Toad Town is actually called "Decalburg" in this game.

I absolutely love just the amount of effort that goes into this retrospective story as these reviews happen! Time stamp at 46:10

And after watching this, I'm finally all caught up, and anxiously waiting to see Colour Splash and Origami King. At least those last two Paper Hearts can't be as difficult as this one. Also, since these videos are how I discovered your channel, I wanna say that it's been really fun so far, and I'm glad I did!

I'm not too invested in narrative outside of the review itself, but I thought it was pretty hilarious how you got your paper heart in this one.

Oooh….those small Chuggaaconroy bits haven’t aged well recently.

This is arguably my most-anticipated video of this year. Great job!

Sticker Star may've been mediocre, but the concept of collecting stickers could've been so interesting. Like, imagine an area somewhere in Decalburg/Toad Town where a small group of sticker enthusiasts hang out at, wanting to collect the most rare, never-before-seen stickers imaginable. You could probably even trade stickers with them! Although, they wouldn't accept common or worn out stickers and Thing stickers could only be viewed by them, not traded as that would defeat the purpose of Thing stickers being seen as "one-of-a-kind" in their eyes if you came back with a duplicate after giving one away. Although one thing I'm *really* disappointed about is that in European territories if you registered your copy of Sticker Star you'd get an actual sticker book filled with numerous stickers. Unfortunately you had to be a Club Nintendo member to get a copy and they only made 10,000 of them. Nintendo Power readers had a small taste of what European territories got, as included in the November 2012 issue there were stickers of a Shell, Eekhammer, Boot, Hammer, Mushroom, Frog Suit and Fire Flower as well as two stickers of Mario and a sticker of the game's logo. On pages 27, 29, 31 and 33 you had to choose a specific sticker which worked best with the hint seen on the side of the page. Except for the last page which took up the entire page just to promote Sticker Star (again) and required two stickers rather than one.

This just has to be the most relatable (and justifiably accurate) retrospective that I’ve ever watched in my free-time. 👏

OH BOY YOU GET TO KILL STICKER STAR VERBALLY HERE WE GOOOOOOOOOOO

I thought of a good analogy for the battles in the newer paper Mario games: It’s like they had a perfectly good piece of paper, but then they put a sticker on it, then they realized that you couldn’t do much with the paper, so they took it off and it tore a bit of the paper with it. they realized they could paint on it and covered up the piece the sticker took, but the paint was to wet. They then just tore off the piece and thought “what if we made oragami?” It made sense in my head… :|

To be fair to the character design in this game, there was a whole lawsuit thing about the Sonic comics where one of the writers created a lot of original characters for the comic. Later, he copyrighted the work he did on the comic, but Sega was still reprinting the comics with them. So, the comics filed a lawsuit against him for breach of contract. I don't know exactly how this happened, and it's probably way too long to put in a KZfaq comment but sega lost that lawsuit . But after that, a lot of stuff changed with the comics. For example, Sonic isn't allowed to directly lose and show strong emotions anymore, you aren't allowed to use some characters anymore, and most importantly, the characters aren't allowed to look too different from their normal design and the comic had to be rebooted. Paper Mario: Sticker Star came out around the time when all of this was happening, and I think they decided to approach the character design the way they did because they didn't want to have this happening to their boy Mario. But it's not like they ever said that that is the reason it's just some stuff I heard from other fans of the Sonic comics who also like Paper Mario Im not saying that it excuses everything else this game dose bad but just something intresting to think about edit: ok im watching the next video in the series now and I have to say that this comment would have been better there since you directly talk about it not being possibel to have unique characters any more but its hear now

Another great video! It was fun seeing you dunk on Sticker Star. Can't wait for the final parts!

just jumping in to say i love the unique framing for this entire series! and congrats on sharing more of your truly-felt self along the way :)

Sticker Star may have caused me so much vitriol, but it was fun watching your take on it and getting more entertainment out of it because i was so curious how it'd tie into your retrospective storyline so much cx

You should complain that after thousands year door there no Kammy Koopa

I like how we barely got 20sec in and already the shade

Bad news: She doesn’t actually have to be positive. Good news: That deal was a one time only, and as such Color Splash is good.

This series is so crazy good I’m sure this is getting a good boost from the recent game. Hell that’s how I’m here

I love your new model!!!

31:19 My first game in the series was Thousand Year Door, and I still liked Sticker Star. Sure, it's hollow and isn't as varied as the previous games, and it's the least good game in the series, but that doesn't make it a bad game, and I enjoyed my time with it. I liked the part where you could bring that one sepia-toned Toad back to life by Paperizing a picture of them. The final level in World 4 being a Shy Guy theme park was fun (Mizzter Blizzard Best Boss in Sticker Star, don't @ me). I liked helping out a Wiggler clear out a poisonous swamp so he could chill and be a butterfly. Figuring out that the Tower Power Pokey was weak to Bats because of the stadium-shaped arena was really fun. And this was the first time that Bowser Jr. and Kamek make their appearance in Paper Mario, and they were a treat to enjoy. My outlook on this game used to be a lot more negative, until one day when I was in my high/middle school marching band, and this one kid was playing Sticker Star on his 3DS. I went "You know that game is bad, right?" and he said "What do you mean?", so I explained some of the issues people had with the game. After that, he told me two words that changed my perspective on the game forever: "So what?" As soon as I stopped hoping for Sticker Star to magically turn into SPM or TTYD, and considered it for the stuff that it offered, I felt less negative about it. It might be cryptic, or have boss battles that require Things to beat (for the most part), or be pretty shallow in its presentation, story, characters, combat, and design... but I still enjoyed my time with it. It's a solid 7/10.

I had such a similar experience playing the game for the first time. I was so completely caught up in the fact that I was playing a new Paper Mario game that I didn't realize I hated it until I was finished with it. My entire playthrough I was actively handwaving away all the problems it had because I was desperate to like it. Then upon finishing it, I felt nothing. I wrote a short blog post about how it was a hollow experience, but in my mind, it was just a boring 7/10 nothing of a game that didn't even really warrant being talked about. But my dislike of the game grew tremendously when the follow-ups came out. That the team decided to make sequels to Sticker Star rather than TTYD or SPM in spite of it barely being a video game was so infuriating that all the flaws I papered over (hah!) while playing it in the past were no longer excusable anymore. I don't think people are unfairly harsh to Sticker Star. It is a legitimately terrible video game that an entire fanbase was Stockholm Syndromed into believing was a 7/10 (a low bar on its own) because it had turn based battles in it. The disgust for the game being so massive now isn't unjust; this is exactly what we and reviewers SHOULD have said at release. We just didn't realize how big of a deal it was that the game was so bland and boring until the follow-ups came out and all we could say is "at least it's better than Sticker Star."

i guess you can say, the story FELL FLAT. (cue joke drum)

I genuinely love the transition to ads

glad to see another part out, hope its as good as the rest :)

sticker star was my second in the series, first being super for the Wii it was a game I loved to play since I got it, as time went on tho I never lost the love for it, but I did learn about the other much better games, and now it's a game that I love to hate on, it's a fun and dumb game I like to go back to and smile about how bad it is

The last decade or so has been filled with nothing for me but "DO NOT TRUST" whenever Nintendo has come up. Games like Sticker Star and Metroid: Other M are why.

Unironically as someone who’s first paper mario game was Sticker Star. This is my 2nd least favorite Paper Mario Game.

Honestly, I think the character/comedy is still as in Spirit as any of the Paper Mario games with this one. People ignore the charm and decent story because it's more of a platformer than an RPG Kind of a cold take to 'dunk' on it though

37:42 I love this final boss theme so I give it an S tier.

15:13 Hooo boy, you do not want to go there. Tippi is a wonderful character that is genuinely good at guiding you and a good person with a deep story to her. Kersti is unlikable, uninteresting, extremely rude, not useful and worst of all, she always says that she's a lady, she can't fight, Mario always needs to protect her after she started a fight with a group of goombas. We have other female characters in the Paper Mario games like Bombette, Lady bow, Watt, Goombella, Vivian and so on.

I also have history with this game. I played the original trilogy and loved them, then got this one… and just had fun with it. No special nostalgia or reasoning, just enjoyed the battles and had fun with it. Not to say it’s GOOD, since hindsight? Yeah, makes the game’s flaws in design very apparent. Everything about combat is counterintuitive with the game’s design, the characters are either bland, copy-pasted Toads or Mario characters with not much interesting to say, I didn’t even KNOW the Things had action commands in my first playthrough… I could give this game the riot act same as anyone else, since the game is poorly designed. But I want to take a few seconds just to… be a little nice. Since I’m pretty relaxed with media and it takes a lot for me to HATE something. And I feel like too often the conversation is just about the bad here. I’m still not gonna defend the game, but it does a few things right. There’s some good music, the occasional good joke, it’s not broken or glitchy, and that is incredibly important to me. Perhaps the faintest praise I can give is the return of turn based combat shows the developers TRIED to give fans something closer to what they wanted, and that effort is appreciated, even if the execution was bad in the end. And I did have fun the first time through, and that counts for something, in my eyes. I’ll admit, I struggled to think of anything nice to say there, so it’s not hard to see why this game has the reputation it does. But with where the series is now and with what came after, I can just… you know, ignore this game.

I’m so happy that Thousand Year Door is coming back on Switch. This could be our chance to change the history of this beloved series.

I hope they continue the Paper Mario-s good way

Honestly, for being meant to be streamlined, this game certainly made a name for itself for being cryptic. With you needing specific things at specific times, and most bosses being very hard without the right thing(s)

Despite all the flaws, this is still a tolerable game, there are far worst nintendo games than this.

Dang sis, you hit it right on the nose. Would seriously doubt the paper aesthetic would have gotten so much flack had the core gameplay stuck to its roots. Very much of the opinion that Sticker Star, Color Splash, and OK looked amazing. Just wish their combat wasn’t poo 😑 Btw having such an amazing time watching your vids! Can’t wait for the next ^O^

holy shirt the sticker lore is perfect

before i watch this im simply gonna say this game SUCKSSSSSS WHY DOES IT EXISTTTT everything was so perfect until it started EXISTINGGGG. why does it have to be an influential bad game its not like this games reception is positive. if their reasoning for switching direction to this piece of shit was cuz SPM had mixed reception WHY DID THEY NOT SWITCH DIRECTION AFTER THIS ONE. theres no excuse for the laziness literally none. i hope we are entering a renaissance for this series now with the new announcements

I just replayed Sticker Star and you know what is sad? It has good parts imo, it has some genuinely cool dialogue but for all the good it has, it's buried under tedium and confusing af puzzles On a first playthrough without a guide, you'd be so confused on what to do and where to go Kersti SOMETIMES gives hints but rarely

JJ might break the cannon just to save cc can’t wait to hear I’m do my own thing in one of the episodes.

no boo night fever mention??? that's my one positive thing about sticker star

Congratulations on cc going to the red guys channel and taking the paper heart from his paper mario and the sticker comet video. I hope it was worth it in the end

One thing I can think I like about this game is the sombrero guys and the music they play

I actually dislike this game the least out of the modern games. They tried something new for the series, and it didn't work. I resent Color Splash and Origami King more, even if they're technically better games, because they feel like Nintendo doubling and tripling down.

Well.

I don't care if I get hate because of this opinion, but 37:41 is my favorite paper mario final boss song.

I personally just don't mind it. .I can't remember if it was my first or 2nd game. Don't really have the highest standard as well.

I don't want this comment to be too long, so I'm gonna say everything I want to and hopefully crunch it down to make as short and simple as possible. So, I'm relatively new to this channeland I saw you Mario Party 8 video as my introduction to your channel and this was after you changed your channel to how it is now, but I like your content both ways before and after said changes. I first came as this series back when I used to watch Chuggaconroy's playthrough of Super Paper Mario, the only part I remember aside from Bowser's Arms being the funniest compilation, is when he played as Peach in Castles Bleck between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 and thought this game looked awesome even though I had only been a Mario fan for 4 years at that time. When I asked my Mum if I could have SPM, she went to game but couldn't find a copy so instead she bought a pre-owned copy of Sticker Star. Since I was more into gameplay over story as a child, I enjoyed the heck out of this game and this was before I found out about the fact everyone was at each others throats, arguing why the old and new are better than the other. Ever since then I've played all of the games, as well as the Mario & Luigi RPGs, Mario + Rabbids game and I plan to play the Mario RPG Remake too. And sometimes I think about how much I hate being on the side that gets hate thrown at then, when the older games weren't perfect either. I'm enjoying the story you've made for this retrospective, it definitely makes you stand out and it reminds me of "hatwearinggamer" who also had a narrative when he made his Mario and Luigi retrospective 4-6 years ago, though if I'm being honest, I did find it a bit cheesy and on the nose that in order to continue the story by using a Paper Heart from "another dimension where this game is actually good", and I understand that this game has many flaws, my bias to this game as my fisrt Paper Mario ever, will prevent me from hating it. But maybe in a decade or something, I might truly see it for it's unworthiness as a Paper Mario installment and wish Kensuke Tanabe had never taken the reins of the series hostage, but for now I still like this game to this day and that won't change at the moment. I understand that everyone has different opinions about things and that's what makes us human, but I still wish people on both sides could find a way to get along for once and stop pointlessly arguing about how this series should and shouldn't be... Also there's another KZfaqr who is also making a Paper Mario retrospective of his own thanks to this game, his name is "The Red Guy", I don't know if you know him, so that's why I'm mentioning him here. And I'm also watching Chuggaconroy's videos about Sticker Star as well. Sorry again if this was too long to read, but as someone who mostly grew up and still enjoys the modern Paper Mario games, I do also have fun with the classic trilogy to the same extent. I accept that you don't like Sticker Star and I respect your opinion on this game. Also, I know I can't convince you that Colour Splash and Origami King are better since they're are basically the same as SS, but I can't wait to see how you wrap up the retrospective as well as the your story in a nicely wrapped bow and I wonder if you'll do an Epilouge to your journey as well. Two things I am curious about are: 1. What would your plans for reviews of future Paper Mario games released after the Origami King review and the retrospective are finished be? 2. If remakes of Super, SS, CS and TOK were made in the style of 64 and TTYD, what would your reaction to that be and would you re-review these games if that happened? I plan to get a job at Intelligent Systems one day and make my own Paper Mario game with travelling through time being my choice for a mechanic, but I don't want people to be mislead about what kind of time travel I'm reffering to as I want to give every chapter it's own identity just like the first 3 games did, but also the time travel gimmick to be unique for all of them as well. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. However, if there more I want add, I just edit this comment later even though you may not see if I do that. I hope you have fun wrapping up this retrospective, wish you luck with beating the last two games and getting the remaining Paper Hearts to stop "Sinister Dude" and find someway to revive CC (RIP for now). I will watch the other two reviews when they come out. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜🖤

28:34 In the words of a certain gaming Nerd: “And while you’re doing all that…Put on a better game!”

Sticker Star is dull and underwhelming.

Five days later be like:

Sticker Star was my first Paper Mario game. 💀

looking forward to TTYD-make! as a self proclaimed Color Splash fan, the formula could work, it *does* work if actual effort is put into it, but they put zero thought into anything in Sticker Star and it shows

This game was so meh, I'm glad your doing it but just watching it brings back bad and boring memories of my own playthough 😂

Ooh i like the papersona, reminds me of art of tippis human form that i saw so long ago

I do hope she includes a review of ttyd remake into this series

this was my 2nd game in the series and the first one i beat and honestly i liked it in isolation from the rest its a decent game, however when compared to its predecessors it hold nothing other than the banger soundtrack and its puzzles being slightly less cryptic than those in super paper mario.

Well... I guess fun fact for this game: I never played it! But I nearly did. One year, shortly after christmas, I was at Wal-mart to spend my christmas cash... And I was torn between 2 games... either Sticker Star or Ni no Kuni: wrath of the white witch. Anyway I love Ni no Kuni

Ah yeah, baby. The... uh... ... ...6th. (I think?) trashing on Sticker Star! Yeah, baby!

2:39 you kinda have 2 references that i know of (1 your Name Lady Reminds me of Lady from T&F (That stands for Thomas and Friends) and 2 when you said Live and Learn, I Remembered Sonic Adventure 2 whennyou said that)

While I never played the game, I can say this. Sticker Star, and by extension, modern Paper Mario, is more consistent than Ratchet and Clank 2016 ever was. That R&C game, while more servicable on the surface, becomes like Back 4 Blood where it missed what made the original work the closer you pay attention. At least Sticket Star knows what it's being and becomes that game. And also, Sonic Frontiers, regardless of one's thoughts, proves that going a bit crazy and original with ideas doesn't hurt at all. As long as the writers know what they're making.

I'm so weird about this game , I like have a genuinely love for this game and can't seem to hate it but I know how bad of a game it is , like how do I explain that this is one of my favorite paper Mario games that I've played. I'm so conflicted on this game lol.

Its the no post game content for me #comedy

I justified Sticker Star's mediocrity as being a handheld off-shoot. It was alright when I lowered my expectations. But then Color Splash followed and I realized how doomed we were. :(

The only good things of sticker star were the final boss and sniff it or whiff it

Congratulations you made it to Friday 😅

virtual insanity sm64 intermission ?

You can't lose respect if you never had any so those guys might be onto something Time to flex tape some animu girls to fix my life

So sticker star was bad as I now know but I'm one of those people that actually like sticker star for having some neat stuff and funny when it does (yes I'm simple sometimes), at least sticker star try to be something but after super paper Mario yeah I can understand the downfall but color splash exists and for origami king it's a neat little package so yeah and still paper Mario sticker star at least stands to me as one of my favorite side adventures of the Mario series but I respect opinions which is something that people can't handle but I'm just half expecting people to tell me I'm stupid and I need to kill myself cuz internet users have some kind of have no holding back

Hi there! Commenting as always to help with the algorithm 😊 I never played SS and hardly had any interest in Paper Mario as a whole after TTYD, but with this brief review of this installment I got interested into giving it a try 😅 Nonetheless, I really felt that the plot of this chapter in your story felt "hollow" and a little bit too cliché. Maybe it's just a reflection of the simplicity of the reviewed game in question and it's a purposely made decision for flavour reasons 😊 (or is it a trap?). Thanks a lot for sharing this work of love and please don't follow the contents of the original letter literally 😢 Best regards 🙂

I hold the "it's not supposed to be literally about paper" argument against the art style. I reached my limit in Origami King when I had to fight a literal box of colored pencils after a chapter full of fighting origami. Which of these options for a climactic boss fight sounds the least interesting? A Mario-themed parody of the teenage mutant ninja turtles, a dragon terrorizing the local town that ate your party member's father, a robot built by an ancient race to protect a relic needed to prevent the destruction of all worlds, or a box of fucking colored pencils? Like, seriously?? What the fuck?? Under what context in ANY fictional universe is the villain of the first act a fucking box of colored pencils? It is literally impossible for me to give a shit about this "character". The "paper" part of Paper Mario has been pushed so far that it has taken complete priority over all other parts of the game. At least Big Goomba and Morton are "Mario" bosses. But we have reached such a low point that "Paper" is the focus, while "Mario" is an afterthought. It used to be the other way around. Video is great. Just explaining my reasoning on why the emphasis on the paper art style is a problem. It is cannibalizing the rest of the game.

I find Sticker Star the least odious of the three. I am a first-three-games purist, but I guess I hated SS the least for a few minor reasons. One of the more unfair reasons was that when I first played SS, for a good quarter of the game, I still had hope that it would get better. I didn't know that it wouldn't develop. So for that simple reason, it gets some points. I enjoyed the first quarter out of ignorance. It also gets some slack because it's a mobile game. For being on the 3DS, it was OK. CS came out on Wii U, which was Nintendo's most misguided time. TOK came out on Switch, a console that's home to Odyssey, BotW/TotK, and LM3, so it has no excuse for being as lackluster as it is. SS has an excuse. I did like the music and visuals, though not as much as the first three games. And I did kinda like some of the locals. The areas in CS were, to me, utterly unmemorable and inconsistent in theming. But SS had the snow mansion, the pyramid levels with the toad heiroglyphs, Surfshine Harbor, the poison river. They're all relatively bland, but still better to me than what CS had to offer. TOK had the best locals of the three, but SS at least did better than CS. Plus stickers worker better than cards and paint. They just did. But yeah, besides that, I hated everything else about SS. Its devotion to corporate whitewashing in an effort to "streamline" the experience and make more accessible to casuals single-handedly ruined the series. It's as bland as plain oatmeal. Wasn't even close to being as good as its 3DS contemporaries such as Mario 3D Land and Dark Moon and MK7, which were all about as bland but has other good things going for them. And its lack of characters and story are forever unforgivable in my eyes.

Sticker star was my first game in the series that I played and I didn't like it I couldn't complete it or color splash just cus I don't like the gameplay of them

Ahh, sticker star, a game so terrible that Nintendo looked at this game and was like "lets use this as the baseline of the series moving forward thanks to the amazing sterilization of our characters."

Ayyy Nintendo redeemed themselves somewhat.

Both this and Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon really disappointed me because I was a huge fan of Paper Mario TTYD and Luigi's Mansion on the GameCube and was thrilled to see them come on the 3DS during that announcement. Dark Moon I could at least playthrough to the end, Sticker Star was just too painful. Everything I liked about Paper Mario was just striped away. While Luigi's Mansion 3 showed they were willing compromise with the edition of portrait ghosts and a single big area while improving on the things from Dark Moon, the Paper Mario series just said "NO RPGS SUCK!" and continued being a watered down RPG too scared to give a Toad a mustache.

Paper Mario sticker star probably wouldn't have a bad reputation....if it wqs a one time thing but nope it's infected the entire series and divined the fanbase. Now it's fine if you enjoyed the newer and older games but please don't disrespect someone for having a opinion. However now that ttyd remake is happening The paper Mario Future is looking more brighter than ever and hopefully The ttyd remake will tone down the fanbase warzone. The game it'self: Paper Mario sticker star is (imo) a mediocre game it's not bad but it's definitely not good either it's has good aspects like world 4 and other positives but the negatives outweigh the postives but with the ttyd remake I can accept this game's existence more than ever.

My level is 23

Sticker Star was the 2nd Paper Mario game i ever played or saw, and even 6th grade me though it was shit. So thats why Super Paper Mario is still the only Paper Mario Game I've beaten. Curious to see your thoughts and how the retrospectige story continues!

This was the first Paper Mario game I played…. And due to that, I can’t despise it with a burning passion. So go ahead, call me uncultured or something….

first

I don’t know why it is controversial. Sticker Star is that bad, and we should have said so. The only reason why it was not immediate is because it only shallowly looked like a walk back from Super Paper Mario, which was hated at the time.