Well, it's also been posted on Mario RPG Universe, but I'll post it here too.
Well, I already played the N64 original, and I beat the Gamecube one decades ago. And now, with Paper Mario Color Splash at my disposal, what do I think of this game? Is it as bad as I imagined it would be?
Well, not exactly. It’s not a bad game, and I do feel I was a bit harsh on it. But here are my detailed thoughts on my progress/lack of progress so far…
Firstly, dang the intro is great. Seriously, if they wanted to set a really ominous scene for the new adventure, they absolutely nailed it with that intro with Peach and Toad visiting Mario, or the boat getting tossed and turned in the middle of the ocean. And while Port Prisma wasn’t as interesting, it was still a fun introduction that did as great a job of setting the scene as the intros in the earlier titles.
So onto the whole ‘game structure’ aspect. Okay, I’m only a few levels in so far, and it seems like a cross between New Super Mario Bros and Paper Mario. That’s not a bad thing, and I do like having a goal to work to at the moment, but I get a little annoyed knowing that I have to keep visiting the same short levels multiple times. Especially given how many of the Paint Stars are very close to each other. For example, Indigo Underground’s 2 exits are right next to one another, which means re-treading a significant portion of the level to get back there.
Overworld gameplay is enjoyable, and I do like hitting things with the Paint Hammer to change their colour. Getting all the spots in a level is quite a nice bit of completionist fun. Unfurling stuff is alright too, as are the puzzles given by the cutting out mechanic.
That said, I do wonder it’ll get repetitive. Yeah, only a few levels in, but the paint mechanic is even simpler than I thought it’d be. You don’t choose colours, you just hit things and it gives you either the right colour (if it needs to be coloured in) or a random one (if it doesn’t). It’s a fun mechanic, but it seems like it’d have been better as one partner mechanic of about 7.
And battle wise? Well it’s okay. Not as fun as the RPG fights, but easy and enjoyable enough regardless. I do like how there’s an actual reward for combat this time round (the whole extra paint levelling thing), so it’s more worthwhile than in Sticker Star.
The jump mechanics are great though. Love how they’re literally ‘hit A before you land on the enemy’ rather than ‘hit A button a few seconds before you land on the enemy’ like in Paper Mario on the N64. Much easier and more enjoyable to time hits here.
However, there are still issues here. For example, Arlo’s complaints of cards being slow to use is accurate, especially given how the fights are ridiculously easy and short otherwise. One or two attacks will kill pretty much everything here.
And it also has a few issues with cards and ‘scarcity’. You see, if you do well, you end up with many more cards than you need. Whereas if you run out, you’re stuck with the battle spin stuff, which is awkward and slow, and seems to reinforce a negative feedback cycle.
Okay, you’ll probably never die to an enemy (since you have a ton of health, healing items are far more powerful and enemy attacks are super easy to counter). But if you don’t have the right cards for a situation (like say, jump cards for flying enemies or hammer/iron boot cards for spiked
ones), it can leave you wasting tons of turns on the battle spinner while neither Mario nor the enemy do sod all to one another. They just need a simple hammer and jump fall-back here, that’s all.
Onto my thoughts on the early levels now…
Port Primsa: Again, fun intro, quite a nice town to mess around in too. Little small compared to Toad Town or Rogueport, but that might be a good thing given how confusing those places could get (especially the former).
Ruddy Road: Pretty fun, gives you plenty of good cards and items. Liked the chase scene too.
Cherry Lake: Mixed. I loved the look and feel of the level, but I hated finding the clothes for that ‘hero’ Toad. They’re just so easy to overlook, especially the boots stuck in between parts of the bridge. Did like how both ‘paths’ could be handled in any order, even though they both end up mandatory for early progress.
Bloo Bay Beach: Pretty enjoyable this one, and I liked the puzzles with the Five Fun Guys.
Indigo Underground: Hated this level. Why? Cause if you run out of jump stickers, those Swoopers will annoy the hell out of you. And this place gives you too many hammers and Fire Flowers, too few jump based stickers. Annoying.
Daffodil Peak: Interesting ideas, though I wasn’t a huge fan of the vertical level design in the first part. Very unnatural for a mountain, bit too New Super Mario Bros like. Fighting enemies IN the pipes was an interesting gimmick though. Wish Super Mario 3D World did that a bit more…
Chosen Toads: Neat concept this one. Nice way to get people revisiting certain areas.
Crimson Tower: The airship section was pretty neat, though a tad short. Wish there was a bigger area set in one to be honest. Tower itself felt like it had a few too many enemies, with at least 90% of my time being spent fighting pointless battles I had no practical way of avoiding. Especially given as well, once you’ve fought a few of any enemy, there’s no real point fighting them again, since paint, money and cards basically grow on trees.
Morton was an okay first boss, though absolutely trivial as hell to fight. The ‘use this Thing’ to win the fight mechanic is getting kind of old to be honest, especially when the combat is just easy in general.
Sunglow Ridge: The black paint thing was a pretty mean trick, especially when you thought you’d really be taking 36 damage a hit from it. Or something.
Loved the ‘joke’ where the sign said ‘hit this to make a bridge appear’ and it turned out it wasn’t referring to the nearby log, but the sign itself.
Chateau Chanterelle: Very easy and short level, but a nice breather after the last few. Two free mini Paint Stars? Yes please!
Mondo Woods: dang those Giant Goombas are super powerful! Nearly got destroyed when I decided not to use giant cards for once. Pretty cool concept though, loved the giant world theme the place had to it.
Marmalade Valley: Oh boy, the Chomp here was a bit annoying.Easy to avoid, but if you get hit, it's an instant game over. Don't like that aspect really, especially when the past games just had you get warped to the start of the room instead.
Kiwano Temple: God this level was a pain. Firstly, dang those spikes do a lot of damage. I mean, when I fell on them, I was expecting something like in Paper Mario 2 where you take one damage and end up on the platform you fell off from. Nope, it’s about a quarter of your health bar at that point in the game. Spikes sure did get made more powerful here!
The rolling wheel stuff gave me Mario Sunshine flashbacks, to the cubes that rotated in the secret levels. I suck at anything involving the character trying to balance on a rotating object…
Lava section with the wheel was annoying, cause hey look! If you made two mistakes, you got a game over. Would look good in a video though.
Oh, and whoever put the second mini Paint Star right under the first one can jump off a cliff. Seriously, there’s a reason we (in the Mario fan game development/ROM hacking community) say never to put a secret exit right at the end of the level. Do you know why that is? Because doing the same thing twice or more with no variation is not fun. But Intelligent Systems seem to make a habit of this in Color Splash…
So that's my thoughts on the levels so far. How about other stuff? Well...
The loading times can take a hike. That title screen seems to take way too long to load, and even parts of levels sometimes load for a minute or so. Though this might be a bit of a Wii U problem really, the console has a lot of issues with games taking forever to load anything, with Mario Kart and Smash Bros being other offenders.
Also, I swear the title screen takes forever to load as well. Either way, it seems like the code optimisation here is dreadful, since you can spend ages waiting for loading screens.
So how about humour? The one thing a lot of people say this game does really well?
Well, it’s good. I have laughed at quite a few lines and scenes already.
But I’m not sure I’d say it’s better than the humour in other Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi games. It’s not worse, but I wouldn’t say this game made me laugh ten times more than did in say, Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door or Mario & Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story or Mario & Luigi Dream Team or whatever else.
I guess you could say the humour is topical and makes jokes about current events a lot (which some people have noted). But again, that’s a
general thing with Mario RPGs. Remember Super Paper Mario and people going on internet forums and complaining about games they’d never played? Partners in Time with 1337 speak? Heck, Mario & Luigi Dream Team had jokes about blogs/social media from what I recall. It’s a consistent thing with the series. It’s why the games are so popular on social media sites, because they absolutely nail ‘internet humour’.
It's not new to this game.
Can’t say anything bad about the graphics or music. Absolutely brilliant here.
Characterisation is pretty great here, which only makes it more depressing that no one has unique designs outside the Rescue Squads, Chosen Toads, Rock Paper Wizard and Huey. So many characters who already have a memorable personality, yet don’t stand out in any real way because of the generic Toad designs.
Either way, it’s a fun game so far, but one that’s perhaps not lived up to its potential cause the battle system and character design ‘limitations’.
Updates in next post!
Well, I already played the N64 original, and I beat the Gamecube one decades ago. And now, with Paper Mario Color Splash at my disposal, what do I think of this game? Is it as bad as I imagined it would be?
Well, not exactly. It’s not a bad game, and I do feel I was a bit harsh on it. But here are my detailed thoughts on my progress/lack of progress so far…
Firstly, dang the intro is great. Seriously, if they wanted to set a really ominous scene for the new adventure, they absolutely nailed it with that intro with Peach and Toad visiting Mario, or the boat getting tossed and turned in the middle of the ocean. And while Port Prisma wasn’t as interesting, it was still a fun introduction that did as great a job of setting the scene as the intros in the earlier titles.
So onto the whole ‘game structure’ aspect. Okay, I’m only a few levels in so far, and it seems like a cross between New Super Mario Bros and Paper Mario. That’s not a bad thing, and I do like having a goal to work to at the moment, but I get a little annoyed knowing that I have to keep visiting the same short levels multiple times. Especially given how many of the Paint Stars are very close to each other. For example, Indigo Underground’s 2 exits are right next to one another, which means re-treading a significant portion of the level to get back there.
Overworld gameplay is enjoyable, and I do like hitting things with the Paint Hammer to change their colour. Getting all the spots in a level is quite a nice bit of completionist fun. Unfurling stuff is alright too, as are the puzzles given by the cutting out mechanic.
That said, I do wonder it’ll get repetitive. Yeah, only a few levels in, but the paint mechanic is even simpler than I thought it’d be. You don’t choose colours, you just hit things and it gives you either the right colour (if it needs to be coloured in) or a random one (if it doesn’t). It’s a fun mechanic, but it seems like it’d have been better as one partner mechanic of about 7.
And battle wise? Well it’s okay. Not as fun as the RPG fights, but easy and enjoyable enough regardless. I do like how there’s an actual reward for combat this time round (the whole extra paint levelling thing), so it’s more worthwhile than in Sticker Star.
The jump mechanics are great though. Love how they’re literally ‘hit A before you land on the enemy’ rather than ‘hit A button a few seconds before you land on the enemy’ like in Paper Mario on the N64. Much easier and more enjoyable to time hits here.
However, there are still issues here. For example, Arlo’s complaints of cards being slow to use is accurate, especially given how the fights are ridiculously easy and short otherwise. One or two attacks will kill pretty much everything here.
And it also has a few issues with cards and ‘scarcity’. You see, if you do well, you end up with many more cards than you need. Whereas if you run out, you’re stuck with the battle spin stuff, which is awkward and slow, and seems to reinforce a negative feedback cycle.
Okay, you’ll probably never die to an enemy (since you have a ton of health, healing items are far more powerful and enemy attacks are super easy to counter). But if you don’t have the right cards for a situation (like say, jump cards for flying enemies or hammer/iron boot cards for spiked
ones), it can leave you wasting tons of turns on the battle spinner while neither Mario nor the enemy do sod all to one another. They just need a simple hammer and jump fall-back here, that’s all.
Onto my thoughts on the early levels now…
Port Primsa: Again, fun intro, quite a nice town to mess around in too. Little small compared to Toad Town or Rogueport, but that might be a good thing given how confusing those places could get (especially the former).
Ruddy Road: Pretty fun, gives you plenty of good cards and items. Liked the chase scene too.
Cherry Lake: Mixed. I loved the look and feel of the level, but I hated finding the clothes for that ‘hero’ Toad. They’re just so easy to overlook, especially the boots stuck in between parts of the bridge. Did like how both ‘paths’ could be handled in any order, even though they both end up mandatory for early progress.
Bloo Bay Beach: Pretty enjoyable this one, and I liked the puzzles with the Five Fun Guys.
Indigo Underground: Hated this level. Why? Cause if you run out of jump stickers, those Swoopers will annoy the hell out of you. And this place gives you too many hammers and Fire Flowers, too few jump based stickers. Annoying.
Daffodil Peak: Interesting ideas, though I wasn’t a huge fan of the vertical level design in the first part. Very unnatural for a mountain, bit too New Super Mario Bros like. Fighting enemies IN the pipes was an interesting gimmick though. Wish Super Mario 3D World did that a bit more…
Chosen Toads: Neat concept this one. Nice way to get people revisiting certain areas.
Crimson Tower: The airship section was pretty neat, though a tad short. Wish there was a bigger area set in one to be honest. Tower itself felt like it had a few too many enemies, with at least 90% of my time being spent fighting pointless battles I had no practical way of avoiding. Especially given as well, once you’ve fought a few of any enemy, there’s no real point fighting them again, since paint, money and cards basically grow on trees.
Morton was an okay first boss, though absolutely trivial as hell to fight. The ‘use this Thing’ to win the fight mechanic is getting kind of old to be honest, especially when the combat is just easy in general.
Sunglow Ridge: The black paint thing was a pretty mean trick, especially when you thought you’d really be taking 36 damage a hit from it. Or something.
Loved the ‘joke’ where the sign said ‘hit this to make a bridge appear’ and it turned out it wasn’t referring to the nearby log, but the sign itself.
Chateau Chanterelle: Very easy and short level, but a nice breather after the last few. Two free mini Paint Stars? Yes please!
Mondo Woods: dang those Giant Goombas are super powerful! Nearly got destroyed when I decided not to use giant cards for once. Pretty cool concept though, loved the giant world theme the place had to it.
Marmalade Valley: Oh boy, the Chomp here was a bit annoying.Easy to avoid, but if you get hit, it's an instant game over. Don't like that aspect really, especially when the past games just had you get warped to the start of the room instead.
Kiwano Temple: God this level was a pain. Firstly, dang those spikes do a lot of damage. I mean, when I fell on them, I was expecting something like in Paper Mario 2 where you take one damage and end up on the platform you fell off from. Nope, it’s about a quarter of your health bar at that point in the game. Spikes sure did get made more powerful here!
The rolling wheel stuff gave me Mario Sunshine flashbacks, to the cubes that rotated in the secret levels. I suck at anything involving the character trying to balance on a rotating object…
Lava section with the wheel was annoying, cause hey look! If you made two mistakes, you got a game over. Would look good in a video though.
Oh, and whoever put the second mini Paint Star right under the first one can jump off a cliff. Seriously, there’s a reason we (in the Mario fan game development/ROM hacking community) say never to put a secret exit right at the end of the level. Do you know why that is? Because doing the same thing twice or more with no variation is not fun. But Intelligent Systems seem to make a habit of this in Color Splash…
So that's my thoughts on the levels so far. How about other stuff? Well...
The loading times can take a hike. That title screen seems to take way too long to load, and even parts of levels sometimes load for a minute or so. Though this might be a bit of a Wii U problem really, the console has a lot of issues with games taking forever to load anything, with Mario Kart and Smash Bros being other offenders.
Also, I swear the title screen takes forever to load as well. Either way, it seems like the code optimisation here is dreadful, since you can spend ages waiting for loading screens.
So how about humour? The one thing a lot of people say this game does really well?
Well, it’s good. I have laughed at quite a few lines and scenes already.
But I’m not sure I’d say it’s better than the humour in other Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi games. It’s not worse, but I wouldn’t say this game made me laugh ten times more than did in say, Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door or Mario & Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story or Mario & Luigi Dream Team or whatever else.
I guess you could say the humour is topical and makes jokes about current events a lot (which some people have noted). But again, that’s a
general thing with Mario RPGs. Remember Super Paper Mario and people going on internet forums and complaining about games they’d never played? Partners in Time with 1337 speak? Heck, Mario & Luigi Dream Team had jokes about blogs/social media from what I recall. It’s a consistent thing with the series. It’s why the games are so popular on social media sites, because they absolutely nail ‘internet humour’.
It's not new to this game.
Can’t say anything bad about the graphics or music. Absolutely brilliant here.
Characterisation is pretty great here, which only makes it more depressing that no one has unique designs outside the Rescue Squads, Chosen Toads, Rock Paper Wizard and Huey. So many characters who already have a memorable personality, yet don’t stand out in any real way because of the generic Toad designs.
Either way, it’s a fun game so far, but one that’s perhaps not lived up to its potential cause the battle system and character design ‘limitations’.
Updates in next post!
