I was very excited for Paper Mario: Sticker Star. But it seemed with every new detail and every new screenshot that found its way to me, I grew less and less excited. An RPG with no party members? An RPG with no experience points? I maintained faith that the fine folks at Intelligent Systems knew what they were doing, but... what were they doing? I couldn't fathom why they would bother to retain RPG elements at all if they were going to be so willing to discard the genre's most basic elements. It seemed to me that the latest and greatest Paper Mario adventure was shaping up to be quite an unfocused mess. I was worried. I wanted another Thousand-Year Door, not another Super Paper Mario.
Well, Paper Mario: Sticker Star is actually neither of those, but now that I've had my hands on it, I can wipe my brow and breathe a sigh of relief. As it turned out, Intelligent Systems knew exactly what they were doing: taking some of the most interesting and exciting risks I've seen the genre take in years.
