Re: Kiir's Gaming Topic (Reply #145 on: October 21, 2016, 01:05:12 am)

hi guys im here 2 tell u that i 100% Paper Mario: Color Splash™ and i love it. here are the Thoughts.

• Overall writing is fantastic, charming, and funny
• The art and visual style looks great
• YEAH the NPC and enemy designs are pretty bland, but some personalities are so unique that you actually end up remembering more characters than you expect to - also you fight a steak at one point and no other Paper Mario game can boast that
• There are so many Shy Guys and I love them
• Some of the very early levels are meh but they get better
• There are also a ton of levels and they're all unique - it's unlikely you'll confuse any of them with each other (except for maybe some early ones) even when there are groups of themed levels
• One cool thing is that you can go back to areas after finishing them and stuff often changes in a lot of them
• I'm not sure if the game is actually linear, but the way it's set out, it feels nonlinear at times
• A lot of inspiration from past Paper Mario games and references to a couple other Mario games, but still manages to keep everything fresh and unique
• There's actually a fair bit to do: repainting all the areas, collecting all the cards, getting all the flags, and there are a few random sidequests dotted around the world (mainly one known as the Piper sidequest, which might be one of my favourite things ever), along with other content that may or may not count towards your definition of 100%
• The music is really good, and there are a surprising amount of variations on the battle theme
• A lot of the bosses are really cool - most are still like Sticker Star in which you need a certain Thing to proceed, but there's a Toad you can talk to that tells you what Things you need for upcoming areas, so trial-and-error isn't necessary
• The final boss is fine, though I wish there was another phase or something - it's kind of tedious
• The main story is kinda weak, especially compared to the writing in the rest of the game, but it does its job and is a lil emotional at the end
• The battle system is largely improved from Sticker Star - cards, paint, and coins are in abundance so you never have to worry about resources. It feels kind of slow at first but it gets a bit better once you get used to it. There's also a point to battling again - you get EXP for your paint hammer, increasing your paint capacity (which is very helpful the further you get in the game, because even near max, some cards drain half of a whole colour)
• The enemies talk in battle and it's super cute/funny, I'd recommend looking up from the gamepad every now and then to see what they say

My final time for the game was ~42 hours (~30 for main game plus extras - I imagine the game could beaten faster if you only fill in necessary paint spots but that's not fun), but you could probably take off a couple because I dawdled sometimes lol.

HERE are my Paper Mario rankings:

64 > TTYD > Colour Splash > SPM > Sticker Star

Colour Splash is basically Sticker Star but improved in every single way. I honestly cannot think of a single aspect of SS that I prefer over this.

The game was kinda warring with SPM (which I liked) until some of the late-game levels, where it finally took over. SPM definitely has a better story, but it takes half the game for the game itself to get good (and even when it is good, IMO not a single level is good for all four parts), whereas Colour Splash escalates a lot quicker.

Honestly, if Colour Splash had a better story and a stronger final boss, I would have maybe ended up putting it above TTYD... I feel like I had more fun with Colour Splash than I do whenever I replay TTYD and I'm in any chapter but chapter 3.

Overall Mario RPG ranking:

64 > Superstar Saga > TTYD > SMRPG? > Colour Splash > SPM > Bowser's Inside Story > Partners in Time > Paper Jam > Dream Team

I haven't finished SMRPG, Paper Jam, and Dream Team so those are kinda tentative - though SMRPG is the only one I could see moving drastically (though maybe the other two could get above PiT lol).