Misses the bar, but still a great game.
The game while having a good amount of puzzles, also gets confusing at times.
There are 10 differant outside battle abilities, all with unique challenges. They come a little too quickly and are confusing. Also considering you have to jump two ways (one then other, or both at same time) its 14 abilities.
It also comes with 2 basic in battle abilities, and variates, making it 4 basic abilities. And the "bros items" are numerous. Green sheel, red sheel, smash egg, cannonballers, pocket chomps, trampolines, fire flowers, ice flowers, copy flowers, mix flowers. Making the total again 14 abilities.
So in this game are 28 abilities you should master. Thats a lot. Not to mention mini-games.
The humor is well there, shown with the hammer bros talking in leet speak (then you am cry!), the star gate talking about the goodness of people and diet, luigi constently getting hurt etc. But compared to even the origional paper mario, the rate at which the humor comes isn't enough.
The game is solidly made, but a better learning curve and more humor would have really helped.
The graphics have style however, but could use improvements.