The Mushroom Kingdom is celebrating Sticker Fest, an annual celebration of all things stickers. A Sticker Comet falls from the sky, and it’s said that those who wish upon it will have all their wishes come true. While it’s on display, Bowser and his minions show up out of nowhere. As the King Koopa attempts to steal it, the comet shatters into various pieces spread out all over the land. A Royal Sticker lands on Bowser’s head, which grants him super strength. The festival is ruined, Princess Peach is kidnapped yet again, and it’s up to Mario to save the day along with his traveling sticker companion Kersti. It’s a simple, cute story that fits well for the 3DS.

Stickers are the name of the game. They are plastered all over the world waiting to be peeled off, and are essential to completing this massive journey through the Mushroom Kingdom. They are mostly used during battles, representing certain attacks and power-ups. These include stickers for jump attacks, hammer types to bop enemies, flowers to shoot ice and fire, and mushrooms to replenish health.

Advertisement

These don’t include the huge amount of wacky special stickers you’ll create from picking up “Thing” items across the world like a fan, jackhammer, balloon, faucet, violin and a goat ... yes, a goat. These stickers also help you solve puzzles when entering “paperization” mode and placing them on the landscape. During battle, they each come with their own fun animation when selected, but since the game doesn’t explain what they do I was hesitant to actually use them aside from boss battles.

Once a sticker is used during battle it’s gone, so some strategy is involved to make sure you’re getting the best use out of each one. Regular enemies like Goombas and Koopa Troopas can be taken down easily with a hammer or jump attack. However, those that fly are immune to hammers, and enemies with spikes on top will hurt you if you jump on them (unless you’re attacking with an iron boot). Attacking multiple enemies can be tricky, too. Since they’re all in a straight line, only the one in front is aimed for, unless you have a sticker like a green shell or Fire Flower that can attack all enemies. A slot machine mechanic gives you the chance to play up to three stickers a turn. Pressing the action button right before hitting an enemy will increase damage, or while on defense Mario will block an attack to lower damage to himself.

Since there are so many stickers in the game that can be found or bought in a shop, I never feared my album would go dry. Regular enemies are a breeze to defeat and usually take a few stickers max, depending on what’s used. Boss fights are a totally different story due to their much higher health. In order to beat them you pretty much need to stock up on special stickers, which can be hard since some take up more space than others in the album. Some fights require certain stickers to defeat a boss, which you won’t know until Kersti shows up mid-fight to tell you about it. Don’t have it? Quit the game or have Mario lose, and go back to finding it. It was real frustrating having to do this a couple times.

Despite that nuisance I like the idea of using these one-time items during battle, and I never got bored running around and collecting stickers. But with so much focus on the stickers, the game is lacking in other RPG elements that may disappoint Paper Mario fans. Completing battles feels meaningless over time, since all you’re basically collecting from them are coins. Sometimes powerful stickers can be collected after battles, but they can also be found throughout levels. I found myself skipping a lot of them since I didn’t feel like wasting stickers and my coin count was in the thousands a few worlds into the game. Mario’s overall health can be increased by finding five-point heart boosts scattered throughout the land, but that’s really it from an RPG standpoint.

The world map is set up like Super Mario World, with each world having multiple levels to complete. Classic worlds like desert, snow and forest are here. They are all colorful and crisp with cool, jazzy tunes setting the mood. Most levels are surprisingly long, filled with hidden areas and secrets that had me joyfully hop everywhere and bash my hammer on everything in sight. Each level is unique, too, so it never felt like I was playing the same one twice. It’s a long game, easily topping 20 hours if you want to uncover all the secrets.

There are moments in the game, though, where the steady flow turns into a crawling pace. Tedious backtracking parts in the story become a hassle to complete. Kersti hands out useful advice to move you along, but sometimes she doesn’t. I won’t get specific, but I needed to find a special sticker to solve a puzzle and she wasn’t helping me. I started randomly talking to Toads and found one - in the main town away from the puzzle - explaining where I could find that type of item. Another part of the game I had to enter paperization mode to place a certain type of sticker on the level to continue forward, but just my luck I didn’t have one and had to leave the level, buy a sticker and go back through it dodging enemies all over again.

The Paper Mario franchise has always been a charming one for Nintendo, and while this latest addition is quite the radical change from the past, it’s still worth the trip to this crazy, two-dimensional landscape. It’s hard to put down Paper Mario: Sticker Star, even though it could use a little more depth.

3 stars out of 4

A review code for Paper Mario: Sticker Star was supplied by Nintendo for this review.

Jeff Hoard writes about video games for The Oakland Press. He can be reached at jeff.hoard@oakpress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffHoard921. His blog is www.yay4videogames.blogspot.com.