Nahh, AJ. What I said was I kinda liked one particular thing about the game.
You pretty much hit all the complaints, though. No story, no characters, shitty battles. The battles are especially bad because you get nothing out of them except coins to buy stickers (which are already laying around all over the place. I have TOO MANY stickers, I don't need to buy more!) which makes them feel essentially pointless. Basically, since there's no experience points or levels, all the battles do is suck your HP and your stickers and your time. They're all completely pointless, and I've found myself just running away from most.
The battles also went back to the idea of hitting A at a specific time to do more damage, for every attack, which is way less fun than Thousand Year Door's system. There's also no real indication of when to hit the button, so I legitimately have no clue how to time the hammer. Additionally, there's no real way to choose who to attack. If you use the battle spinner then the second and third stickers will hit the second and third guys, but there's no way to, for example, focus entirely on the second enemy in the line with every attack. (Also, the battle spinner only lasts for one round. By default you're almost always doing one 1 attack per round, which is kind of shitty).
Also, and I'll admit this is a personal complaint and not a "bad" thing intrinsically, the numbers used are WAY higher. You start with 20 HP, Goombas have 6, a basic jump attack does 7 damage if you don't time it. That's crazy. It's a far cry from when Goombas have 2 HP, and the most damage you can do without badges is 6.
Also also, yeah, no partners. Bullshit.
The "shitty level system" is actually the ONE thing I kind of like about the game. Because, yeah, it reminds me of Super Mario RPG. The levels themselves need to be longer, but dividing the game up like that I don't think was a bad move.
However, at the same time, I recognise that the reason they broke it up like that is because HEY GUYS REMEMBER MARIO 3?? YOU LOVED THAT GAME RIGHT? LOOK THIS IS LIKE THAT SO YOU SHOULD LOVE THIS TOO ALSO WOW COOL FROG SUIT YEAH COOL!!!!!!! which is absolutely the worst reason to do it.
oh, no, wait. the music and the visuals are fantastic as well. The music is really good and jazzy, the game looks like everything is made from like paper and cardboard and stuff, which is REALLY cool, and good to finally see a proper return to. But the reason both of these are so good is because they could focus on them because there are no characters and no story so they could use that part of the budget elsewhere.
so, yes, presentation is amazing, gameplay is amazingly bad. all style, no substance.
