Paper Mario Sticker Star is different, but is that really a bad thing?
The story of Paper Mario Sticker Star revolves around the Sticker Comet. The game starts off at Sticker Fest at Decalburg, but Bowser comes to ruin the party. He touches the Sticker Comet, which makes him more powerful, and he kidnaps the princess. Yeah, not the best writing. But it'll do for now.
Paper Mario Sticker Star returns to the series' original roots of turned based battling, but with a twist. Now, all of your moves are based off of stickers. You need to have a sticker to pull off a move, like a jump, or a hammer. I was a bit skeptical about this system, and I'm still not sure if I completely like it or not. Don't get me wrong, I like this game. The thing is, stickers are very, very common. But the problem I have is I don't like wasting my stickers for basic enemy fights.It's usually a good idea to stock up on lots of stickers that can attack multiple enemies, to speed up fights. If you can beat all of the enemies in a battle in one turn without taking damage, you will get a "Perfect Bonus", which entitles you to several coins depending on the enemy.
Besides basic battling stickers, there also "Thing" stickers. These "Thing" stickers are how you use real world items that you find in the game. You find the things in the levels, and there are two places in the game where you "sling" them to convert them into stickers. There are a lot of different Things in the game, and they all do different things. Some Things are very important to winning boss battles(or making them easier), so it's important to know what they do so you can take advantage of them.
The graphics are pretty well done. This Paper Mario game is truly based around paper, and the game actually makes references to everything paper. You can actually interact with the environment in certain areas by "paperizing" the area. There are some places where scenery is placed right, you can change how it looks by paperizing. You can also put certain stickers in paperization areas, giving you new stickers, or thing Stickers in other areas to access certain areas and progress throught the game.
The controls are solid. To move, you use the Control Stick, A to jump, B to Hammer, Y to paperize, X to access the sticker album, and L to talk to your one and only partner, Kersti, who will give you advice throughout the game when you need it. Kersti is the one who will let you paperize and use the Battle Spinner in battles, which is a slot wheel during battles which gives you the chance to use multiple stickers in battle, which is very useful during boss fights.
The music is very well done. I have to say, Sticker Star probably has the best soundtrack out of any Paper Mario game. It is very well composed, and it is cheery, and fits the mood of the area that you're in.
The boss fights were very well done, but it usually takes two tries to fight a boss since you probably won't know their weakness beforehand unless you read a walkthrough as you're playing(which is what I did).
As I mentioned before, the only problems I had with this game was the unneccessary fights. It was annoying to waste a lot of my valuable stickers on common enemies. Also, you probably won't know what to do and how to get past certain areas on your first try without a walkthrough, as everything isn't completely obvious on how to get through.
Overall, though, Paper Mario Sticker Star is a good game. I had a good time with it, and I give it an 8/10.