Paper Mario: Color Splash Review

Originally I wasn't too convinced on if I would even play this game since I really did not like Sticker Star, but overall this game was good. If you want my TL;DR look at the bottom, but if you are interested I will keep my breakdown spoiler-free. The first thing I will note is that I will be making a lot of comparisons to Sticker Star since it is quite obvious that this game is a direct sequel to Sticker Star. In fact the mechanics are so similar to Sticker Star that I actually kind of consider this game a Sticker Star 1.5 more than a Sticker Star 2, but despite that, a lot of positive changes were made. Anyway, let's get into this.
	The core elements I will break this game into is the battle system, the puzzles, and the writing. This is a little different than what I did for Paper Jam since I stuck to strictly gameplay for that write up, but the writing of this game is too essential to be left as a side-note.

Battle System:
The battle system in Color Splash is honestly lacking. Sometimes its good but most of the time its not. There are quite a few changes from Sticker Star but not all of them were good, so it doesn't end up being that much better than Sticker Star's. If you are familiar with Sticker Star's battle system here are a list of some good and bad changes from it:
Good:
Hammer Scrap System/Paint System (New Entirely)
Number of Attacks/ Battle Spin
Better Boss Battles
Bad:
Running
Menu
Kamek
HP

	Okay so the Hammer Scrap/Paint System adds a lot more incentive to doing battles which is a huge change from Sticker Star. Sticker Star had a huge problem of there actually being incentive to avoid as many enemies as possible. This does certainly help, but its not significant enough to make you want to actively seek out fights. You still don't actually want to get in battles most of the time, but once you get into them, you do get things out of it. The system is supposed to have you do battles so you can use a lot more cards but it doesn't do it very well. Unfortunately, this is never really enforced enough so that you feel like you need hammer scraps/paint, until maybe late game but even then, there are ways around it. What this boils down to is that you still don't feel like you need the battles but they don't feel entirely useless, which is an improvement.

	The number of attacks you get is upgraded as you progress through the game instead of only being affected by the battle spinner. The battle spinner was changed to receive a card of a random lot, but its not difficult to get a specific card that you want. It also does not cost too much to use. It is more of a last resort thing instead of a must use on bosses from Sticker Star to get in a decent amount of attacks.

	The boss battles are much better in Color Splash. While you still need specific things to complete a lot of the bosses like in Sticker Star there are at least other parts of each boss fights where you feel like you actually get to duke it out with the boss. There is still the puzzle element of needing the things, but it is much easier to know what you will need for each boss compared to Sticker Star where you just had to guess what was going to work.

	The running in this game is horrible. It is not a good option to use in a fight. You are much better off just killing encounters once you get them. It is honestly really frustrating being unable to run from fights until you do it 2-3 times. It seems like this is supposed to be an incentive to kill enemies but it actually makes you want to avoid getting into encounters if you can. I actually think if running wasn't just random it may have helped give more incentive to do fights.

	The battle menu in this game is not good. When you have a game that is completely item based it would make sense to have a menu at least categorize the items right? For some reason they decided to literally throw everything together in one row to navigate through and force you to use touch controls to navigate it. Touch controls would be fine if it worked right but it is very easy to mess up a menu by accidentally grabbing and moving around cards when you don't want to.

	Kamek is now more annoying than ever. The flip-flops in Sticker Star were kind of annoying but I actually miss them compared to what Kamek can do now. He can limit you to a certain number of cards in your inventory while also blinding you as to what they are. I don't think I have to explain how bad that is. At least I think he is mostly scripted?

	For some reason damage numbers for enemies was removed. It is minor, but if the numbers were in Sticker Star why remove them?

With all these changes, the battle system only ends up being slightly better, in my opinion. Battles are slightly more fun.

Puzzles:
This game does a good job with puzzles for the most part. This is a huge improvement of Sticker Star. Sticker Star actually has some of the worst puzzles out of any game I have played. In Sticker Star the puzzles lack direction to the point where it is very easy to get stuck multiple times in the game and it gets to the point where the game stops being fun. In this game the puzzles are usually just good enough to not be too obvious while also not being too unforgiving if you get stuck. Usually NPCs are around near puzzles to offer you some help. As for puzzles that require things, there is a specific NPC you can talk to akin to fortune tellers from the first three games. With that being said, the puzzles are not really that exciting or particularly fun, they are okay.

Writing:
In terms of story this game is kind of a cross between Paper Mario 64 and Sticker Star. Simply it boils down to collect stars and beat Bowser. In order to get each Star though there is a sort of a mini plot involved. It is not to the degree of PM64 where each Chapter is its own story, but its not as bland as Sticker Star having mostly only themed areas. Some stars have more story attached than others. The dialogue is amazing in this game. Some of the cutscenes and dialogue in this game can at some points carry the rest of the game.

A few other things on the side: The OST is amazing, although this is true for all Mario RPGs. The graphics and art style are amazing.

*TL;DR
Final Ratings:

Battle System- 5/10
Puzzles- 6/10
Writing- 10/10

Total: 7/10
This game is enjoyable and is worth playing. This game made a lot of improvements compared to Sticker Star to make it much more fun. Unfortunately since it uses the same core mechanics it still retains some of the problems Sticker Star has.

P.S. I figured I'd show a comparison to how I rate Sticker Star:

Battle System- 4/10
Puzzles- 3/10
Writing- 5/10

Total: 4/10