Topic: Paper Mario: Color Splash - OT

While i havent' played Sticker Star, I think the complaint was mainly geared toward Tower Power Pokey (many HPs) and Gooper Blooper (the ink actually stunned him, lowering his defense and making him miss attacks for three turns in a row). Actually, I was forgetting Cheep Cheep, that required the Hook.

My main complaint for Sticker Star was were all the Thing Stickers were located. I only played about halfway through the game because I got tired of looking around for Thing Stickers that were way out of the way of your current goal. Most of the locations were so random to me, like the fish hook. (In the middle of the woods behind a secret door.. really?) And needing to find the Thing Stickers in order to proceed only made matters worse...

Luckily though, it looks like Color Splash is fixing that problem, with needing the mandatory Thing Stickers to beat the level. Just for that reason, I'm willing to give this game a chance. I'm also hoping Paper Luigi gets a semi-big role in the game! Probably not, but a Luigi fan can hope!

The only boss were Things stickers were mandatory was Cheap Cheap.

It's nearly impossible to beat Blooper, Pokey, or Bowser without Thing Stickers.

With King Goomba and Ice Bowser it makes the battle much easier but is still totally possible without them if you look for Hp Ups before hand.

Petey Piranha was the only major boss throughout the game that didn't have a major 'Thing' weakness.

That's from my recent experience, I played through the game about two weeks ago. However, Morton is very worrying. 48 damage without guarding? That's way too much to make the 'Thing' cards feel optional, which Sticker Star at least sometimes did.

@Seacliff While I too suspect that Thing Cards will be made as mandatory as possible in boss battles, remember this image:

The max HP here are more than in Sticker Star.

Ok, new video of the gameplay:

This time we have an inn instead of the classic ghost house, which might confirm what the map showed, that the developers are trying some new tropes for the settings.
Well, at least they understood that Toads and enemies can wear different kind of outfits...
unfortunately, not much is seen of the gameplay, which in this location might be quite interesting (in Sticker Star the Enigmansion was probably one of the most interesting parts of the game).

Well, it looks really good. The graphics are pretty stunning.

Couldn't help but smile after they refrenced a certain game.

ALRIGHT. I will give the game this: the Inn looks great visually, and if it's anything like the mansion from the last game, it could actually be one of the few moments that actually feels like a Paper Mario game. Still wish that there were characters other than Toads, though...at least they're wearing something different, so I guess that's an improvement.
Also, can I just talk about this for a moment?

...Good God, this is stupid.

I'm starting to think that stripping the game of what made the others more complicated and adding visuals like that that the game is meant to appeal specifically to really young children.

Like really young.

I don't know man. The pig sure knows how to dance, and I actually think it's pretty funny.

This. I especially love the way the pig twitches his nose at the beginning.

Oh god. It's Sticker Star's Turkey all over again! XD

Reminds me of a lot of kids cartoons now. The ones that think that being 'random' makes everything hilarious.

I mean, it's a somewhat amusing sequence, but it feels... kind of out of place here.

Shows like Steven Universe and Adventure Time are what Nintendo usually strives to do: Appealing to children cuz of their colors and cute characters at first glance, but has many things that appeal to adults as well. That's how the Paper Mario franchise started. Now it's more like Uncle Grandpa. Colors everywhere, random, meant to be cute only for children. Not that it's necessarily bad, but it really sucks considering what it used to be.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Seems like they're trying to aim for the social media audience too, what with all the memes and stuff.

Does the "the memes and stuff" apply to just things in this game like the break-dancing pig (Speaking of which, is there something I'm missing here? What about this is so funny?), or Nintendo's recent attempts to be "hip" in general? Because, yeah, that needs to stop. See, when someone like, say, the Sonic Twitter account do memes, it's funny! But when Nintendo does it, it's actually a bit painful to watch. But enough about that. If part of the reason for the dumbing down of the series is to appeal to children, then that's stupid. Children are not idiots. They can handle more than this. The older games proved this. Some modern cartoons like what @Operative mentioned prove this. You should not have to completely dumb things down and devolve to "LOL! SO RANDOM!!!!XD" humor for children.

Mario certainly looked impressed by its moves.

He sure do.

Anyways, I don't think a bit of randomness is that bad. As long as they don't overdo it and it's not too out of place and all.

Paper games in the past had out-of-place random stuff too.

And pigs.

There appears to be a mechanic where you can instantly defeat enemies on the field via first attack if you're strong enough... the time Mario got in an actual battle with the Scaredy Rats the attacks were massive overkill.