Well, if you think of it that way...

A while back, I got Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the 3DS. Going in with rather high hopes as I hadn't been disappointed by the series before, I came out feeling almost violated. "M-muh childhood," I whispered, having played the original two games whenever I was younger.

Frustrated, I quickly sold the game. That was the first game I had ever sold.

Image source, the attached article is also worth a read.

As much as I'd love to dedicate a post to bashing the game, I think I've already done that enough to anyone who would listen (and sometimes to those who would rather not, my apologies) and most likely by now you, the reader, have already formed an opinion on the now second black sheep of the series.

One thing that got my attention was what other people thought of the game. I've seen people praise things such as the music and graphics, which I can agree with to an extent. However, it's whenever I saw comments on the game such as "well, if you don't think of the game as being in the Paper Mario series, it's actually kind of enjoyable."

Let me start with a comparison: say you are an avid fan of Kellogg's cereal - you ate up every box of breakfast food they put out, and so far, they've never disappointed you in a way you can remember. However, things go amiss whenever they hastily push their newest product, Pork Flakes onto store shelves. Although you've heard odd things about the product, you can't help but be drawn to it by brand and name alone. You pick up a box and have a bowl. Upon taking a few bites, you know something is off - but maybe it's an acquired taste, so you press on through the bowl. Half way down the bowl, you quit and sell it to a homeless person, bowl, spoon and all.

One's first thought on that last paragraph will probably be, "this writer is over-reacting to a game by writing a comparison to cereal," which is correct, but I just find the commenters' statement so strange. The game is supposed to be the next game in the series, and it's clearly presented in such a fashion, so why would you brand it as an off-child and sort it into another category? If you had all of the Paper Mario games on a shelf, would you not want Sticker Star there too, for the sake of completeness?

I've also seen other people make similar comments on other oddballs in series that don't get much love, such as Resident Evil 5 and 6, Zelda II: the Adventure of Link, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and some even mention similar distastes for the previous game in the series, Super Paper Mario.

 Games that have suffered from being too different from the predecessors. Although I'm not sure about Resident Evil 6 being good to begin with.

Anyhow, to finish, on a psychological level, that's pretty hard, especially if you've played previous games in the series. You can't go anywhere in the game without seeing the titular character smack-dab in the middle of the screen, meaning the name "Paper Mario" will always come back to your head while playing somehow, whether it be because of an NPC saying his name, or you trying to remember what the heck you're doing playing a game such as that when you could be playing something else.