• Publisher: Nintendo
  • Release Date: Nov 11, 2012
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 69 Critics What's this?

User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 133 Ratings

  • Summary: Paper Mario: Sticker Star is an epic new adventure, starring the
    Mushroom Kingdom's most famous hero in an elaborate papercraft world. With the land packed full of stickers, Mario collect and uses them to fight off bad guys, uncover secrets, and more. Fans of the Paper Mario series will dis
    cover gameplay elements new to the franchise, while newer players will enjoy a craftastic new twist
    on their favorite Nintendo hero - only for Nintendo 3DS.
    Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 45 out of 69
  2. Negative: 1 out of 69
  1. Nov 19, 2012
    91
    Another fantastic entry in its series, and easily one of the best 3DS releases of the year. The game retains the charm and wit of previous Paper Mario titles, and its new sticker mechanic makes combat even more engaging than before.
  2. Dec 7, 2012
    86
    Paper Mario debuts in Nintendo 3DS with a very original game, which changes its traditional gameplay adding stickers to the RPG system. The result is a game as funny and humorous as in past titles, but more innovative.
  3. Feb 7, 2013
    70
    Unfortunately for it, Paper Mario: Sticker Star has to deal with being a “pretty good” entry in a series that is usually considered amongst the best games on their respective consoles. While I did have fun with it, there were times when I felt like I was just going through the motions, and very little of the innovation or character of previous entries shone through.
  4. 40
    A horrible disappointment that not only fails to capture the magic of its predecessors but seems oblivious to what made them popular in the first place.

See all 69 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 35 out of 55
  2. Negative: 13 out of 55
  1. The game was fun, beautifully designed and the RPG element is a kicker. I've never played the previous paper mario series so really I've got no complaint about "changes" and "improvement". I bought the game expecting a great Mario experience and I definitely got my money's worth. Two little things I wish were better: it could use more playable characters to enhance the RPG feel, and it probably could use a difficulty slider--the game was a tad too easy, despites the abundance of secrets and mysteries in it. Expand
  2. This game was my least favorite in the paper mario series, it is extremely hard to finish without a game guide, it doesn't communicate with the player enough, the boss battles require specific hidden thing stickers that if the player doesn't find or use in battle, they will not be able to finish the boss fight, the availability of stickers is good though, and the levels (most of them) are nicely done and sometimes pretty fun, but i dont see a use to the run away button if its a 50/50 chance to actually run away from a battle, it should be 100% if you tap A repeatedly.
    Final Score: 7.5, but there's no halfway scoring option T.T
    Expand
  3. 7
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I really don't know what to say about this game. This game can hardly even be called an RPG. The only "RPG" about it is that you meet enemies and engage combat with them in a turn-based battle. You get no experience points and when you run away from battle, the enemy disappears on the map like you actually defeated it. There is also no real point to combat other than getting coins, but those are pretty much only spent on the overpowered Things that you need to get in order to make Thing Stickers that you sometimes have to apply to the real world using your annoying sticker fairy partner's "paperize" ability. Sure, maybe you will need to buy a few mushrooms here and there but you can actually get all of these things EVERYWHERE in every level. The battles against a wave of enemies can get extremely annoying because you can't actually choose which enemy you are attacking: you will always attack the first one in the row. You need to use the Battle Spinner in order to attack enemies in the second row too, and it's extremely annoying. Bosses are unbalanced and can pretty much only be defeated by Thing Stickers. Some of them have certain weaknesses but these are never stated unless you've died about three times for not knowing something that was never hinted to. At a certain point I started to avoid combat altogether because I didn't want to waste the stickers I actually needed and either traverse previous levels to get some stickers again or return to Decalburg a billion of times in order restock on stickers(This may seem like it condradicts my previous statement but please keep in mind that this is still not a good thing no matter how you look at it.) Puzzles in the real world never have any real hints either: at a certain point in the game you have to freeze lava by pasting a certain Thing in the background. This could be a handful of Things: Shaved Ice, AIr Conditioner, Fan, etc. So yeah, it turned out to be the Air Conditioner but I only discovered that after failing numerous times with the other things it could possibly have been. There's too much trial and error like this throughout the whole game. But even with all these horrifying flaws, the game can still be fun. I had fun with the game and blasted through it quickly, but only because I had(with GameXplain's advice) watched some playthroughs a few weeks before it was released in Europe. I also have to praise the graphics: they look amazing. It's like the entire game was handcrafted and handdrawn by some sort of amazing artist: I had a lot of fun just watching the environment alone, ESPECIALLY World 4 and 5. But even then the environment is nothing that you won't find in the countless New Super Mario Bros. games: it's exactly those kind of worlds. Anyways, short summary: they could have done WAY better on pretty much everything in this game, but regardless of that it's still pretty fun and I reccommend it if you liked the previous Paper Mario games. Expand
  4. This was the worst showing for Paper Mario since release. Nintendo has removed all of the RPG, all the humour and all of the more interesting settings. Besides that, progression in the game itself is slow, with countless save/load screens and arbitrary nonsense and busywork designed to lengthen game-play in an otherwise unremarkable game. Expand

See all 55 User Reviews

Related Articles

  1. Ranked: Mario and Super Mario Games

    Ranked: Mario and Super Mario Games Image
    Published: May 20, 2010
    This weekend, Nintendo releases Mario's latest adventure, "Super Mario Galaxy 2" (Wii). It seems like the perfect time to explore the history of the Mario series, and rank the previous titles from best to worst.