I haven't played this game yet, nor do I plan to, but I do hear good things about the writing and design..

This game is great. Unfortunately, Paper Mario fans feel like anything which doesn't match TTYD is garbage and should be thrown away. They're as bad as the genwunners from Pokemon and the Melee elitists.

Personally, I didn't find the thing cards to be that much of an issue. Although they are needed to defeat the main bosses, there is still the challenge of having to weaken them before reaching that state, and each of the bosses provided different challenges to overcome before reaching that point, and they were all fun for me.

The story I feel the same as well. It doesn't really have a strong presence in this game, but I feel this was more for the adventure than for the end goal, as yeah, there is a lot of enjoyable moments that happen in the game.

This game had some lovely visuals and music. The boss parts really annoyed me, however, since you're going in blind, and if you didn't bring the appropriate Thing card (or used it at the wrong moment in the battle), then you might as well reset the game, because it's impossible to win at that point. A better way would have been to make the thing card optional, but harder to win without it.

And don't get me started on the boss battle that requires 3 thing cards to be used in a particular order, and requires 1000 coins per attempt (no spoilers).

There are several minigames in the game where you need to get a perfect (or close to perfect) score or attempt in order to proceed...with the main story! At least save that kind of stuff for completionists, don't put it in the main storyline...

Hm, I never noticed the cheat option. My main gripe was getting a perfect score in one game to get a thing card that's required for one of those boss fights. 

While it's been a couple of months since I've played it, I've warmed a lot more to the soundtrack in the game, and still pull it out on occasion, but I'm in no rush to play it again anytime soon.

Nice review!

7 is a bit low 8.5 is what it deserves. some paint star are lazy - I Agree

I loe this game, although I can see some of its flaws: the battle system can become boring (although I haven't had big problems with it) and I feel that some levels' design is weak (while others are great).

I remember the Indigo Underground as a boring level, and some sections with a lot of enemies in other levels can become a bit tedious. Also some levels have some flawed sections: for example, the Golden Colisseum is a great level, one of my favourites, BUT, it shouldn't let you access to the arena until you've find the needed thing card, since it somehow spoils the rest of the level (for example, hering the shy-guys conversation about the boxes or talking with characters that are waiting to the fight to start doesn't make many sense once you've defeated the first "horde" of enemies... I know that it's clearly hinted that you shouldn't access to the arena without "that" card, but I had found a copy before and I thought it was enough... When I quit the fight and continued exploring I felt a disappointed, since I thought I could not access to the spectator's entrance before fighting... Anyway the level was entertaining and have some of the best lines of the game.

Thinking about it, more than a problem with the level design itself I have a problem with how the Thing Cards  have an influence in the level design...