I mean.
To be kinda (didn't realize how long I'd go off) brief.
Besides the blatant "No partners" and such and such comparisons to TTYD, here's what were the big faults people saw in the design of Sticker Star in general as the RPG series people remembered it as, and not the "action-adventure" that Nintendo calls it now.
1) Without EXP and a Leveling system, players have very little incentive to ever go into combat outside of Bosses. The only possible reward from fights is effectively trading your limited-usage attack stickers for an amount of coins to either be spent on the battle spinner and buying more attack stickers, most of all the "Thing" stickers.
2) Boss fights are either incredibly easy by usage of the right Thing stickers or incredibly difficult if trying to handle in a traditional sense with no middle ground. Best example being the Gooper Blooper whose poison and hard hitting attacks will always keep you under heavy pressure... but the sticker has him lose 10% of his max hp every turn, miss every attack, and take more damage from every other form, for a total of 5 turns (meaning you only have to do 50% of his hp, and with weakened defenses, for bringing the right thing sticker).
3) Most times, what thing sticker you actually need (and them being very context sensitive ON that) is something that you can only really know either by having a guide or throwing yourself at the boss to die first and THEN get the item that devastates the boss. The worst offender being the Bowser fight that has about 5 phases and EACH requires specific stickers to be feasible.
4) Very little npc interaction. Once you do the stuff in Decalburg, the only other real npcs that you come across are the chapter about Wiggler... Wiggler himself and the Sniff It or Whiff It gameshow.
5) The areas you traverse are incredibly segmented and takes away from as good of a sense of a "world" as you'd see in most rpgs.
6) Final Boss has 0 dialogue. The big banter and play up into a climax are what make some of the best moments in almost every rpg!
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