Have you ever watched a show or a movie series that at first was amazing, one of the best of its kind, but then later down the road the whole thing just got worse and worse to the point where it's just beyond repair? Well that's more or less what happened with Paper Mario. After the original and Thousand year door being two of the best games I've ever played came the third entry "Super paper mario" on the wii. While this was in my opinion a great game, it was not a great paper mario game, more on that game when I actually review it. The main issue I had with SPM was that it wasn't an RPG anymore, well when sticker star was announced it was advertised as a "return to the roots" by being an RPG again, what we got though was a hefty disappointment. Right so first and foremost while Sticker star is technically an RPG (I use that term very loosely) it lacks almost all the things that made the first two Paper Mario games so great. No more badges, no more partners, you can't even level up in this game, yes an RPG game where you don't even level up. This gives you basically no incentive to fight enemies as the only thing you get from winning is a bunch of coins, coins which you use to buy things that will help you but only barely, without having the ability to level up this is hardly an RPG and it makes the game a real bore to go through. Secondly you can only fight enemies by using stickers, these stickers are things like items you can use against enemies or different moves you can use such as jumping or using your hammer, if you have no stickers you CANNOT fight enemies whatsoever and that frankly is just ridiculous. To add to this the bosses and enemies this time around are all just generic Mario enemies, nothing special like they used to be and every boss has some sort of gimmick that you have to figure out in order to defeat them, I only made it to the third boss in this game before I gave up completely but I could not for the life of me figure out how to beat this boss on my own even with all the clues the game gave me.

Now for the story, the story and characters of Paper Mario has always been a real highlight of the series but this time around there's absolutely no unique characters, first off Bowser is your main enemy and he doesn't even talk in this game like he did in previous entries, the only "partner" Mario has is this tiara whose name I can't be asked to remember as she's just incredibly annoying and other than that, that's really it. All other NPC's are just generic toads which became a staple in the series after this game and it's absolutely for the worst. I have personally given up on them ever making another great Paper Mario game, this for me was enough to stop me from ever buying one again but seeing as how the series has progressed since this game I just don't see it ever going back.