As Polar said, it was fun, but I really missed the RPG element the previous games had. It wasn’t anywhere near as story-driven as the past Paper Marios, and I really miss the turn-based battles.

More importantly, the “style” moves were really awkward, since the battles are essentially old-school Mario style and real time. Basically, when you’re jumping on an enemy, you’re supposed to shake your controller wildly and hope you don’t get hurt my whatever other enemies may attack you while you do this. Or you can even miss a moving enemy by the delay it does! I did it maybe once or twice, got hurt once because of it, then didn’t bother.

Another annoyance is the Pixls. While they provide new skills that can be fun, you can only have one out at a time. All those old skills you could use at any time with a single button in the previous games? No more. You must switch out Pixls (or even heroes). This gets really old fast.

Still, all this wasn’t enough to deter me. I still went ahead and played it though, and while these things caused frusteration at times, it was still a decent game. Just don’t expect it to be like the previous ones.

Finished this over the weekend on the 360, but only 66% complete when I won. Fun stuff, though. Funny and engaging. There were a couple of parts that got really frustrating, but it was just a matter of not chucking my controller across the room and getting over that hump. xD

Sorry, but that card battle system should BURN. Especially in the second half of the game (enough said without spoilers). It was frustrating and often awkward to battle towards the end, but when push came to shove, I kept coming back for more. The storyline is worth the trouble, I’d say.