Paper Mario: Sticker Star Review

The Paper Mario series continues in its latest game, Paper Mario: Sticker Star.

Paper Mario is different from your action-adventure Mario titles. In Paper Mario, you play as a paper version of Mario through many chapters of the game.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star brings a whole new thing into the series: stickers.

STORY:
The beginning of the story reminded me a little bit of Super Paper Mario. The game begins as Princess Peach hosts the Sticker Fest. A Sticker Comet falls from the sky onto the stage. Suddenly, Bowser appears out of nowhere and attempts to grab the comet, but rendered unable to due to Toads holding him back. Eventually the Toads can’t hold him back any longer and Bowser breaks free of their grasp. As Bowser lunges to grab the Sticker Comet, the Sticker Comet explodes into 5 pieces, called Royal Stickers, for you to get later in the game. After it explodes, a sticker crown falls on Bowser’s head and turns him into a stronger, frightening version of himself. As Bowser literally blows the crowd away, he tries to kidnap Peach. Mario comes to the rescue and tries to defeat Bowser, but instead of hurting Bowser, Mario knocks himself out. When he wakes up, a flying crown-shaped sticker name Kertsi mistakes Mario for Bowser and accuses him for making the Sticker Comet explode. After Mario agrees to help fix everything and defeat Bowser, Kertsi and Mario begin their adventure. The game’s goal is to defeat Bowser and collect all of the Royal Stickers.

GAMEPLAY:
Paper Mario: Sticker Star has returned to the RPG genre that the first two Paper Mario games had, but the 3rd installment (Super Paper Mario) didn’t.


The RPG aspect returns in Paper Mario: Sticker Star.

But as I mentioned earlier, Paper Mario: Sticker Star adds stickers. You may be asking, “What do the stickers do?” Well, the stickers act as attacks like Jump or Hammer, but function as items. There are stickers for (almost) everything you can think of (even real-life, non-paper items like scissors if you’re lucky enough to find one). There are also stickers that are upgrades of the normal kind, and some that are downgrades of the normal kind. When you collect a sticker, it’s automatically stored in your Sticker Album.


The Sticker Album; as you can see it’s carrying Jump, Hammer, and Mushroom stickers.

The controls are easy to learn and are not difficult to use. Cutscenes are pretty good. Bosses aren’t the best, kind of boring as they are just an upgraded version of classic Mario enemies with high health.

GRAPHICS:
Paper Mario: Sticker Star’s graphics/art-style surprised me. I had mixed feelings about the backgrounds. Some levels, they looked amazing. Some backgrounds reminded me of Kirby Triple Deluxe’s foreground, background levels. A lot of the backgrounds were plain but fine. A majority of effects were fun to look at, such as the player peeling off a stuck Toad or using a special sticker move. Menus are fun to look at as well.

Plain background; not the most interesting thing to look at but
makes the level look traditional.

 
More interesting background, makes the level look original.

MUSIC AND SOUND:
The music is great, each track feels like a perfect match to the level and very original. It has some catchy tunes, especially at the end of battles. Sound effects could have been better.

CONCLUSION:
Paper Mario: Sticker Star combines elements from Paper Mario/Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door and Super Paper Mario. It’s a pretty challenging game but easy to learn. If you like RPGs/Paper Mario games, Paper Mario: Sticker Star is a game you should have.

Score: 87