were up? I waited and it knocked them all out one after the other, just wondering what happens if you jump the gun.

Paperizing is really important, that should be your go-to tool whenever you get stuck. Hell, do it all the time. A lot of flower rings have an invisible red block outline near them that can upgrade or change whatever sticker you put inside. Don't worry about all those half-sketched doors everywhere, it's be really obvious when you have access to them.

EDIT: OH, LOOP LOOP RIVER. Yes, I remember that now. It took me a bit but I did figure that one out. I'd say the worst one for me was the vacuum cleaner in the desert since it didn't really make sense to me logically, but your options are pretty limited at the time and Kersti gives you a hint anyway.

[Mzo]

A few other things that may not be immediately obvious:

There are three levels of attack bonuses for attacks. I thought this was obvious but I've seen a lot of people seemingly content with a "nice," which is bullshit. There are still "great" and "excellent" ranks with better timing. The hammers are the most difficult ones to time: they all have a spark that grows and suddenly disappears; excellent timing means hitting it right at the very end of it. Pretty risky since even the tiniest delay means a failure, but the timing isn't hard to get used to. Jump attacks are easy, just hit the button before you land. Very lenient timing. Some boot types have different max hits, but the last is always free if the previous hits were successful: For example, normal and iron jumps are 5 so they require 4 button presses, slippers are 10 so they require 9, etc.

Door stickers can be used as a guaranteed escape during battles. The game is pretty stingy about letting you get away, and it's almost mandatory for one puzzle in particular.

Thing stickers are basically the summons of this game. You can button mash during the animation to increase their potency!

For the roulette game to gain extra attacks, I always link the first two and wait for the end of the looping pattern, which is something like coin, mushroom, coin, mushroom, coin, mushroom. That increases your odds of getting three in a row pretty high resulting in either coins or free healing. I sometimes go for the POW block but the previous example is so much easier.

The boombox sticker gives you an attack bonus for three rounds.

The Kamek + Bowser gauntlet is kind of a huge pain in the ass! There are like five stages to the fight and it's set up to drain your stickers if you're inefficient. Half the fun is figuring out a battle strategy, but I can give some general tips if anyone is frustrated.

For Kamek, keep in mind what stickers you're willing to sacrifice and put them on screen before opening the door. You can end the fight immediately by winning both extra attacks and hitting the max number of times with all three flipflop attacks. The timing isn't hard.

First off, you can't jump on Bowser's head with the regular jump attack because of his pointy crown, making it almost worthless. If you're like me and that was the majority of your arsenal coming in you're fucked. The stages change based on Bowser's health, so anything you do to minions is wasted effort except the Whomp in stage 2, who you should take down asap. Consecutive multi-hit attacks knock him down, it's easy from there. Anyway:

Stage 1 - AoE attacks to bring down Bowser's health. Two of the strong scissor-type attacks and you're done.
Stage 2 - Take the Whomp down as mentioned above, then do whatever.
Stage 3 - A cold summon like Shaved Ice will freeze the podoboos.
Stage 4 - I flipped out when I did this, tested it again to make sure: A single racoon tail attack will send the chain chomp back at Bowser and knock him off in one hit.
Stage 5 - If you can't finish him off after all that, kill yourself.

Overall, this game was fucking GREAT. I absolutely LOVE how everyone is all "wah wah, Nintendo holds my hand so much" but the second, I mean the SECOND anything requires a modicum of thought or the possibility that you might be stuck for longer than a minute and these reviewers are up to their fat tits in salty tears. Fuck them. Finished the game today and never looked a damn thing up. Game was excellent.

[Shin Johnpv]

The 3D effect on this game works so damn well.

[Finch]

yeah, but it hurts my eyes. The little bit i've played is fun, and i could see this being totally a great game without the little helper characters everywhere. The dialogue is amazing and the music is... AMAZING.

[Hero]

Now that I'm past World 3 it's fun again. World 4 is great. Especially the haunted mansion. Music has never ever suffered. Even if I were to grow tired of this game, I will never tire of the soundtrack!

EDIT: I also gotta give it up for the bosses - World 3's has a lot of logic about it making which "summon" to use really obvious. I'm guessing in World 4, some Thing I find and make into a sticker will be used against a boss. It's a pretty easy thing to figure if you don't overthink it.

Like getting the Infinijump right before fighting the Boo Stack. The manual you find by the sticker specifically says its useful against stacks of enemies - something I never encountered until the Boos.

[Finch]

This game is great, probably my favorite Paper Mario since the first one, and I'd probably prefer this one if I was playing both. I like that the puzzles aren't immediately obvious, it feels better when you find the solution. I don't even miss the assistants. A+ mzo was right

[Geo]

This game is stellar and delightful. Love everything about it, love playing it. Combat is a blast.

I've recently made it to Outlook Point in World 3, happy to see the new merchant selling the long-awaited blue door sticker. Tempted to buy enough of those stickers to revisit all previous worlds to this point, before continuing with the quest to reunite Wiggler with his missing body segments.