GoNintendo Review - Paper Mario: Color Splash

Nintendo fans have been a little more restless than usual. It's a bit of an unsure time in the world of Nintendo. We don't know a single thing about the NX and fans are feeling slighted. Metroid Prime: Federation Force brought about a visceral reaction from its very first trailer. My Nintendo doesn't seem to what people were hoping for. Are any/all of those complaints valid? That's not a decision for me to make, but I can't deny that that sentiment is out there and fans are being quite vocal.

Paper Mario: Color Splash fits in with that flow as well. Fans of the Paper Mario series have felt a bit betrayed for awhile now, with first complaints creeping in during the Wii days. Super Paper Mario definitely branched out from what Paper Mario and it's sequel put together, but Paper Mario: Sticker Star really seemed to sour the crowd. That entry in the franchise remains the most divisive to date, and that's why some people automatically turned against Paper Mario: Color Splash. The battle mechanics looked closer to Sticker Star than the first two installments, which lead to opinions that tumbled quickly thereafter.

Again, I am not going to tell you that those feelings are right or wrong. I can tell you that I didn't have the same negative reaction to Sticker Star that some did, but I could see where the anger is coming from. I can also tell you that I look at each game with a fresh mindset. If you're looking for a review that comes at Color Splash from a Thousand Year Door perspective, you aren't going to get that. I'm going to give you my honest thoughts on my experience with Color Splash and how the game stands on its own. If that sounds good to you, then please read on.

Paper Mario: Color Splash brings Mario to the land of Prism Island, a place usually full of colorful characters and scenery, but something out there has been stealing all the color from the land. Mario and the gang only find out about this through a letter sent to Mario, which actually turns out to be a folded-up Toad that had his color stolen. When Mario arrives at the island, he meets up with a paint can called Huey and the two become fast friends. As a matter of fact, Huey is the key to the entire game, because you need his powers to restore Prism Island to its former glory. Now it's up to this dynamic due to find out who's behind the color stealing and put an end to it.

As you most likely know, painting is a main mechanic in Paper Mario: Color Splash. Huey gives Mario's traditional mallet a bit of a makeover, letting it fill in colorless spots in the game world. You just walk up to a blank spot and smack it with your hammer to fill it in, with the right color being chosen automatically. Of course, you need paint to fill those spots in. There are all sorts of ways to get paint, including harvesting it from fallen enemies and also smacking the color out of other items in the environment. You only have to worry about the colors blue, red and yellow, as they'll mix together to create any other color you need. For example, if you need to up your red paint level, you can hit a pink flower and get the ink you need.

Every single level you enter is going to have spots to paint, but it's up to you if you want to paint them. There are some sections that you'll need to paint in order to move the story forward, but there's many more areas that can be left unpainted. Each level will have a paint percentage to show you how many spots you've missed and it's up to you to find those spots in the level. Again, this is just extra content in the levels that you don't have to worry about tackling, but since I'm a completionist in some regards, I really felt compelled to hunt out those spots.

The other area painting comes into play is with battling. Instead of finding and using stickers like you did in Sticker Star, Color Splash has you battling with cards. As you play through levels, you'll happen upon cards that have pictures on them. Some will have boots, others will have hammers or shells. There's a lot more cards than that, but they're almost all for use in battle. These cards might be colored or completely blank. The more color on a card, the more powerful it is. For example, if you use a blank boot card to stomp a goomba, you might not have enough power to take it out. If you take that same card and paint it, you'll blow away the goomba with no trouble. It's up to you to decide how much paint you want to apply to a card, and that also depends on how much paint you have in your reservoir.

I actually found the battling mechanic to be really interesting. I felt it offered up a bit more strategy than I first expected. Once you start taking on more than one enemy at a time and you open up ability to play more than a single card during a turn, things can get really interesting. For example, at any given time you might have a blank boot card as well as a colored in boot card. There's also cards that show worn out boots or busted up hammers. When dealing with weaker enemies, you might want to use a worn out boot to do the dirty work and save the regular boots for tougher enemies. Then again, you can paint in a worn out boot and it should do nearly as good a job as a 75% painted regular boot.

As you can tell, card management really comes into play. The good news is, cards are all over the place. You'll get cards that are hidden in blocks, cards that pop out of enemies when you defeat them and you can also head to the local store and buy cards whenever you want. There doesn't seem to be a limit on how many cards you can have in your inventory. Now I could be wrong on that, but when I was playing I never hit a limit. I would just go through a few levels and then head back to town and stock up on the cards I wanted. I'd buy somewhere around 15 of each type of card I wanted and then just head out on my merry way. If you are worried about the space management aspect of Sticker Star popping up again in Color Splash, I really don't feel you have anything to worry about. Again, there may indeed be a limit, but I never experienced any issues with one.

Since I'm a real cheapskate in real life and in games, I would usually just purchase a bunch of crappy blank cards and power them up with paint. I'd save the really good ones I happened upon for some of the bigger challenges the game throws at you. I honestly thoroughly enjoyed the battle mechanics here and never felt like I was going to run out of attacks to use. Even if you do use every single card you have, you can still spend money during a battle to spin a wheel and get a card. In other words, you aren't going to be in a situation where you just sit there and lose a battle because you don't have any cards. I mean, I guess that could happen if you run out of cards and have no money, but again, that was a situation that I never even came close to being in.

The real resource management that comes into play outside of cards is your paint meter. Painting can really make a big difference during battle. Again, a blank card versus a painted card will differ a lot in their attack power. Paint isn't an infinite resource when in battles, and some enemies even rush in to steal away paint when they attack. This means you'll have to learn about who you're fighting and how they like to attack. It also means you might want to hang back on fully painting some cards earlier on if you're expecting a bigger fight later in a level. The painting ability really beefs up your attack power, but you don't want to go fully painting every card you use. It's overkill and it's not necessary. As you play, you'll learn just how much it takes to do away with an enemy in one card, and just how much paint you should apply.

Then on top of all that, there's still the action-based aspect of the battle system. You'll be pressing buttons along with the attacks to do extra damage, just like any other Paper Mario game before it. Time your button presses right and get the most damage out of each card you throw out there. Even if you have a fully painted card, you can still leave an enemy standing if you miss out on the timing based button presses. Each attack type has its own rhythm to maxing out its power, and the same goes for your button presses during defense. This should be standard practice for any Paper Mario fan, but it still helps to keep the battles engaging and a bit more active than your standard RPG fodder.

Battles are fun, strategic and engaging, but they're not the real star of the show. I kid you not when I say that I can't gush enough about the rest of Paper Mario: Color Splash. The adventure itself, the soundtrack and the writing altogether form that kind of project that made me a Nintendo fan in the first place. It's some of the most compelling content I've seen from Nintendo to date.

While Color Splash may utilize an overworld map for your travels from place to place, the cohesiveness between the environments is impressive. While playing, I really felt like I was on a grandiose adventure in an overall location that just made sense. The way the stops on the map flow together married with the variety they give you is just unbelievable. I mean, you're going to see traditional elements like caves, fire levels, water levels and everything else inbetween, but there's just something about the way they're built this time that makes them feel so fresh and charming. I really couldn't wait to see each new spot, but I also didn't want to leave the wonderful levels I was exploring!

Color Splash actually teases you with its environments by showing you some areas you aren't going to be able to visit right away. You'll have to return to some locations to complete alternate objectives or take different paths outside of a level. These alternate routes are sometimes required and they'll open up new paths on the map that push the story ahead. The thing is, you never feel like you're traversing the same level over and over and over again. The levels do a great job of getting you interested and enticing you with areas you can't quite reach, making you eager to return once you can.

Going together with the fantastic level design is the insanely good audio/visual presentation. I know companies like to use their hardware to make games more realistic looking and push higher resolutions, but Nintendo likes to use their hardware power in other ways. That said, I'll be damned if Color Splash isn't one of the best looking games I've ever seen. It's going to benefit from age just like Wind Waker did. We'll look at this game 10 years from now and still say it looks fantastic. The first high def outing for the Paper Mario series has really made the aesthetic come alive. It sounds dumb to say, but the paper aspect looks more believable than ever before. The colors are absolutely popping off the screen and the realistic construction of the environment gives it an extremely whimsical style. I rarely say this, but I truly believe the visuals really heighten the entire experience in a major way.

The same can be said for the music, although I imagine things to be a little more subjective here. For me, the soundtrack couldn't be any more up my alley. If you were a fan of the jazzy approach in Sticker Star, you're going to love what Nintendo has done with Color Splash. Picture that approach, but with a bit more variety and a lot lusher sound. The best praise I can heap on the soundtrack is that I absolutely, positively NEED Nintendo to release this on CD! This is a soundtrack I need to own and play over and over. The way the music breathes life into every scene is outstanding. I've been humming these tunes for weeks now, which include new twists on old songs and completely original compositions that blew me away.

Still, those amazing aspects aren't even close to the best part of Color Splash. Now I know that the Mario RPGs are highly regarded as some of the wittiest writing that Nintendo does, but I believe Color Splash to be the shining achievement of the entire series so far. I don't know how much of that credit goes to the original writing team or the localization staff, but either way the end result is absolutely spot-on for this type of adventure.

This is truly some high-caliber writing here. I'm not talking about sophisticated story or loads of exposition. I'm referring to lines of dialog and ways of talking that perfectly fit the characters involved. Everyone from a random NPC to a major character in the story are all given the utmost respect with their dialog. There's so much tongue-in-cheek humor here, and even some self-referential stuff going on. This writing really captures what the Mario universe is all about and makes it feel so fleshed out and alive. There are moments that are heartfelt, times where dialog will make you chuckle and other moments that are laugh-out-loud funny. The writing in Color Splash makes the characters really feel like actual personalities. I've always loved the writing in these games, but I think Color Splash is hands-down the best yet. I think it might even be some of the best writing Nintendo has done to date!

I know Color Splash has an uphill battle to fight. Perhaps not as much as Metroid Prime: Federation Force did, but there's still some pushback. I really, REALLY hope those that have ignored the game will reconsider once it launches. I cannot stress this point enough. Paper Mario: Color Splash is a prime example of why I love Nintendo. It's the type of experience that only Nintendo can seem to create. It just has that certain magic to it. That feeling that you can't really describe, that vibe that you can't really put your finger on. Paper Mario: Color Splash is Nintendo at its finest.

There will be arguments about the battle system from now until the end of time. There will be people that clamor for a return to the more traditional RPG mechanics of the original Paper Mario. Again, I'm not here to say those calls are right or wrong. I'm literally just asking you to give Color Splash a shot and take it for what it is. Try it and see how you feel about the battles. I found them supremely entertaining and unique. I know others won't and that's perfectly fine. I really see it as the only part of this game that people will complain about. When it comes to story, visuals, music and overall presentation, I really believe very few people will be let down.

While Zelda: Breath of the Wild is coming to Wii U, it's also hitting NX as well. That makes Paper Mario: Color Splash the last first-party exclusive you'll only be able to find on Wii U. I personally find it to be one hell of a send-off for the system. It's a game that reminded me of just how magical Nintendo experiences can be. It also makes me eager to see what's ahead for the Big N. Paper Mario: Color Splash demands a spot in your Wii U library. This is not an experience to be missed. For me, it's one of the finest Paper Mario adventures to date and it makes me salivate at the idea of what's next.