Color Splash is very much a sequel to Sticker Star, and as a result, very much not what Paper Mario fans wanted in 2016 (or really what I think they'll ever want). With a level-based structure once again, an overabundance of Toads once again, and a battle system incredibly similar to the stickers of yesteryear, it seems like Color Splash is set up to fall right into all of the same pitfalls that Sticker Star did. Yet I'm not so sure that it does. I loved the game at release (keep in mind I was a middle schooler at the time), and replaying it, I found myself having a plenty enjoyable time. So why is a game that's set up so similarly manage to succeed where its predecessor failed?
For one, there's a teensy bit more of a narrative this time around. While it still does eventually boil down to “Bowser stole Peach, oh no!”, there's a bit of intrigue there in the opening as to what's going on, and Bowser's able to at least get a few words in, albeit only at the very end of the game (plus, all the stuff with the black paint is fairly interesting... like you see the big mixer in Bowser's castle and are like “...whoa”. It's not much, but at least Bowser's vaguely doing something this time instead of just sitting around... even if most of the bosses still sort of just jump out of nowhere). Seeing the Koopalings is a little frustrating, since once you see the first one, you instantly know who the rest of the bosses throughout the game will be. But at least they have some level of personality to them (another step up from Sticker Star)! Also worth noting the writing here is fantastic. Huey manages to be an actually likeable partner, and Color Splash as a whole is in the running for the funniest game I've ever played. The jokes just never miss.
Things make their grand return, though a lot of the issues they caused in Sticker Star are at least attempted to be addressed. In Sticker Star, Thing stickers usually took up a massive amount of space in your Sticker Album, and while stronger attacks taking up more space in your inventory was an interesting idea, it fed into the game’s overall issue of having to run back to Decalburg constantly to sling Things because you could never comfortably carry many on you at once. Luckily, Color Splash makes it so Thing cards take up just as much space as any other. Another issue was simply not knowing when you’d need a Thing or what exact Thing you’d need at any time. Color Splash solves this issue by having a Toad in the game’s hub whose specific purpose is to tell you what Things you’ll need coming up so you’re prepared for them. In order for the game to always know what you need though, it also has to eliminate any and all non-linearity, the one thing that kept Sticker Star’s progression interesting. It’s like putting a band-aid over an infected wound instead of actually treating it. Like... problem solved, I guess? I’m not frustrated by the implementation of Things anymore, sure, but when the solution is to straight up tell me what I’m gonna need at every turn, then I think the whole point of the system in the first place has been lost along the way.
As Color Splash’s title implies, the gimmick of the game this time revolves around paint. Rather than peeling stickers off of walls, you’ll be painting in colorless spots throughout levels to find cards. The colorless spots provide greater incentives for exploration in each level, as 100% completion requires you to fill them all in, and a limited amount of colorless spots also means that there’s limited sources of free cards, negating Sticker Star’s issue of “why would I buy stickers or fight enemies when I can literally just pick stickers up off the ground?”. You need paint to fill in colorless spots, which give you the cards you need to fight enemies, which in turn give you the paint you need to fill in more colorless spots. Top that off with the fact that paint is used in battle to color your cards, which is necessary to actually do significant damage (and also cool in that you can decide exactly how much to paint them, making battles a game of resource management), and that battling also rewards you with Paint Scraps to increase the maximum amount of paint you can have at once (*gasp* are those the hints of a leveling system I smell?), then you seem to have an incredibly efficient system built here. There’s just... one tiny little thing that throws a wrench into all of it: pre-painted cards. A solid chunk of the cards you find through exploration are already fully painted, and you can buy them too (which you’ll most certainly have enough money to afford plenty of). It’s such a simple addition that takes away a huge chunk of potential strategy away from the game. Like, in the beginning of the game, Fire Flower cards really ate up my paint supplies. And that makes sense, as they’re pretty powerful cards! So maybe I should be more strategic as to when I use them, making sure I don’t waste too much paint I need for other attacks, or—oh, wait. I could just buy a bunch of pre-painted Fire Flower cards and call it a day. I can spam these powerful attacks all I like now! And then why should I care too much about fighting now? Increasing my paint supply doesn’t matter so much when I can just avoid using it like this. I understand the idea behind pre-painted cards, as otherwise it’d mean that if you run out of paint, you’re screwed, but... I feel like they cause more problems than they solve. There’s gotta be another solution for the issue.
But hey, at least the game looks pretty! Great segue, I know. I wasn’t a big fan initially of the whole “oh yeah, Paper Mario is actually explicitly made of paper now guys, haha!” sorta thing, but Color Splash’s visual style (along with the way that same style was carried over to Origami King) might’ve just won me over. It’s a beautiful aesthetic, and on a tangential note, this game allows characters to be so much more expressive than its predecessors, and it’s great to see (expressiveness being a big part of the reason I still LOVE THE ROY FIGHT WITH ALL MY HEART (it’s just so creative and you don’t see it coming and ugh, my heart still explodes for it)). The music is phenomenal too, remaining the one thing you can’t criticize about the modern Paper Mario trilogy. Presentation is overall really solid. And, uh... I’m running out of things to say now, so pretend this really eloquently transitions into a conclusion!
Color Splash tries to address many of the foundational flaws of Sticker Star, and in doing so manages to achieve a wondrous feat: it is legitimately a fun game to play. The dialogue makes you smile at every turn, there’s actual reasons to explore, and the wacky scenarios you find yourself in are oozing with creativity and delight (two words: the steak). But even if Color Splash knows what the issues of its systems are, it can’t quite entirely fix them. Measures put in place to fix the Thing system can only take it from frustrating to lackluster, and incentivizations for combat stumble right before crossing the finish line. If anything, Color Splash shows that a game in its same style can reach great heights... but some flaws here and there keep it from reaching those heights itself.