Partridge Senpai's 2019 Beaten Games:Previously:
2016 2017 2018* indicates a repeat
1.
Night Slashers (Switch)
2.
Bye-Bye BOXBOY! (3DS)
3.
GTA4: The Ballad of Gay Tony (Xbox 360)
4.
Katamari Forever (PS3)
5.
Detention (PS4)
6.
Donkey Kong 64 (N64) *
7.
OctoDad: Dadliest Catch (PS4) *
8.
FlintHook (Switch)
9.
God of War (PS4)
10.
God of War HD (PS3)
11.
Tiny Barbarian DX (Switch)
12.
God of War 2 HD (PS3)
13.
Starlink (Switch)
14.
Shin Gundam Musou (PS3)
15.
Battle & Get! Pokemon Typing DS (DS)
16.
Banjo-Kazooie (N64) *
17.
Super Mario 64: Rumble Edition (N64)
18.
Mario Party 3 (N64) *
19.
Paper Mario (N64) *
20.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES) *
21.
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (GBC) *
22.
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (GBC) *
23.
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (GBC) *
24.
Yoshi's Island (SNES) *
25.
Super Mario World (SNES) *
26.
Super Mario RPG (SFC) *
27.
Kaeru No Tame Ni Kane Wa Naru (GB)
28.
Final Fantasy VI (SFC) *
29.
Final Fantasy IV (SFC) *
30.
Final Fantasy V (SFC)
31.
Final Fantasy III (Famicom)
32.
Mother 2 (SFC) *
33.
Mother 3 (GBA) *
34.
Hebereke (Famicom)
35.
Donkey Kong Country 2 (SFC)
36.
Donkey Kong Country 3 (SFC)
37.
Donkey Kong Country (SFC) *
38.
Wario's Woods (Famicom)
39. Paper Mario: Color Splash (Wii U)
A favorite Twitch streamer of mine mentioned this game earlier in the week and called it "the second best Paper Mario game." I was naturally quite intrigued by this. I had heard some fairly good things about Color Splash, but never such high praise as this. I was in between bigger games, and Color Splash happened to be one of the few Wii U games I'd brought with me from America with the intent to finish eventually, so I set to work. Five days later and about 40-50 hours of gameplay later (getting nearly all the cards and doing enough stuff to get the "real" ending), I can say that this is not just a great Paper Mario game, it is the BEST Paper Mario game.
The story of Color Splash revolves around Peach recieving a strange letter in the mail: A folded up Toad with no color! She brings it to Mario, and the two of them along with a single Toad retainer go off on a boat to the island the letter was postmarked from: Port Prisma. Upon arriving there, they find an island whose paint has been sucked up in droves by a mysterious force of largely Shy Guys, and with the help of their new friend Huey the paint can, Mario sets off to work to save the island and return its color. It's not an incredible feat of storytelling that has something super in-depth or meaningful to say about the human condition, of course. This IS a Mario game, so the guess of who's behind it all isn't that difficult. That said, the real winning part of the story is its presentation and the dialogue.
This game is, even for a Paper Mario game, incredibly silly and irreverent in its humor. It's constantly breaking the 4th wall, making homages to other Mario and Paper Mario games, and poking fun at RPGs and the Mario series in general with its own spin on a very modern humor. It's a sense of humor that will probably date the game to a certain extent, compared to the other Paper Mario games certainly, but it had me absolutely in stitches the entire time I was play. I loved getting to an area with new NPCs because I just HAD to talk to everyone. Huey especially is the ultimate realization of the replacement for the colorful cast of sidekicks that the first two Paper Mario games had but the next two did away with. He really feels like a companion and a character rather than just a guide through the story, and Huey in particular is probably what puts the writing and humor of this game above the other Paper Mario games for me. Huey is the only actual new Mario character in this, as all the citizens of Port Prisma are Toads and not some new kind of islander (despite the Stars looking like Isle Delfino Shines, that is entirely coincidental and no Mario Sunshine references or characters are in this at all, actually), but the way the game is written, the island really feels like it has a personality all its own in a way that feels different from other Mario RPGs. I'm sure some people will bounce off the humor of this game, but it clicked with me 100%.
Further on the topic of presentation, this game is really nice looking. Paper Mario is hardly a photo-realistic art style, of course, but they really lean into the paper-craft look of the series in a way that is a logical progression of how they were treating things in Sticker Star. It's also referenced in the dialogue/humor a lot, how everyone/thing is paper, but everything looks that way and acts like it too. Enemies will tear up the cardboard to try and smash you with it, Toads will fling themselves like shuriken to make a staircase, Bowser's goons will tape doors shut with Bowser-branded tape to keep you from getting past. The game's HD look and its style make the game look great, and except for a few cutscenes, the game keeps a really solid framerate as well.
Even still, the best part of the presentation may be the game's music. Now I'm not usually one to notice music in games or even talk about it, but holy crap this game has some incredible music. It has a really well done orchestral score that I think may be my favorite sound track to a game ever. It does a great job at setting the atmosphere for more serious moments (the few there are), as well as creating a specific brand of silliness for different lands you visit throughout the island. Music is of course a very subjective topic, but this is the only game I've ever played that I've thought "where can I buy the soundtrack for this thing?"
Speaking of lands, that's another thing this game does a little bit differently from other Intelligent Systems Mario RPGs. Rather than a traditional hub world, the game has several dozen "stages," which are more linear experiences unto themselves. You find different exits in each in the form of stars, and those starts create paths to other stages. Many stages even have redundant exits leading to already explored stages just to make the world map a bit more easy to get around. It's a really clever way to design an RPG's world, as it means that things lack a concrete "point A to point B" cohesion, but it also means that each stage feels like a complete experience in and of itself.
Now finally, we get to the meat and potatoes of an RPG, the combat. I'm gonna start out immediately with clarifying that, as you may've guessed, this is far from the most complex RPG combat system in the world. If Final Fantasy V is the baseline you set for RPG combat systems, and anything less will make a game super boring for you, then you won't find much to love here. That said, this is the most complex a Paper Mario game's combat has ever been. By expanding on Sticker Star's dull and pointless combat, they've managed to create something really compelling and interesting.
The biggest problem Sticker Star, the previous Paper Mario game, had was that the combat felt like a waste of time. Your stickers were limited, and because there was no XP system in that game, getting into battles felt like something universally worth avoiding, since it would just drain your precious sticker supply. All you cared about were HP and stickers, and battles drained both of those things for very little reward past the occasional rare sticker. Color Splash fixes all of this this by adding one more thematically appropriate resource pool: Paint.
In Color Splash, instead of stickers, you have battle cards. Battle cards don't require being painted to be used, but they're far more powerful when imbued with paint. However, your red, blue, and yellow paint reserves are limited, so in addition to keeping track of how many of each card you have (out of a max of 99), you also must keep track of how much paint you're using. Battling enemies will use up paint and cards, yes, but battling enemies will net you more paint as well as EXP, which is the only way to increase your maximum paint supplies, which you'll want as high as possible. 1-Up mushrooms that refill your paint supplies in battle are rare, and XP doesn't affect how hard you hit, only the power of the card affects what damage you do, and more powerful cards need a lot more paint. Pre-painted cards do exist and can be bought in-game, but they're far more expensive and harder to find than unpainted cards. Enemies are persistent with the instance of the stage, so if you clear out a room, it'll stay cleared out until you exit the stage, so each stage effectively acts like one larger resource management puzzle (albeit a bit of a simple one: this is far from the hardest game in the world), and the large variety of them makes opening up a new stage always something exciting.
The last returning feature to be improved upon from Sticker Star is the Thing system. Things are objects which are not made of paper that you'll find in the world that can have the paint squeezed out of them to have them turned into a battle card. These are almost always a part of the solution to some puzzle at some point in the game, whether its an environemental puzzle or a certain part of a boss battle, and knowing which ones to have and when is crucial to not getting stuck. The up-side to this is not only can you buy another of any Thing you've found at a store, like you could in Sticker Star, but unlike Sticker Star, there's a Toad in a trash can right next to that store who will give you a hint (granted its a very obvious hint) of what kind of Thing the next puzzle you'll encounter will require. It removes any element of clairvoyance you'd need to have to guess which Things to take along with you for the next stage, and helps the game flow much better since you aren't constantly backtracking to get the Thing you had no idea you'd need.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. This game is one of my favorite games I've played all year. It's up there with Dad of War as a game I thought I might like when I started it, but grew to absolutely adore as an all-time favorite over the course of completing it. I stand firm in that this is the best Paper Mario game, and it is also a contender for best Mario RPG (and that includes Mario & Luigi games) as well. The humor certainly won't be for everyone, and the combat will be too simple for some RPG fans as well, but if you've enjoyed any of the other Paper Mario games, you will likely enjoy this game quite a lot as well.
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me