As someone who's been a fan of the Pokemon games since Generation One, I've never really bothered going much indepth in terms of Tournament Level Play. All that fancy stuff about EVs, IVs, movesets, tiering, etc. was something I never really bothered with.
Well, it's not a 100% true, to be honest. Me being interested in competitive play started somewhere around 2010 or 2011 when I first met other people on some convention, back when Heart Gold and Soul Silver where still a thing. But as I didn't know anything about the metagame and how teambuilding works, it is needless to say that my team didn't stand the ghost of a chance.
Making a second attempt when Black 2 and White 2, I at least tried to use actuall movesets, but I still didn't understand the concept of hidden values (EVs, IVs) or teambuilding in general and again, my team was obliterated, but at least I was a little bit less stupid then before.
Then X and Y came around and for the first time, I felt like doing more then just playing through the games and be done with it. I started watching tons of videos, other people battling each other, throwing around tons of words I didn't even know what they meant.
While looking for ressources I also found the probably biggest (or at least best known) Pokemon competitive scene that is the Smogon community. People might complain about them for various (and often not justified) reasons, but in the end, they are the only ones who actually care to create a Metagame that's somewhat balanced.
Anyway, while I started getting better in understanding what makes a metagame a metagame, what I'm still lacking is actual experience. I've had multiple attempts in the past trying to build a team, but I never felt comfortable with the results I got. It basically got to a point where I had to realize that I spend way more time building a team than I actually used it. In general the amount of battles I had must be around ten or so, which is actually pathetic.
What is the PokéCommunity League?
For quite a while now I've been haing around the PokéCommunity (or PC for short), a forum dedicated to everything Pokemon related, which also happens to have a battling section, which I frequently like to observe.
At the moment they started an event called PokéCommunity League (or PCL for short). It's kind of a competing event, with one of the main focus being set on getting new people into the competitive battling scene. Participants are divided into different clans, all of them having a clan head. Clan members can help each other, while also sharing the goal to become the best clan of them all (called "chief clan").
The chief clan itself is meant to be the representative battler whose duty is to take on outsiders, while also fending off other clan's attempts to take over.
It was more or less a spontaneous decision of mine to take part in this, but I sure am interested in how it turns out to be.
Ressources:
Smogon
The PokeCommunity
The Mischievous Gentleman Overlord
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Super Mario. A series known for its blue and red clothed plumber with a big nose and a mustache and platforming gameplay. There's probably only a small amount of video game playing people, who never heart of him and even less who never played a game featuring this little fella.
Being the most successfull franchise in the entire video gaming world and spanning almost every genre available, it was only a matter of time until Nintendo would introduce a Mario based RPG. The first attempt of such a game is well known as Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, produced by Squaresoft. But as Square decided to change systems from Nintendo to Sony, taking away every possibility of a sequel to the series (and a possible reintroduction of Geno), Intelligent Systems, a developer also known for the Fire Emblem and Wars series, took their place instead.
And so, the Paper Mario series was born.
What makes the series special is how it takes your generic 2D Mario Platformer, takes it into a 3D world and expands it with a lot of RPG elements, including NPCs, an RPG like battle system, companions that join Mario on the way and a story that fits well while also retaining most of the important platforming elements.
A lot of people call Paper Mario an RPG, when in fact it's a hybrid of an RPG and a platformer, both elements being relatively balanced.
After Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the formula changed, when Super Paper Mario made its appearance. Suddenly the old battle system was gone in favor for the platforming battles, the Super Mario series is know for. Also instead of having your usual companions, you now could choose between four character to control and passive followers called Pixels who all grant your character a certain ability.
These changes shifted the series from being an RPG/Platformer hybrid more in favor for a Platformer, which caused a hugh ruckus in the community. At least the game still featured a really great story.
At the end of 2012 a new Paper Mario game was released, this time it wasn't on a home console, but rather on the 3DS. It is called Paper Mario: Sticker Star
I have to admit, up to this point, I have never played any of the Paper Mario games; I've watched a couple LPs of them, but I never experienced them myself. So when this game was released, I took the opportunity and bought it instantly, not knowing what I would get. After playing it for a couple of hours and after somehow beating the boss of the first world, I just gave up on it and didn't touch it until just recently.
It was more of a spontaneous decision, combined with me asky myself, why I abandoned it in the first place. Playing through the rest of the game, I was convinced that it wasn't a bad game, it just had a bunch of problems that can easily lead the player to hate it.
What is Paper Mario: Sticker Star?
The town of Decalburg becomes the center of attention as the Sticker Comet makes its appearance. To celebrate this event, the Sticker Fest is held every year, as the comet is supposed to grant every wish. Obviously, Bowser is really interested in this and crashes the festival by touching the Sticker Comet, which results in it exploding and releasing the Royal Stickers inside who get scattered around the land, one of them getting stuck at Bowser himself.
The now corrupted Bowser takes Princess Peach hostage and escapes to his Sky Fortress, leaving Mario behind, who, once again, has to save the day. Accompanied by a Sticker Sprite called Kersti, Mario takes on the hugh quest that is to find the Royal Stickers and ultimately rescue Peach out of her missery.
And that's it for the story. We are back to the old formula, no plot twists, no character development, or any kind of world building. But at least this game has some minor subplots for every world.
Talking about character development: when playing the game, you will soon realize, that there aren't many character with actual names. In fact, there are no original characters. Only Mario, Bowser, Peach, Bowser Jr., and Kamek have an actual name. Well, Kersti has, too, but in the end, she's just your Mario counterpart of Navi with about the same amount of character development. When looking around the different areas of the world, every Toad is just that: a Toad; every other NPC is just called by what he is, as well.
The funny thing about that, though: it actually has a reason!
Believe it, or not, Shigeru Miyamoto himself told the developers to not include original characters and only rely on the already known and loved characters from the original Super Mario Series.*
What about the gameplay?
As already stated, the Paper Mario series likes to combine elements from both RPGs and Platformer games. Right when you start the game and you take control of Mario for the first time, you get the same composition that you already saw in the first two Paper Mario games. You have access to the third dimension all the time, unlike Super Paper Mario, where you needed to use a certain skill that would turn the world from 2D into 3D.
Mario can jump and use his hammer to, well, hammer things. You can wander around Decalburg, which functions as the central hub of the game and some things come to note:
1. there's no Inn
Instead there's two boxes Mario can hit by jumping. The left one recovers Mario's health, while the right one saves your game.
2. there's a shop right at the entrance
This shop sells Stickers, which are Mario's main way of attacking in this game. After getting a little bit further into the game, you also get access to the Sticker Museum, which is basically your generic collectables place which lets you place Stickers on certain spots. Can't have a game without some random place that only solves one purpose: making 100% completing the game unneccessarily tedious.
3. the western side of the town features a Toad who lets you turn Things into Thing Stickers
Going a little bit more to the left, there's also a shady Toad who sells Things at a high price.
4. to the east there's some houses and a path leading north where the festival took place. For the most part, there's not much to do here. Well, the festival place also has eight banners that serve as achievement trackers. Just when you thought, getting all the Stickers into the museum is all you need for game completion.
A new feature in the Paper Mario series is the World Map. Previously, you would just go directly from the Hub world to were your next goal is located. Sticker Star on the other hand makes use of the same Overworld style, the Super Mario series is known for. I think, by now people should already have figured out, what the main intention of the game is supposed to be: Super Mario, with Paper Mario elements.
Anyway, entering the overworld, you'll realize, that it is divided into multiple worlds and you are allowed to pick whichever world you like to play first. Well, not really, at least not at the beginning. Sadly, in order to get to some of the worlds, you need to unlock them first, by finding certain items in already unlocked stages. But, fortunately, it is not mandatory to beat the boss in one world in order to get to the next one, so if you ever get stuck, you can just skip the boss, go to the next world and return later. When I played the game, I skipped the second boss and only got back to it, after beating the third one.
In order to get further on the overworld, you need to beat a level first, before it expands to the next level. On the first glance those levels are pretty much designed like your usual Paper Mario stages. It's your usual 3D stage with enemies wandering or flying around, some blocks floating in the air and at the end a goal.
Just running through every stage isn't going to work, though. There are a lot of instances in the levels, where you need to solve environmental puzzles in order to progress and that's where Stickers and one of the main gameplay features come to play: Paperize
Now, in order to understand how paperizing works, you need to know, how the Stickers work in this game. Mario has a Sticker Album, that has different sections all having their own importance:
The front shows how far you progressed into the game, as every Royal Sticker you obtain, resides here.
On the second page it shows Marios stats, including his HP, the time played, etc.
The third page covers all of your Battle Stickers, depending on your progress it expands, so you can take more of those Stickers with you. They all have a different size, depending on how powerful they are considered. A Thing Sticker most of the times takes a considerably larger amount of space, then a normal Battle Sticker does. But rest assured, you don't need that much space anyway, as most of the time the environment in the levels hands new Stickers basically everywhere, allowing you to easily replace already used ones. One exception to that, though, are Boss battles, because if you are not prepared for them and you don't know what to do, you will burn a lot of Stickers quite easily.
There's also a sorting function, by pressing Start, the game sorts your Battle Stickers, possibly freeing up more space. Or you could just sort them manually, by using the Touch Pen.
Page number four covers what I like to call "environmental Stickers". There will be a lot of times where you cannot progress, because something in the level is either missing, or seems to be off. This is also the point, where paperization comes into play.
As you get to a certain point in the game, Kersti will tell you, that she is able to help Mario repair those parts of the levels. She then drags him out of the scene, which at this point turns into a 2D picture, where you can either place a Sticker, or rip a wrongly placed out of it, making it possible for you to put it in the right position, by paperizing it again. In some places, you can even place Battle Stickers which then become Boxes, that, when hit, have a chance to pop a upgraded version of the Sticker you just provided.
Lastly the fifth page holds all the Things you can find during your adventure. Things are 3D objects, that seemingly got stuck in the 2D world and by visiting a certain Toad in Decalburg, you can turn them into Thing Stickers, which you need in order to solve some puzzles and beat the bosses.
Sadly, the paperizing mechanic has its downsides. There are a couple of puzzles that require a certain Thing, or sometimes Battle Sticker in order to be solved. There's no indication on which Sticker is neccessary in order to progress. While a Battle Sticker can simply be stuck on a wall nearby the puzzle, no indication also means, that you could accidentally use this Sticker in Battle, meaning that you have to exit the stage and come back again, making it unneccessarily tedious in the process.
Puzzles that require certain Thing Stickers are on a completely new level, though. Outside of Boss battles, there's basically no need to carry these around at all and all of a sudden one small puzzle pops up, requiring you to backtrack in order to get said Thing Sticker. There are even instances where you are required to use a certain Sticker, that you could simply have missed. On top of going back to retrieve said Thing, you now have to first find out, where it is located, which means that you either need to go through a lot of levels, which is really annoying, because there's no indication that tells you, that you've found everything in a certain level, which basically means that after you found some Things in a level, there can still be more, or you need to resort to a walkthrough. And second you need to get through said level, because you can only buy Things from the shady Toad in Decalburg, that you've already found.
All of that just because you missed something, that could easily be considered optional content, which it ultimately is not. This is one of the reasons, why I think the whole Thing gimmick isn't particularly well thought out and the game would have been better without it.
Another interesting part is the battle system. Whenever Mario touches an enemy, the screen zooms out and transitions into the battle. Here he faces at least one enemy. In order to beat those enemies, Mario has to use Stickers, that he can buy at the shop or find in all kinds of places across all levels.
Every enemy has its own weakness, most of them can easily be guessed, even if you never played another Mario game. Like trying to hit an enemy that is flying in the air, using a Hammer Sticker is pretty much not going to work. Instead a Jump Sticker does the trick.
Let's start with the battle layout: You have Mario standing on the left side with his HP bar on top of him, facing his enemies, who either dwell on the ground, or are airborn. At the start of the battle, additional to the enemy you encountered on the field, more enemies can join, which is shown by them juming on stage and doing an attacking animation (but they are not attacking, so don't worry about it). There's also no scanning ability, instead there's one HP bar that has all their lifepoints combined.
When entering the battley by hitting the enemy, you get one free attack, which the enemy can't respond to. After the battle started, you choose one Sticker in your Battle Sticker collection. Optionally you can spend three Coins in order to play a slots minigame that, depending on how many items match, adds additional sticker spots, two item matching adding one and all three matching, adding two for the rest of the turn. That way instead of one sticker, you can add one or two other ones, which basically allows for a setup if using certain Thing Stickers. E.g. you can put the Beatbox Sticker, which doubles the damage you do, with a Battle Sticker, which then will benefit from that boost.
After choosing the Battle Sticker, Mario attacks first. If you take out every enemy at the end of the first turn, without taking damage, you receive a "Perfect" which gives you a considerable amount of Coins.
Unfortunately, if you don't use the right item to hit multiple enemies, you are not able to hit anyone in the back. Instead you need to hit the guy on the front, until he dies, allowing you to hit the guy right behind him, while they are allowed to to attack Mario. Fortunately by pressing A at the right time, you can block, allowing you to reduce the damage taken.
Some stickers also can hit one enemy multiple times, even if they are already defeated, until the combo count runs out, which nets you one Coin per additional attack. In order to do so, you have to keep the timing right, or else the combo breaks and Marios turn is over.
The only stickers that have combos are jump stickers and their combo ends as soon as you get an "Excellent", Hammer attacks and Mushroom heals improve when the A-Button is hit at the right moment. Thing Stickers can be improved, too, but most of the time you are just better off, mashing the A-Button, as there's no penalty for doing so.
Normal enemies are relatively easy beat, but where the difficulty really spikes is the Boss fights. Or rather, it can be really difficult, if you don't know what to do (which, btw., is likely to happen).
The Bosses are unique and need a certain strategy in order to be beat and all of them involve certain Thing Stickers. But nobody tells you, how to beat them, unless you get beaten up the first time. On your second attempt, Kersti will appear after a couple of turns, giving you a hint on what you have to do. So, basically you get beaten once, get the tip, get beaten a second time and then you go, look for the Things you need in order to beat that boss, which like said earlier, can involve a lot more guesswork and backtracking, especially if you haven't already found the Thing you need.
After that you return, disarm the boss with said Thing Stickers, followed by spamming other Thing Stickers until his HP drop to zero. Horray for easy Boss fights!
So you beat the enemies and the battle is over, but something is missing. While the battle system looks RPGish, there's no EXP to gain; getting no EXP means, that there's no level to gain, or is it? Sticker Star doesn't utilize a traditional leveling system. Instead you can find HP-Up items across the world, which enhance Marios HP by five points. Also while Mario doesn't have an Attack stat per se, he still deals slightly more damage as you manage to get more Royal Stickers. At some point, he gets strong enough to beat most of the easy enemies, without entering a battle. Simply jumping on them, or hitting them with your hammer will do.
As there's no real reason to grind for experience, what's there to gain? Well, Coins.
To be honest, there's not much of a reason to farm for Coins, actually. I got through the game with only a minimal amount of Coin farming, as most of it happened right before the final battle. Just beating the levels while also beating a lot of enemies in the process nets you a ton of coins when reaching the end of the stage and on top of that, if you get a "Perfect" in battles, the rewarded coins will also add up, so you're unlikely to lose too many coins, especially with Battle Sticker floating around everywhere. Frankly, I'd say that system works pretty well.
As soon as you get to the end of the stage, the next stage opens up, allowing you to progress further. Well, that's not always the case. Additional to all the Things hidden in the levels, with some of them being required without the player neccessarily knowing that, there are also a couple of stages that have a secret exit and some of them require you to actually find them to get to the next stage, much like the Ghost Houses in Super Mario World.
Sticker Star requires a considerable amount of backtracking, which can be pretty annoying, especially when going for 100% completion. It would have been definitely better, if they included a marker on the map, that showed up, when you manage to complete a stage.
But to be fair, the levels are short enough and the puzzles don't get reset, so you can blast through most of them in a considerable amount of time.
Talking about short: the game isn't that long, as most of the time you spend by backtracking, and it's made for the 3DS and with the intention in mind, to give players the possibility to pick up the game, whenever they want, play a little bit and get some progress. Cutting the story and original characters also makes it clear as well: it's a game made with casual players in mind.
Not that I would think, casual players don't want a good story, but you better tell that those game developing companies.
Does the atmosphere work?
Sticker Star has a really cheery OST and a lot of those tracks are remixes of old Mario music. There are also a lot of different variants in the game, depending on where you are. E.g. the overworld theme has multiple tracks depending on which world you're currently in. In the dessert, it sounds like dessert music and in the snow world, it has this ringing tone, you'd normally expect from an ice world.
The graphics are as you'd expect from a Paper Mario game. You have your 2D sprites, your paper/cardboard environment which also have those fancy unfolding sequences as you solve some puzzles that let you access new areas.
Every world has its own theme, e.g. the dessert has that sandy look, the ice area has icy paths, glaciers and every asset fits together quite well.
Lastly, the 3D options the 3DS is known for: it's not important, you fortunately don't need it. Normally you'd expect Nintendo to enforce usage of the 3D option,but there's no such thing.
The whole game can be played without usage of the 3D feature. Now obviously, it depends highly on whether you're a fan of said gimmick or not and honestly, I'm not a fan of it, which is why I was happy when I realized that I could just turn it of and still enjoy the game to its fullest.
So, what are my thoughts about this game?
I think it's an alright game, that had a lot of potential, but a good amount of that was wasted. I still enjoyed it quite a bit, or else I would have definitely not played the whole game. Although I used a walkthrough, to get through all the nonsense that was backtracking and some bosses.
As a Paper Mario game, it's not reall good, though, and I can definitely see, why the game's not considered to be on par with the other titles in the series.
Would I recomment people to buy this game?
I think, people who didn't enjoy Super Paper Mario are probably not going to like Sticker Star. If you've never played a Paper Mario game, Sticker Star is not what you'd want to start with, but if you still like to buy it, anyway, then you may go ahead. It definitely involves a lot of fun.
*Additional sources:
Interview with the developers
Being the most successfull franchise in the entire video gaming world and spanning almost every genre available, it was only a matter of time until Nintendo would introduce a Mario based RPG. The first attempt of such a game is well known as Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, produced by Squaresoft. But as Square decided to change systems from Nintendo to Sony, taking away every possibility of a sequel to the series (and a possible reintroduction of Geno), Intelligent Systems, a developer also known for the Fire Emblem and Wars series, took their place instead.
And so, the Paper Mario series was born.
What makes the series special is how it takes your generic 2D Mario Platformer, takes it into a 3D world and expands it with a lot of RPG elements, including NPCs, an RPG like battle system, companions that join Mario on the way and a story that fits well while also retaining most of the important platforming elements.
A lot of people call Paper Mario an RPG, when in fact it's a hybrid of an RPG and a platformer, both elements being relatively balanced.
After Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the formula changed, when Super Paper Mario made its appearance. Suddenly the old battle system was gone in favor for the platforming battles, the Super Mario series is know for. Also instead of having your usual companions, you now could choose between four character to control and passive followers called Pixels who all grant your character a certain ability.
These changes shifted the series from being an RPG/Platformer hybrid more in favor for a Platformer, which caused a hugh ruckus in the community. At least the game still featured a really great story.
At the end of 2012 a new Paper Mario game was released, this time it wasn't on a home console, but rather on the 3DS. It is called Paper Mario: Sticker Star
I have to admit, up to this point, I have never played any of the Paper Mario games; I've watched a couple LPs of them, but I never experienced them myself. So when this game was released, I took the opportunity and bought it instantly, not knowing what I would get. After playing it for a couple of hours and after somehow beating the boss of the first world, I just gave up on it and didn't touch it until just recently.
It was more of a spontaneous decision, combined with me asky myself, why I abandoned it in the first place. Playing through the rest of the game, I was convinced that it wasn't a bad game, it just had a bunch of problems that can easily lead the player to hate it.
What is Paper Mario: Sticker Star?
The town of Decalburg becomes the center of attention as the Sticker Comet makes its appearance. To celebrate this event, the Sticker Fest is held every year, as the comet is supposed to grant every wish. Obviously, Bowser is really interested in this and crashes the festival by touching the Sticker Comet, which results in it exploding and releasing the Royal Stickers inside who get scattered around the land, one of them getting stuck at Bowser himself.
The now corrupted Bowser takes Princess Peach hostage and escapes to his Sky Fortress, leaving Mario behind, who, once again, has to save the day. Accompanied by a Sticker Sprite called Kersti, Mario takes on the hugh quest that is to find the Royal Stickers and ultimately rescue Peach out of her missery.
And that's it for the story. We are back to the old formula, no plot twists, no character development, or any kind of world building. But at least this game has some minor subplots for every world.
Talking about character development: when playing the game, you will soon realize, that there aren't many character with actual names. In fact, there are no original characters. Only Mario, Bowser, Peach, Bowser Jr., and Kamek have an actual name. Well, Kersti has, too, but in the end, she's just your Mario counterpart of Navi with about the same amount of character development. When looking around the different areas of the world, every Toad is just that: a Toad; every other NPC is just called by what he is, as well.
The funny thing about that, though: it actually has a reason!
Believe it, or not, Shigeru Miyamoto himself told the developers to not include original characters and only rely on the already known and loved characters from the original Super Mario Series.*
What about the gameplay?
As already stated, the Paper Mario series likes to combine elements from both RPGs and Platformer games. Right when you start the game and you take control of Mario for the first time, you get the same composition that you already saw in the first two Paper Mario games. You have access to the third dimension all the time, unlike Super Paper Mario, where you needed to use a certain skill that would turn the world from 2D into 3D.
Mario can jump and use his hammer to, well, hammer things. You can wander around Decalburg, which functions as the central hub of the game and some things come to note:
1. there's no Inn
Instead there's two boxes Mario can hit by jumping. The left one recovers Mario's health, while the right one saves your game.
2. there's a shop right at the entrance
This shop sells Stickers, which are Mario's main way of attacking in this game. After getting a little bit further into the game, you also get access to the Sticker Museum, which is basically your generic collectables place which lets you place Stickers on certain spots. Can't have a game without some random place that only solves one purpose: making 100% completing the game unneccessarily tedious.
3. the western side of the town features a Toad who lets you turn Things into Thing Stickers
Going a little bit more to the left, there's also a shady Toad who sells Things at a high price.
4. to the east there's some houses and a path leading north where the festival took place. For the most part, there's not much to do here. Well, the festival place also has eight banners that serve as achievement trackers. Just when you thought, getting all the Stickers into the museum is all you need for game completion.
A new feature in the Paper Mario series is the World Map. Previously, you would just go directly from the Hub world to were your next goal is located. Sticker Star on the other hand makes use of the same Overworld style, the Super Mario series is known for. I think, by now people should already have figured out, what the main intention of the game is supposed to be: Super Mario, with Paper Mario elements.
Anyway, entering the overworld, you'll realize, that it is divided into multiple worlds and you are allowed to pick whichever world you like to play first. Well, not really, at least not at the beginning. Sadly, in order to get to some of the worlds, you need to unlock them first, by finding certain items in already unlocked stages. But, fortunately, it is not mandatory to beat the boss in one world in order to get to the next one, so if you ever get stuck, you can just skip the boss, go to the next world and return later. When I played the game, I skipped the second boss and only got back to it, after beating the third one.
In order to get further on the overworld, you need to beat a level first, before it expands to the next level. On the first glance those levels are pretty much designed like your usual Paper Mario stages. It's your usual 3D stage with enemies wandering or flying around, some blocks floating in the air and at the end a goal.
Just running through every stage isn't going to work, though. There are a lot of instances in the levels, where you need to solve environmental puzzles in order to progress and that's where Stickers and one of the main gameplay features come to play: Paperize
Now, in order to understand how paperizing works, you need to know, how the Stickers work in this game. Mario has a Sticker Album, that has different sections all having their own importance:
The front shows how far you progressed into the game, as every Royal Sticker you obtain, resides here.
On the second page it shows Marios stats, including his HP, the time played, etc.
The third page covers all of your Battle Stickers, depending on your progress it expands, so you can take more of those Stickers with you. They all have a different size, depending on how powerful they are considered. A Thing Sticker most of the times takes a considerably larger amount of space, then a normal Battle Sticker does. But rest assured, you don't need that much space anyway, as most of the time the environment in the levels hands new Stickers basically everywhere, allowing you to easily replace already used ones. One exception to that, though, are Boss battles, because if you are not prepared for them and you don't know what to do, you will burn a lot of Stickers quite easily.
There's also a sorting function, by pressing Start, the game sorts your Battle Stickers, possibly freeing up more space. Or you could just sort them manually, by using the Touch Pen.
Page number four covers what I like to call "environmental Stickers". There will be a lot of times where you cannot progress, because something in the level is either missing, or seems to be off. This is also the point, where paperization comes into play.
As you get to a certain point in the game, Kersti will tell you, that she is able to help Mario repair those parts of the levels. She then drags him out of the scene, which at this point turns into a 2D picture, where you can either place a Sticker, or rip a wrongly placed out of it, making it possible for you to put it in the right position, by paperizing it again. In some places, you can even place Battle Stickers which then become Boxes, that, when hit, have a chance to pop a upgraded version of the Sticker you just provided.
Lastly the fifth page holds all the Things you can find during your adventure. Things are 3D objects, that seemingly got stuck in the 2D world and by visiting a certain Toad in Decalburg, you can turn them into Thing Stickers, which you need in order to solve some puzzles and beat the bosses.
Sadly, the paperizing mechanic has its downsides. There are a couple of puzzles that require a certain Thing, or sometimes Battle Sticker in order to be solved. There's no indication on which Sticker is neccessary in order to progress. While a Battle Sticker can simply be stuck on a wall nearby the puzzle, no indication also means, that you could accidentally use this Sticker in Battle, meaning that you have to exit the stage and come back again, making it unneccessarily tedious in the process.
Puzzles that require certain Thing Stickers are on a completely new level, though. Outside of Boss battles, there's basically no need to carry these around at all and all of a sudden one small puzzle pops up, requiring you to backtrack in order to get said Thing Sticker. There are even instances where you are required to use a certain Sticker, that you could simply have missed. On top of going back to retrieve said Thing, you now have to first find out, where it is located, which means that you either need to go through a lot of levels, which is really annoying, because there's no indication that tells you, that you've found everything in a certain level, which basically means that after you found some Things in a level, there can still be more, or you need to resort to a walkthrough. And second you need to get through said level, because you can only buy Things from the shady Toad in Decalburg, that you've already found.
All of that just because you missed something, that could easily be considered optional content, which it ultimately is not. This is one of the reasons, why I think the whole Thing gimmick isn't particularly well thought out and the game would have been better without it.
Another interesting part is the battle system. Whenever Mario touches an enemy, the screen zooms out and transitions into the battle. Here he faces at least one enemy. In order to beat those enemies, Mario has to use Stickers, that he can buy at the shop or find in all kinds of places across all levels.
Every enemy has its own weakness, most of them can easily be guessed, even if you never played another Mario game. Like trying to hit an enemy that is flying in the air, using a Hammer Sticker is pretty much not going to work. Instead a Jump Sticker does the trick.
Let's start with the battle layout: You have Mario standing on the left side with his HP bar on top of him, facing his enemies, who either dwell on the ground, or are airborn. At the start of the battle, additional to the enemy you encountered on the field, more enemies can join, which is shown by them juming on stage and doing an attacking animation (but they are not attacking, so don't worry about it). There's also no scanning ability, instead there's one HP bar that has all their lifepoints combined.
When entering the battley by hitting the enemy, you get one free attack, which the enemy can't respond to. After the battle started, you choose one Sticker in your Battle Sticker collection. Optionally you can spend three Coins in order to play a slots minigame that, depending on how many items match, adds additional sticker spots, two item matching adding one and all three matching, adding two for the rest of the turn. That way instead of one sticker, you can add one or two other ones, which basically allows for a setup if using certain Thing Stickers. E.g. you can put the Beatbox Sticker, which doubles the damage you do, with a Battle Sticker, which then will benefit from that boost.
After choosing the Battle Sticker, Mario attacks first. If you take out every enemy at the end of the first turn, without taking damage, you receive a "Perfect" which gives you a considerable amount of Coins.
Unfortunately, if you don't use the right item to hit multiple enemies, you are not able to hit anyone in the back. Instead you need to hit the guy on the front, until he dies, allowing you to hit the guy right behind him, while they are allowed to to attack Mario. Fortunately by pressing A at the right time, you can block, allowing you to reduce the damage taken.
Some stickers also can hit one enemy multiple times, even if they are already defeated, until the combo count runs out, which nets you one Coin per additional attack. In order to do so, you have to keep the timing right, or else the combo breaks and Marios turn is over.
The only stickers that have combos are jump stickers and their combo ends as soon as you get an "Excellent", Hammer attacks and Mushroom heals improve when the A-Button is hit at the right moment. Thing Stickers can be improved, too, but most of the time you are just better off, mashing the A-Button, as there's no penalty for doing so.
Normal enemies are relatively easy beat, but where the difficulty really spikes is the Boss fights. Or rather, it can be really difficult, if you don't know what to do (which, btw., is likely to happen).
The Bosses are unique and need a certain strategy in order to be beat and all of them involve certain Thing Stickers. But nobody tells you, how to beat them, unless you get beaten up the first time. On your second attempt, Kersti will appear after a couple of turns, giving you a hint on what you have to do. So, basically you get beaten once, get the tip, get beaten a second time and then you go, look for the Things you need in order to beat that boss, which like said earlier, can involve a lot more guesswork and backtracking, especially if you haven't already found the Thing you need.
After that you return, disarm the boss with said Thing Stickers, followed by spamming other Thing Stickers until his HP drop to zero. Horray for easy Boss fights!
So you beat the enemies and the battle is over, but something is missing. While the battle system looks RPGish, there's no EXP to gain; getting no EXP means, that there's no level to gain, or is it? Sticker Star doesn't utilize a traditional leveling system. Instead you can find HP-Up items across the world, which enhance Marios HP by five points. Also while Mario doesn't have an Attack stat per se, he still deals slightly more damage as you manage to get more Royal Stickers. At some point, he gets strong enough to beat most of the easy enemies, without entering a battle. Simply jumping on them, or hitting them with your hammer will do.
As there's no real reason to grind for experience, what's there to gain? Well, Coins.
To be honest, there's not much of a reason to farm for Coins, actually. I got through the game with only a minimal amount of Coin farming, as most of it happened right before the final battle. Just beating the levels while also beating a lot of enemies in the process nets you a ton of coins when reaching the end of the stage and on top of that, if you get a "Perfect" in battles, the rewarded coins will also add up, so you're unlikely to lose too many coins, especially with Battle Sticker floating around everywhere. Frankly, I'd say that system works pretty well.
As soon as you get to the end of the stage, the next stage opens up, allowing you to progress further. Well, that's not always the case. Additional to all the Things hidden in the levels, with some of them being required without the player neccessarily knowing that, there are also a couple of stages that have a secret exit and some of them require you to actually find them to get to the next stage, much like the Ghost Houses in Super Mario World.
Sticker Star requires a considerable amount of backtracking, which can be pretty annoying, especially when going for 100% completion. It would have been definitely better, if they included a marker on the map, that showed up, when you manage to complete a stage.
But to be fair, the levels are short enough and the puzzles don't get reset, so you can blast through most of them in a considerable amount of time.
Talking about short: the game isn't that long, as most of the time you spend by backtracking, and it's made for the 3DS and with the intention in mind, to give players the possibility to pick up the game, whenever they want, play a little bit and get some progress. Cutting the story and original characters also makes it clear as well: it's a game made with casual players in mind.
Not that I would think, casual players don't want a good story, but you better tell that those game developing companies.
Does the atmosphere work?
Sticker Star has a really cheery OST and a lot of those tracks are remixes of old Mario music. There are also a lot of different variants in the game, depending on where you are. E.g. the overworld theme has multiple tracks depending on which world you're currently in. In the dessert, it sounds like dessert music and in the snow world, it has this ringing tone, you'd normally expect from an ice world.
The graphics are as you'd expect from a Paper Mario game. You have your 2D sprites, your paper/cardboard environment which also have those fancy unfolding sequences as you solve some puzzles that let you access new areas.
Every world has its own theme, e.g. the dessert has that sandy look, the ice area has icy paths, glaciers and every asset fits together quite well.
Lastly, the 3D options the 3DS is known for: it's not important, you fortunately don't need it. Normally you'd expect Nintendo to enforce usage of the 3D option,but there's no such thing.
The whole game can be played without usage of the 3D feature. Now obviously, it depends highly on whether you're a fan of said gimmick or not and honestly, I'm not a fan of it, which is why I was happy when I realized that I could just turn it of and still enjoy the game to its fullest.
So, what are my thoughts about this game?
I think it's an alright game, that had a lot of potential, but a good amount of that was wasted. I still enjoyed it quite a bit, or else I would have definitely not played the whole game. Although I used a walkthrough, to get through all the nonsense that was backtracking and some bosses.
As a Paper Mario game, it's not reall good, though, and I can definitely see, why the game's not considered to be on par with the other titles in the series.
Would I recomment people to buy this game?
I think, people who didn't enjoy Super Paper Mario are probably not going to like Sticker Star. If you've never played a Paper Mario game, Sticker Star is not what you'd want to start with, but if you still like to buy it, anyway, then you may go ahead. It definitely involves a lot of fun.
*Additional sources:
Interview with the developers
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Monday, March 2, 2015
Introduction
Jumping on the bandwagon that is blogging, I figured the first best thing is to introduce myself. Without further ado, let's get this over with:
I'm a cynical, yet for the most part really polite, but also introverted person, who's not particularly into talking to other people too much. My main interest lies withing playing games, with a high emphasis on research and analysis. It's pretty hard for me to get into many games, but if I get hooked, I want to know as much as possible about them.
For these matters I like to watch Let's Plays, and Reviews, read some interviews, Wiki pages, forum posts, etc. and learn more about Game Design in general as I feel it's my right to know why I like or don't like a certain game.
I'm also a hugh gameplay fanatic, so if there's a game with an incredible story, that has terrible gameplay, you can be sure I'll not going to play that game for too long.
I'm also into more philosophical topics, finding answers to questions, many people don't even consider to ask themselves.
What's my reasoning for creating a Blog and keeping it updated?
To be honest, I was thinking about creating one of these for about a year, but I never really felt like starting it right away. Partly, because I figured, I wouldn't have much content, I could contribute and partly because of lazyness.
After a year passing I started visiting other people's Blogs, a lot of them being people I actually know and I figured: If they can pull one of, I might as well try it myself. It also helped a lot to realize, that I already had everything I needed to set one Blog up; that's one of the few positive aspects of Google forcing Google+ accounts on everyone who wants to write comments on Youtube videos, I suppose.
So, what'll this Blog be all about?
Mostly things that I already mentioned above. It's going to be about games in a more analytical aspect, philosophy how I see it myself, but it can also be just some random stuff, depending on what I feel like doing. I intent to do something different; while many people I know seem to use their Blog in order to show their own progress in games, for me the most interesting aspect I want to put into is a higher meta level. Instead of "I don't like this game", I'm more inclined in "this game uses this and this and because of reasons I'm not a fan of it". With philosopy it's basically the same. I don't care what some random philosophist thinks, for the most part; I just write down, what I think is right and maybe it connects with some thoughts other people had as well and maybe I'll point that out when I get around it, but that's a topic for a later post.
Also keep in mind, since I'm just doing that stuff for fun, I'm not setting any timelines for when I'm going to put up a new Blog entry at all. It'll happen when it happens.
Some people might ask: why do it in English? Is your native language not good enough?
I've been roaming around international communities for quite a while and now I'm basically at a point where I feel more comfortable using English than I feel when using my native language. There's also the benefit of English being an international language, so by using it in my posts, I also have a chance to reach more people then I would otherwise.
I'm a cynical, yet for the most part really polite, but also introverted person, who's not particularly into talking to other people too much. My main interest lies withing playing games, with a high emphasis on research and analysis. It's pretty hard for me to get into many games, but if I get hooked, I want to know as much as possible about them.
For these matters I like to watch Let's Plays, and Reviews, read some interviews, Wiki pages, forum posts, etc. and learn more about Game Design in general as I feel it's my right to know why I like or don't like a certain game.
I'm also a hugh gameplay fanatic, so if there's a game with an incredible story, that has terrible gameplay, you can be sure I'll not going to play that game for too long.
I'm also into more philosophical topics, finding answers to questions, many people don't even consider to ask themselves.
What's my reasoning for creating a Blog and keeping it updated?
To be honest, I was thinking about creating one of these for about a year, but I never really felt like starting it right away. Partly, because I figured, I wouldn't have much content, I could contribute and partly because of lazyness.
After a year passing I started visiting other people's Blogs, a lot of them being people I actually know and I figured: If they can pull one of, I might as well try it myself. It also helped a lot to realize, that I already had everything I needed to set one Blog up; that's one of the few positive aspects of Google forcing Google+ accounts on everyone who wants to write comments on Youtube videos, I suppose.
So, what'll this Blog be all about?
Mostly things that I already mentioned above. It's going to be about games in a more analytical aspect, philosophy how I see it myself, but it can also be just some random stuff, depending on what I feel like doing. I intent to do something different; while many people I know seem to use their Blog in order to show their own progress in games, for me the most interesting aspect I want to put into is a higher meta level. Instead of "I don't like this game", I'm more inclined in "this game uses this and this and because of reasons I'm not a fan of it". With philosopy it's basically the same. I don't care what some random philosophist thinks, for the most part; I just write down, what I think is right and maybe it connects with some thoughts other people had as well and maybe I'll point that out when I get around it, but that's a topic for a later post.
Also keep in mind, since I'm just doing that stuff for fun, I'm not setting any timelines for when I'm going to put up a new Blog entry at all. It'll happen when it happens.
Some people might ask: why do it in English? Is your native language not good enough?
I've been roaming around international communities for quite a while and now I'm basically at a point where I feel more comfortable using English than I feel when using my native language. There's also the benefit of English being an international language, so by using it in my posts, I also have a chance to reach more people then I would otherwise.
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