Paper Mario: Sticker Star
It is as terrible as the prophets foretold.
Sticker Star feels like it belongs to a completely different series than its predecessors. The gameplay and writing have both been gutted: There are no friendly NPCs except Toads, Bowser doesn’t get a single line of dialogue, and you can’t level up. Yes, that’s right, they removed the RPG from their RPG. I was willing to go into this with an open mind, because the idea of redefining RPG battles to specific set pieces rather than copy-and-paste encounters fueled only by extrinsic motivation is intriguing to me; it’s the guiding principle behind Wine & Roses, also known as the best game ever. But no, encounters are still just as samey as in the previous games, you just no longer get any XP from them.
And this feels minor next to everything else, but the set design is godawful. Everything is literally made out of cardboard. We are also repeatedly informed that all the characters are literally paper, unlike in the previous games where it was clearly just an art style. I don’t know why anyone involved thought this was a good idea. We experience art for the immersion, not to be reminded of the artifice.
Apparently this was all due to executive meddling, so make of that what you will. The more I hear about Shigeru Miyamoto, the more I feel like he is the Elon Musk of Nintendo.
Onto greener pastures.
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam
So actually, I was wrong when I said Dream Team was the final Mario & Luigi game. This is the game that killed the franchise, because Sticker Star apparently destroys everything it touches.
You know the “…and Jerry” encounter from Undertale? This is that. It’s a quite solid Mario & Luigi game… and it has Sticker Star clinging to its heels like a cancerous growth. The premise is that the Paper Mario universe apparently exists as a storybook inside the Mario & Luigi universe, and when it’s accidentally knocked over, it releases all the paper denizens into the 3D world. Mario & Luigi team up with their paper counterpart, and so does Bowser and minions.
The core gameplay is Mario & Luigi style, and does have level-up mechanics — thank goodness. I’m a little disappointed that Paper Mario doesn’t get the level-up mechanics he had in the first two games, but I’ll take basic jRPG mechanics over whatever madness was going on in Sticker Star. I actually find Paper Mario’s inclusion a welcome addition to battles, since more party members means more strategic depth, and he does have genuinely different moves and mechanics that give him a sense of specialization that Mario & Luigi lack.
Unfortunately, they also copied Sticker Star‘s godawful cardboard areas. They’re mixed with regular 3D areas, so on the one hand, you’re not staring at them the whole time, but on the other hand, the contrast makes them even uglier.
The minigames are what really drag the game down. In every story chapter, you have to rescue a bunch of paper Toads so they can make a plot coupon for you. Instead of anything sensible like letting you rescue them in the course of normal gameplay, all the rescue missions are individual mini-levels that exist in some sort of pocket dimension you can only access through a standardized minigame portal. I hopefully don’t have to explain how bizarre this is; it makes these minigames seem totally divorced from reality. They’re all incredibly artificial and “game-y”, for lack of a better term, with toads that run away from you and have to be chased down even though you’re rescuing them, stealth missions where you inexplicably can’t kill the exact same enemies you’ve been fighting all game, and obtrusive barriers to isolate the pocket dimension’s reused maps.
The whole thing is incredibly phoned-in, to the point I have to question why they included it at all. More executive meddling, I presume? Toad glut is the only way to please The Miyamoto? Alas, I don’t share his view; Toads are the most boring Mario species. Give me more friendly goombas and koopas, please. There’s even a section midway through the game where you reach an island chain full of shipwrecked Toads that is also inexplicably full of koopa troopas. I immediately thought the koopas must be friendly, since they’re just wandering around calmly with the Toads in full view, but nope! They attack you while ignoring the Toads wailing about how the island is covered in Bowser’s minions trying to capture them.
The giant battles from the previous game have been replaced with a similar mechanic: You now occasionally have to fight giant paper-mecha battles. The actual mechanics are much different and play more like an action game; while this does make them more engaging (the giant battles felt a bit too much like a solved game at times), the controls are so incredibly clunky that I was never too enthusiastic about them. Each battle does at least feature an interesting set piece, so that’s something.
Fortunately, while the Paper Mario team was descending into madness, the Mario & Luigi team continued their excellent progress from Dream Team. There are a greater variety of expert challenges beyond just “execute action commands well”, the user interface has been improved (you’re now shown the number of levels until the next rank up), and enemy design continues to be fantastic. I’m very impressed with how they managed to make the paper enemies recognizably similar to their normal counterparts while still being distinct; they often have similar attack patterns, but move at different speeds, requiring different timing. They can also perform combo attacks with their normal counterparts, which, when combined with the previous fact, are very hard to dodge! Despite that, the overall difficulty is significantly toned down from Dream Team, which I don’t mind since Dream Team was a bit extreme even for me. I do wish they let us skip turns so we could farm the “dodge 5 attacks in a row” achievements more easily, but you can’t have everything.
Also, the Koopalings return, with actual lines and personality this time! The models in Bowser Jr.’s Journey must have been recycled from this game. They form a series of midbosses, where you fight a pair of them at each significant story beat, which worked great; I’m a sucker for that trope, and it was so fun to fight chatterbox villains instead of random monsters. They each have their own gimmicks and interactions with each other, and they’re just really great. I particularly love Ludwig calling out the unfair advantage of battle cards, because that was something I had been thinking about ever since the badge mechanic was introduced in Inside Story! Bowser Jr. himself is also a major character, and I found it really cute to see him getting along with his paper counterpart so well in contrast to the Bowsers and Kameks.
I found the final boss a letdown, though. Spoilers, I guess? But you don’t fight Bowser and Paper Bowser together like I expected; instead they do a fusion dance and Bowser ends up literally wearing Paper Bowser as a suit. It’s exactly as weird and janky as you’re picturing, and the animation for Super Bowser looks incredibly sloppy and phoned-in compared to the lovely sprites he had just prior. For some bizarre reason they gave him a unique pose for when he’s being targeted by a special attack (something no other enemy does, to my knowledge), but it just consists of him turning to the camera and holding completely still like a doofus. It genuinely looks unfinished. It doesn’t make sense storywise, either; the Bowsers are constantly arguing right up until the end, so the idea they’d trust each other enough to do a fusion dance is just out of character. I was actually really looking forward to how that would be reflected in the gameplay, but no such luck. I’d much rather have had a proper duo boss fight that mirrored the gameplay mechanics you’ve been using like the Bowser battle in Partners in Time. They even seemed to prime this idea by making you fight the Koopalings, Bowser Jr., and Kamek in pairs! But nope, final boss is one big baddie like always.
So, a disappointing note for the series to end on. It was a neat concept and they used it well, but it really did feel like the series was circling the drain here. Maybe things would have been different if it hadn’t been so weighed down by Sticker Star; a mashup between Mario & Luigi and the actual Paper Mario games probably would have been fantastic. But as solid as it is on its own merits, it can’t hold a candle to the previous games, alas.