Paper Mario: Color Splash

[Fawfulthegreat64]

So this is a thing that happened. I know everyone hates it... I kinda do too. I was hoping for a game with Thousand Year Door mechanics and a story even better than Super Paper Mario's... not Sticker Star 2. But anyway I thought it should have a thread so here we are. What are your hopes for this game? I personally hope it has a story that doesn't bore me to death, and a new villain or returning villain that isn't Bowser. But I'll accept Bowser as the villain if he has Kammy Koopa with him, as she was the original Paper Kamek. I had no problem with Sticker Star's mechanics, though I preferred TTYD's. So the card mechanic doesn't seem that bad, I'm just afraid the story will also take after SS, which would be very bad.

I hope it at least acknowledges Super Paper Mario in some way, as that's the only one that didn't even get a character namedrop in Sticker Star. Perhaps Count Bleck could appear with Tippi for a cameo. Of course I want to also see Mario's partners from the originals appear, preferably all of them. In the flesh, not some shitty namedrop or less. In Paper Jam I wanted interaction between X-Nauts and Shroobs, but I guess that didn't happen, so any appearance of Shroobs can be kissed goodbye. At the very least have some original PM enemies like Clefts and Clubbas.

TL;DR: Please for the love of Grambi, reference the other Paper Mario games besides Sticker Star.

[Dolphman]

Never followed the Paper Mario games, so I can't say what I think of this one really. I did see the trailer but I'm not sure about it.
The main Nintendo YouTube channel seems to be very afraid to upload it because of the savage fanbase.

I just don't understand Shigeru Miyamoto's obsession with keeping the characters flatter than Mickey Mouse (Before the 2013 cartoon, that is)
Hear me out on this one. Everyone agrees Mickey became too bland starting with the 1940s and the decades afterwards.
Mario has very little personality compared to the famous mouse, despite being more popular than him nowadays.
Because aren't we sick of the same formula in every main game? 3D world got praise for making Princess Peach playable again, did it not?
They also have so many characters that go the Chuck Cunningham treatment, that they really need to bring some of them back.
I'd kill for a Mario game that brought back Wart. Who doesn't love a bubble-spitting frog monster who's afraid of vegetables?

[Koopaul]

Didnt you hear? Miyamoto's vision is more important than what people actually want.

The guy has so much respect that no one is going to challenge his ideas. Even if they are terrible. And sometimes they are.

[Fawfulthegreat64]

I agree, and it's a shame. He has many good ideas, but removing the soul of the Paper Mario series is not one of them. I hope one day I can interview Miyamoto. One of the first questions I'd ask him is "What is your opinion on original characters and story in Paper Mario games?"

On a side note, why does everyone praise Paper Jam? It pretty much did the exact same thing Sticker Star did, except with proper RPG gameplay. I see it as a huge waste of a crossover between two series that spawned such great characters as Fawful, Count Bleck, Antasma and Dimentio. I realize most of them are kinda... dead... but crossovers don't typically follow canon, and for the Paper characters they can simply come out of a page before they died.

But anyways. I did a video on Color Splash a while back where I discuss my initial opinions on it.




And here is a tribute to the first 3 Paper Mario games.




I really hope Color Splash is good, but from what we have seen so far it doesn't really seem like that'll be the case.

[NICKtendo DS]

I like Paper Jam. It's by no means amazing, but it's fun to see how the paper world interacts with the real world and Paper Mario reminding everyone that he's made of paper, with the folding and the copying.

I also didn't think Sticker Star was bad. It was mediocre, but I love how everything looked paper and cardboard-like. That kind of graphics in HD is one thing for me to look forward to in Color Splash. I think I'll give it a chance. Assuming its an improvement over Sticker Star, I might enjoy it.

I'll be honest here. As die hard of a fan that I am and was first playing the game as a kid, I was more excited for familiar characters than the original ones in Paper Mario. Blooper was one of my favorite bosses, believe it or not. I do prefer the more diverse Toads in the first two games over the copy-pasta recolors in the later games. I'm also not a fan of the abstract, overly simple characters and enemies in Super Paper Mario. It was supposed to be a game about travelling through different dimensions, but apparently only the Mario universe gave a shit about character design. Some of the environments were nice though. Goes for all the Paper Mario games by the way. Environments like the old games in the style of the new, a man-child can dream.

Despite the fact that I'm excusing Color Splash here, I didn't ask for it. Give me a proper entry, like Paper Mario 64 and TTYD any day over any of Nintendo's wacky experiments (and their sequels).

[Zero Kirby]

I've always felt like Sticker Star was a perfectly fine idea hampered by extremely poor execution.

The cards thing in Colour Splash reminds me of when I tried to make a deck-building card game based off of Sticker Star. (I should pick that back up, actually...)

As long as Colour Splash fixes the mistakes that Sticker Star made, I think it'll be a great game. But only time will tell. Nintendo has a tendency to overcorrect on or just ignore their mistakes.

[Fawfulthegreat64]

Well if it wants to fix the mistakes of SS it needs to be completely overhauled from what we've seen so far, including giving unique features, tattle descriptions and names to each generic Toad seen in the trailer. Along with returning FP, leveling up and badges, things that are pretty much confirmed to NOT be in the game. Also it needs to have Kammy Koopa in it, especially if Bowser is going to be the main villain again. Her absense in Super Paper Mario was tolerable since Bowser was a playable character and it would've been hard to implement her into the plot. But Sticker Star literally replaced her with Paper Kamek, and Paper Jam kept Paper Kamek instead of making normal Kamek interact with Kammy. Bring back Kammy for this one, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. And while you're at it, bring back also the Merlon clan and Whacka.

[Jermungandr]

I honestly think they might have a good game on their hands if they just dropped the RPG battle elements altogether and just focused on making a game about Paper Mario exploring the world using his color-powered hammer to change the environment. The overworld visuals on their own are really good.

[Fawfulthegreat64]

I'd be fine with that as long as the story is just as good as the first 3 games.

[Zero Kirby]

Well if it wants to fix the mistakes of SS it needs to be completely overhauled from what we've seen so far, including giving unique features, tattle descriptions and names to each generic Toad seen in the trailer. Along with returning FP, leveling up and badges, things that are pretty much confirmed to NOT be in the game. Also it needs to have Kammy Koopa in it, especially if Bowser is going to be the main villain again. Her absense in Super Paper Mario was tolerable since Bowser was a playable character and it would've been hard to implement her into the plot. But Sticker Star literally replaced her with Paper Kamek, and Paper Jam kept Paper Kamek instead of making normal Kamek interact with Kammy. Bring back Kammy for this one, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. And while you're at it, bring back also the Merlon clan and Whacka.

I meant gameplay-wise. Most of what you described outside of FP, Levelling, and Badges is just fluff.

And even then, Sticker Star could've done just fine without them. Trust me, Sticker Star's biggest problem was not that each and every single stupid Toad didn't have a stupid pun for a name ending in "T."

The main problem with Sticker Star is its circular combat. You fight with stickers. Why fight? To get coins. What are coins for? Buying stickers. What are stickers for? Fighting and solving puzzles. What do you do those for? Getting coins. What are coins for... repeat ad nauseum. It's kind of pointless.

Instead, have players spend coins during battle to purchase stickers from a stock you build up over the game. You find a particular sticker in the overworld, they're like badges, you have a magic sticker book and you spend coins to buy "copies" of those stickers to use from that point onwards. That way you aren't depleting your inventory every time you get into a minor scrap. Now, getting coins for battling isn't so bad as long as the ratio of coins gained to coins lost isn't too severe. Would levelling up as a reward be nice also? Sure, but this fixes the biggest problem with the game for me. It doesn't need badges and it doesn't need Flower Points. It just needed smarter design.

What I hope with the cards mechanic is that you can actually "build a deck" where using cards doesn't mean they vanish into the ether. Finding more cards means you can build bigger or better decks. So it'll be kind of like ol' Chain of Memories except turn-based. I'm okay with that, frankly.

[Jermungandr]

My biggest annoyance with the battle system as it was shown so far, is the fact that you have to hold the cards down to "charge" them with color before flicking them into play. Do they not realize how excruciatingly slow that's going to make combat?

[Fawfulthegreat64]

So as many of you know, some people have the game now due to Nintendo's accidental release of it for a few hours. And let me just say this game has exceeded my low expectations, while I'm still disappointed that Huey is the only OC, pretty much everything else was actually decent. I think this game might actually be underrated.

Big spoilers in here, so don't click if you don't want them.

Bowser and Luigi both talk, and the final boss is kinda Bowser but kinda not. He's not in his right mind and seems to be controlled by the black paint. This is evident when you drain the black paint from his face and he then snaps out of it for a few seconds to ask why Mario is there. Then the black paint regains control and makes him say "Ignore what I just said." Also Luigi doesn't have a big role till the last stage, where he takes you there on Rainbow Road in a kart... no joke.

Huey sacrifices himself, as expected, but in a much sadder way than Kersti. And he doesn't come back until you 100% the game, in which case he falls from the sky, seemingly lifeless.

[Sengir]

im p sure like every M&L final boss is a Kinda Bowser (Bowletta, Shrowser, Dark Bowser, Dreamy Bowser, Shiny RoboBowser) so its interesting to see the trend jump to the PM series

like with Sticker Star, the graphics and world design look great but the characters are boring