Good
- the cardboard and paper themes are really well done, probably the most well done in all of the paper Mario games. The attention to detail when I came to how objects interacted with the elements, like wind, was very well depicted.
- the 3D looks really good.
- peeling stickers off of walls on the floor feels quite satisfying, and putting stickers onto missing parts of the levels also felt quite nice.
- I like how the music transitions into a different remix of the same song when I enter a new world on the map
- the roulette is pretty fun to use, as I got good at the timing. Made the random battles go by much quicker.
Bad
- you don't even need the time block that well. The window to block is so huge that it's really hard to fail it. There's just no challenge when it comes to countering. I'm also really upset at the removal of super guard, because it removes the option of very skilled players to attempt it.
- because there is no XP, the wild enemies became a matter of how well i could Dodge them, because there was absolutely no reason for me to fight them since they offered nothing besides some coins, which I could already find plenty of in the level, and after the level.
- the combat is also very shallow. There are no special timing moves. All the qte's were timing the hammer and timing the jumps. Which is way less diverse than the original two paper Mario games.
- some of the scraps that you have to turn into stickers aren't very obvious as to where you're supposed to use them. And collecting the three tablets that you need to access world 2-5 was also very ambiguous as to their location. It was never made clear that each piece was hidden in a separate world, inside of a chest. The game never stated that I needed to combine tablets, never did they mention that the tablets were scattered across three different worlds, and never did they mention that each piece was hidden in a chest. As a consequence, I was trying to paper eyes random scraps in world 2-5, obviously to know avail. And now my scrapbook was stuck with a bunch of scrap stickers which took up all the space from regular stickers.
- it's completely unintuitive and annoying that you must turn objects into stickers in order to use them against the boss. It basically meant I had to fight the boss one time without the super effective sticker, probably lose, restart, go back to deckleberg, make the object into a sticker, travel to the boss again, then fight him. I felt the game should have just allowed me to use the object without having to turn it into a sticker.
- because battles gained me nothing, I avoided them. But this caused another issue. because I tried to avoid as many battles as I could, there were many puzzle clues that I missed because I was trying to escape the enemy.
- sometimes puzzles require certain stickers to be solved. if you didn't have those stickers, it meant you have to walk all the way back to the entrance, then all the way back to the store to buy the stickers you need, then travel all the way back to where the puzzle was. This was extremely tedious.
- Overly cryptic puzzle: 3-5 random hidden blocks to cross broken bridge
- Overly cryptic puzzle: 3-4 wiggler segment hidden in random bush
- Overly cryptic puzzle 5-5: refrigerator freezes entire volcano?!
- Overly cryptic puzzle 5-5: falling rocks don't create hole in cracked ground except on a single crack. How am I supposed to know that one crack is special?!
- for the log River level, how does running on a raft make it move? The logs are clearly connected, or else they would have drifted apart. and if they are connected, there is no way one can run on the raft to make it move. They should have just given Mario a paddle, which makes way more sense.
- I think the biggest problem with this game is having to convert things into stickers inside of shops. This means that if I encountered puzzles requiring a thing sticker, I would need the thing itself. If I didn't, I'd probably be trying a bunch of different s*** that doesn't work, until I looked at a guide to see the thing that I was missing. At which point, I would have to backtrack to a certain world to get the thing. Then go to a shop to convert the thing into a sticker. Then travel all the way back to the world with the puzzle, and all the way to where the puzzle is actually located. Only then can I apply the thing sticker. This is completely unintuitive backtracking. And is almost impossible to solve if you haven't found that thing when trying to solve the puzzle.
- they removed everything good from the paper Mario series. Partner abilities, star Spirit abilities, partners in general, XP, and an actual hub world. Instead of learning new abilities to open the way to the next world, the progression is made way more linear, and when it isn't, you're forced to trial an error thing stickers to attempt to open the way.
- the game tries to apply logic in a very illogical world, that is paper Mario sticker Star. When you try to actually apply logic, it may not work, because it isn't the developers logic. They should have allowed multiple solutions to puzzles that required things stickers. Scribblenauts does it right, because although the solutions may be bizarre, there are multiples solutions to puzzles which removes the tedious and unnecessary trial and error gameplay.
- Kersti gives no hints about thing sticker applications. In fact she virtually gives no hints at all, only extremely obvious information. I would say she's even worse than Navi from Zelda.
- some glitch caused me to lose all my stickers after having used all the shiny crowns to unlock world 6. Thank God I restarted the game in time and reloaded an earlier save.
- unable to skip turn
- no peach segments. Those were nice little stealth segments. And had an interesting side story from the main plot.
- the inhabitants of every world consists of just toads. Where are all the different species that were present in the first two paper Mario games? All the little stories behind the characters in the first two Mario games were so interesting, charming, funny and cool. Here, it feels so bland cuz all there is are toads.
- why does Bowser not talk?! He's talked and literally every paper Mario. He's had a personality. But in this game he doesn't say a single word. He just roars.
- unable to bulk sell or bulk buy at shops. I'm forced to buy or sell one sticker at a time.
- I couldn't target the enemy I wanted in battle, which further made the fights shallow.
- There are no warnings as to what stickers you need before a boss fight. A number of boss fights almost require specific stickers to get through smoothly, or at all. Final boss fight, you cannot use regular jump stickers because Bowser's crown hurts Mario. Meaning if you brought them into the fight, you might as well just reset, and sell all your jump stickers, cause they are useless.