Quick Look: Paper Mario: Color Splash

This isn't a real game.

Can't wait to see how this tire fire followed the tire fire that was Paper Mario: Sticker Star

Edit: This game's garbage seems the exact same as Sticker Star's garbage. What a bummer

it looks so vibrant and charming, how can it be bad? i should probably play the thousand year door first anyway.

The paint can did nothing wrong.

The original Paper Mario and Thousand Year Door are honest-to-goodness RPGs with a lot of depth and great storytelling. Definitely finish those first. The third in the series, Super Paper Mario, loses a lot of those RPG mechanics but still has a great plot.

After Super Paper Mario, there was some sort of internal decision at Nintendo to almost completely gut the Paper Mario series of RPG elements because they already had the Mario and Luigi series on handhelds for that. So since then they've just been weird little platformers with light role-playing elements like HP and an inventory.

I highly recommend this video by Arlo on YouTube for a quick rundown of just how flat the Paper Mario series has become - no pun intended.

Fuckin' Toads.

With every iteration, this series gets further from what I really want out of a Paper Mario game. The visuals in this make my heart break, because they would be better served by a more traditional RPG

So sad to see my most beloved franchise die.

These new mario rpgs keep making me sad :( Even the m&l games have turned into boring 'My first rpg: bare-bones slogfest edition’ .... Maybe Im just misremembering how good those first few m&l and paper marios were though.....

The visuals in this are soooo great! Goshdarn!

Edit: That is totally splatoons paint tech.

At this point most of this series is a bummer

I really like the music in this game.

Yay, Sticker Star HD.

Screw you Nintendo.

Man that looks so depressing. Sticker Star was such a trash fire, shame they decided to double down on trying to reinvent the wheel. They had the best combat system in the RPG space in TTYD, it's really a super bummer to use the worst combat system for this and Sticker Star.

The brilliance of those games came from the simple fact that you always could do the math in your head whether you could kill an enemy. You have 4 damage, your partner has 3, the enemy has 7 health. Perfect. Or you could do a Star Storm, that'll do a flat 7 to everyone and end the fight. Worth it if there's enough enemies that killing them one by one would take too long. They replaced that brilliant system with one predicated on randomly flashy attacks that would be hard to do the math on even if they did give you the numbers which they don't. Awful.

If you have a Gamecube or a Wii and can find it play Thousand Year Door. There's a chapter where you become a pro wrestler. There's another where you solve murder mysteries on a train. It's one of the best games of all time.

Man, could that Arlo guy be any more melodramatic?

@visualizer: I bet you havent watched any of his other videos.

I never beat paper mario a thousand year door, still have a save at the last boss.

TheMasterDS' post really made me want to replay it again. Havent played it since release. Still have it. Gonna do it.

Lastly,having seen the whole quicklook I think I'd rather play this then more of mario&luigi in sleepyland.

The worst thing about this game is that the more I watch it the more I want it because it is incredibly charming. Really, even though this game is taking the Sticker Star style again, it actually looks pretty great. Like, the writing is some of the best I have seen in a Paper Mario, and everything about the game pretty much oozes tons of charm.

That card stuff seems like it might be a bummer :/ this game seems to have a fairly positive reception at outlets I've been looking at, so maybe if I can find it on sale I might give ot a shot ?

At some point, you need to judge the game for what it is and not just be upset that it isn't Thousand Year Door. Something can be different and even not as good, but also not bad. I am seeing multiple comments saying its a garbage fire, or listing all these great scenarios that don't exist in this game that were in other games; both of these are just false. Game is resting at a 79 on Metacritic with no negative reviews, so it certainly isn't "garbage" by any measurement.

If you were to look at some of the said reviews, you will see there is a lot of variety; you are doing things such as solving crimes or are the center of a three ring circus. It is the expected high level of writing and it is bursting with variety in both its setting and objectives. GameXplain hated Sticker Star for the same reasons a lot of you in this thread did, but they were glowing about Color Splash and give a lot of reasons to back it up. I 100% understand why people were upset when this was revealed, but it seems like the game deserves better than the thousands of dislikes it's reveal got following the Nintendo Direct. This is not the Paper Mario that will satisfy everyone's nostalgia, but people should at least be willing to give it a chance for what it is. - J

@moregrammarplz: problem being it seems hard to get a copy nowadays. i even had one at a point! (sold it though :( )

@lestephan: This is the first I've ever heard of him. And I mean hey I'm not going to defend or justify Nintendo's direction with the last few Paper Mario games because I don't really care for them either. But the way some people get way over dramatic about stuff like this just kinda makes me cringe.

I can't believe they doubled down on the whole "limited resources" thing after Sticker Star wasn't recieved all that well.

Oh well, I guess Mario and Luigi are the "RPG" games now. The first 2 paper marios were phenomenal though.

Only website I have seen that is overly negative about this game. Everywhere else is very positive. Getting my copy.

This game is significantly better than Sticker Star. It's still not an RPG but it's pretty fantastic anyway.

Kinda surprised Dan hates the combat so much, battles are pretty short and you get hammer upgrades from them so it becomes a relatively simple leveling system (you also get coins to buy more cards, which Dan doesn't seem to use his coins for.)

Even without that they use the Paper stuff in really smart ways and it's really funny.

Also it looks gorgeous, Nintendo should do a remake of TTYD on this engine.

Man all Mario music has such a "royalty-free" vibe nowadays. Think of how much better the music for Super Mario RPG was! It's just so generic now. New smb, 3D world, and this all sound the same. Seems like they just stopped caring at some point.

@visualizer: you still didnt go look did you? I couldnt agree more with you lol.

Looked like you had to follow that toad and duck under the chain chomp on the ground level.

I wish they would get rid of this sticker/card battle system. At least you gain some form of experience points this time.
Sticker Star was largely a pointless game.

Played through Sticker Star recently.

I can accept the argument that people prefer the previous games (...of course! TTYD was a masterpiece!). But judging it on its own I didn't think Sticker Star was that bad. There were two poorly thought-out aspects of it: limiting the capacity of the album so severely at the start of the game (such that you're very quickly forced to do management and discard stickers that you didn't need), and making it a chore to replenish "things" (it would have been better to just have the things separately from stickers and have some other system to keep you from abusing them).

Battle itself is not so bad, of course it is different in character from a traditional RPG-style system, but complaints like "I have to waste my good stickers on trash mobs" ring hollow to me...basically I'd respond "you're playing it wrong". I thought the variety of stickers & things was actually pretty cool, and you only need to battle those mobs if you want unique stickers or feel like raising money (which you can totally do if you think tactically...).

Now, it seems like Color Splash addresses some of the worst parts of Sticker Star, so I'm looking forward to it. That doesn't mean this game is for everyone (clearly it's not for Dan) but "garbage" is totally a mischaracterization.

Nintendo once again finds it fit to remind me that Thousand Year Door is a goddamn achievement. That game is right up there with Legend of the Seven Stars. If anyone hasn't played it and is interested in getting into the Paper Mario series: play that shit, not this.

Holy shit this looks fantastic!

@hyltonwarburton Nintendo has been doing the paper thing since SNES. Stealing color? deblob did it before TearAway.

I finished Dream Team, i don't want to play a Mario game ever again.

Time to listen to Dan rage!

Really disappointing to see this game make the same mistakes Sticker Star did.

The fact that Nintendo never made a sequel to Paper Mario Thousand Year Door is depressing. Especially since the Mario and Luigi series at their peak were far inferior to Paper Mario at its peak. If that is not bad enough even the Mario and Luigi games seem to be going downhill fast.

Not that it matters Nintendo seems to be tone deaf they released tons of sub par entries to their major franchises this gen. Hope the NX washes off the terrible taste the Wii U left but its not looking good at all. :(

I liked Sticker Star so this is a definite buy for me. I'm happy to see that they've kept a similar variety of level objectives so you're never sure whether you're going to get a sprawling area to explore, a smaller puzzle-focused challenge or some weird minigame thing.

Despite tending to hoard consumables in most games I never found it a problem with stickers as you earn them faster than you can spend them and because of the inventory limit you'll be throwing weak ones away if you don't use them in battle. The combat in general wasn't too deep, but it was fine considering you could easily avoid most enemies if you got tired of fighting a particular type.

My only big complaint about PMSS was needing certain 'thing' stickers to beat the bosses but not knowing until you actually go and fight them. Stupid bit of design but it wasn't a huge problem for me to look up a boss FAQ so I knew what to bring. Couldn't tell from the QL but hopefully it isn't the same in this game.

So charming, and cute.

Its a pity the combat does look tedious.

Really disappointed to see this has the same problem as Sticker Star with the combat being largely pointless and just a hindrance to your progress. I was hoping this would be kind of a return to form for Paper Mario, but it looks like this is just another entry to pass on.

@zombieclem: alongside you, I thought sticker star wasn't that bad. I am surprised people had issues with the "limited resources" aspect of the game. The stickers were actually something that I thought was interesting spin on the combat. Usually in RPGs I stick to the handful of things I find purely useful and everything else is just cruft. The fact that I was forced to try new things made for some creative battles.

The whole needing a specific sticker to fight certain bosses gave the game more of an "adventure game" sorta feel to it. I'd almost rather refer to Sticker Star as an adventure game with light RPG elements. I actually found it a very refreshing change from the original formula. And M&L sorta carried the torch past those first couple games, so it makes sense that they might want to switch it up a bit.

True, this is all a large deviation from the original games which I really really liked. Did I like Sticker Star as much? Not really, but I definitely found it compelling enough to finish which is more than I can say for most RPG styled games.

I love the look of this game.

Paper Mario must be burnt to the ground so it may rise again from the ash... Game looks visually amazing, but I can't look past the continuing departure from 1 and 2, personally.

This is one of the best art styles I have seen in a game. I might get it for that alone. The combat looks bad, but not as bad as I thought it would be.

Wow, they learned NOTHING from Sticker Star.

First Paper Mario I'll actually skip :(

You gotta squeeze the bone to get that hot bone juice.

I'm currently playing Stick Star, and while some aspects are annoying, I don't hate it. However, it looks like they took the annoying battle mechanics from Sticker Star and made them far worse. No thanks!

I absolutely hated Sticker Star, so I'm sure I will hate this too.

It felt like a bad adventure game since they took out every single RPG mechanic. I also can't stand how they shied away from interesting designs for the NPCs and enemies. Having played about half of Sticker Star before dropping it for something better, I'll just completely skip this one.

@artmaddox: lol, the music in this game is extremely pleasant and dips between nice background stuff and very catchy. Plus contextual audio design is still top class here from Nintendo. Mariokart 8's OST, around 95% of Nintendoland's OST, and the orchestrated bits heard thus far from Breath of the Wild are just three quick and easy examples to point to in terms of their theme composition still being fantastic

Let's give that bone a squeeze!

@moregrammarplz:That's a pretty uninformed video. The writing and world is as strong in Color Splash as in the first three games. The battle system is way too basic, yes. But I always found the amazing writing to be the core of why I love this series and that aspect hasn't changed.

I was fine with Super Paper Mario, the idea of change itself isn't what bugs me. It's the fact that they doubled down on Sticker Star's combat system that bugs me. The "papercraft" look is fun to look at but it needs to stop being tied to gameplay I don't like for me to get all the way into it. Played Sticker star to completion, really not down for more of that.