Paper Mario: Color Splash

 Wii U
Metascore
76

Generally favorable reviews - based on 74 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 51 out of 74
  2. Mixed: 22 out of 74
  3. Negative: 1 out of 74
Buy Now
Buy on
  1. Giant Bomb
    Oct 16, 2016
    40
    A dreadful combat system brings down an otherwise beautiful and funny Mario adventure.
This publication does not provide a score for their reviews.
This publication has not posted a final review score yet.
These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation.

In Progress & Unscored

?
  1. Glixel
    Jan 12, 2017
    I don’t think anyone wants games like this, really. It’s lovely to have games that can feel like entire worlds, but they take approximately ten billion times longer and require many more people to work their fingers to the bone, and then when they come out people say they aimed too high, stretched themselves too thin. I hope that, in the years to come, we get to see games that scale themselves back to focus on the filigree.
  2. Kotaku
    Oct 18, 2016
    Color Splash is so damned imaginative and beautiful, though, so colorful and confidently funny. Even when it annoyed me, it was only fleetingly.
  3. The A.V. Club
    Oct 5, 2016
    Most of what there is to love in the series’ previous games is still here, but while Color Splash is far from a disaster, it’s hard not to be disappointed with an experience that’s ultimately all surface.

Awards & Rankings

11
#11 Best Wii U Game of 2016
2
#2 Most Discussed Wii U Game of 2016
2
#2 Most Shared Wii U Game of 2016

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 475 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 291 out of 475
  2. Mixed: 84 out of 475
  3. Negative: 100 out of 475
  1. EFYevan
    Oct 7, 2016
    10
    Wonderful game! Very funny! Nintendo does it again! Well done! Play this one all the way to the end! The most realistic lemons I haveWonderful game! Very funny! Nintendo does it again! Well done! Play this one all the way to the end! The most realistic lemons I have ever seen! !… Full Review »
  2. Genericdewd
    Oct 7, 2016
    4
    Good presentation, but ultimately bland uninteresting gameplay with tons of pacing and padding issues, and lazy uninspired character design.Good presentation, but ultimately bland uninteresting gameplay with tons of pacing and padding issues, and lazy uninspired character design. Better than Sticker Star as a whole, but definitely doesn't live up to the quality of the first 3 games.… Full Review »
  3. Fireriku546
    Oct 7, 2016
    4
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. Let me be clear here, this is not "mindless bashing" on a game that isn't Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64 or Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Gamecube. This is telling it like it is.

    Paper Mario: Color Splash is an improvement over Paper Mario: Sticker Star in many ways, for one you can actually level up your character's paint meter and progression is good to have in an RPG. The game is also still the turned based battles that we've been seeing for 4/5 games of the series, so at least it feels like a Paper Mario game in that sense.

    However then we go into the flaws, first off the character development for Toad is nice; however seeing him over and over again or shy guys over and over again just gets really redundant and makes the character development for Toad and Shy Guy null and void, especially considering Nintendo is just going to forget about it in the next game anyways. Also Peach gets "color drained" only to be immediately brought back to life and Huey leaves Mario and his friends behind in a scene that really isn't that impactful considering we only got one game to see him develop and he didn't develop all that much anyways.

    But enough about story, despite the fact that the original Paper Mario game was called "Mario Story" in Japan that isn't the main concern of someone who would play a Mario game. Gameplay consists of going around the world looking for Big Paint Stars and you don't really need to battle anyone but the bosses to really get most of them. Add this to the fact that "thing cards" are the only reasonable way to defeat the bosses without battling them futilely for hours on end and something still feels off about this game that could easily be fixed. Just have the thing cards for casual players who struggle with the boss fight but allow hardcore players to use strategy and wit to defeat the bosses normally. Add that on to the fact that if you do end up in an encounter which I wouldn't really call random since you can see the enemies on the map, you end up fighting the slow, clunky card system as well, and you can see why I gave this game a 4 out of 10.

    This game is not bad by any means, but the truth of the matter is that it is a mediocre RPG with pretty graphics that we learned to expand from in 1997 when we learned that graphics aren't what makes an RPG good in Final Fantasy 7 (that is still a great game by the way don't get me wrong) and Paper Mario has already done the concept of Mario going on an adventure looking for stars with better partners (counting Huey as one), better gameplay mechanics, and with greater stakes 16 years ago    … Full Review »
See all user reviews »