Afternoon, lovely viewers, so, preface before
this review: take value & my words seriously
if you trust in my ability of giving a genuine
or honest review.
I’ve always been honest with discussions,
reviews and my thoughts on games in the past,
but it’ll fall on you on taking my word
for it since my word is all I can give.
If you’re expecting nothing but bridled
rage against this game or nothing but pure
adoration, largely catering to one side or
the other to this review, you’ll be disappointed.
My thoughts on this game are more mixed than
you may assume.
Many of you know I’m not particularly fond
of the recent Paper Mario games for various
reasons, largely between a massive disconnect
from a preestablished identity and a failure
of introducing or implementing gameplay changes
that work from a design perspective.
Out of literal nowhere late Spring of 2020,
Nintendo revealed a new Paper Mario was coming
in the form of Paper Mario: The Origami King
and to say I wasn’t the most optimistic
about it was an understatement.
Despite mixed feelings on the game and overall
series at that point, I gave the game a fair
shot, streamed the entire campaign, saw it
to the end & have varying judgments on it
& various parts of it.
A majority of comparisons made in this review
will be made to Sticker Star and Color Splash
with only a few, loose comparisons to Paper
Marios prior to that when appropriate.
Once again, please only take stock & value
in my words if you trust my ability to be
genuine & honest as I have been in the past.
If you feel you’re not going to enjoy it
or get anything worthwhile out of my review,
I recommend spending your time elsewhere.
Now then, in a short summation before the
meat, the details of this review, what’s
a brief verdict I can give Paper Mario: The
Origami King?
Honest to god, I think it’s decent.
My feelings on this franchise the way it currently
is have not changed at all.
I have an even bigger video planned after
this one discussing that, and you guys know
I genuinely despise Sticker Star and do not
like Color Splash.
I look at those 2 games and I can’t call
them good games, let along even decent games
anymore, I just don’t agree with that.
When I look at Origami King, however, I actually
can call it decent.
I think it’s an okay game.
If that doesn’t put in perspective how I’m
not deadset on pissing on this game, how I’m
willing to acknowledge a game for its qualities
in spite of its faults, despite I’ve been
known to do that since I started this channel,
and how I’m not always going to lynch a
new Paper Mario to hell and back, even when
the majority disagree with its current direction
and philosophies by its current head developers,
then I don’t know what will.
Of the last 3 Paper Mario games, I’d definitely
say Origami King deserves some extra thought
or consideration in playing or checking out.
Of course, I have genuine issues with this
game, some that did affect the overall experience,
but it not only offered some genuine highlights
I actually really like, I feel like I got
more out of this game than I did Color Splash,
forget Sticker Star.
So, what about this game is worth considering
you may ask?
I’ll tell you in a spoiler-free fashion.
Big details and important notes to make of
that happen won’t be spoiled, despite the
game has been out for 3 weeks now.
The Origami King opens up with Mario & Luigi
receiving an invite to an Origami Festival
by Peach in Toad Town, but when they arrive,
no one is in sight.
Mario investigates and meets an origami-folded
Princess Peach not feeling herself, only to
be dropped into the castle’s dungeons and
to discover Bowser, folded up like a wet floor
sign, and a little Origami fairy named Olivia,
cheerful and naïve who tags with Mario along
the adventure.
The 3 discover Olivia’s brother, Olly, was
the one who folded not only Peach, but also
Bowser’s forces into doing his bidding for
conquest of the Mushroom Kingdom.
Olly manages to separate Bowser from Mario
& Olivia and lift the castle to a faraway
Mountain locked off by giant streamers.
With the help of Toads, Luigi, other allies
and even Bowser’s forces later on, Mario
and Olivia set out to eliminate the streamers
closing off Peach’s castle and dismantling
Olly’s ever-growing army across the kingdom.
The story itself has a premise that does more
than Color Splash and Sticker Star and while
on a base level it’s fine, but the things
the story does that make it better are the
character moments and ways they utilize some
of these characters.
Olivia, for example, is a charming companion.
She’s more naïve and childlike but also
cheerful and caring for Mario and his heroics
and she serves some assistance along the way.
She dons Mario the 1000-Fold Arms technique
that allows Mario to interact with the environment
in not completely unique ways and provides
an extra power for puzzles and battles.
I say not completely unique largely in that
the 1000-Fold Arms largely act as ways to
mess with the background to add pathways or
solving puzzles much like the Cutout mechanic
in Color Splash was.
And you’ll see that throughout the game,
it shares plenty of design cues and ideas
with Color Splash, even a reference or two
to Sticker Star.
But on Olivia, she genuinely is a good companion
and I might consider her better than Huey.
Huey was a lot more comedy focused, all of
Color Splash really, and while he was charming
in that aspect, I’m fonder of characters
that have a genuine personality to them.
Her brother on the other hand, Olly, … I’m
not going to say specifics but you learn his
motivation and character, as in why The Origami
King’s events even happen to begin with,
why he does everything, and to say they’re
disappointing would be an understatement.
Even if he’s a new character, Olly’s probably
the biggest let down of a villain in a Mario
game, let alone in Paper Mario.
But back to the 1000-Fold Arms comparison,
another thing TOK shares with the last two
games are the lack of new characters.
Outside of Olly and Olivia, yeah, there aren’t
any new characters unless you really want
to stretch it to two enemies that don’t
pop up until much later in the game only for
that part.
The main thing they do is give the paper characters
an allying, supporting role to Mario so any
normal, Paper character is someone you can
trust and the Folded, origami looking, characters
are the ones that are your enemies.
But outside of that, it follows that same,
standard formula for character variety Mario’s
gone thru since the 3DS up until the Switch.
Even then, they try to push it bit by bit
by giving certain Toads unique attire similar
to how Mario wore his costumes in Odyssey
that match a theme or background they inhibit.
Despite this limitation, I did like how they
handled the pre-established Mario characters
in this.
Luigi has a much more active role in this
game than the last two, he’s constantly
trying to find the key to Peach’s Castle
but is finding different keys that aren’t
for Peach’s Castle but still help you on
your adventure, mainly as a running gag which
I think works.
You also have a Bob-omb that tags along with
you after the first big area, nicknamed Bobby
and for as basic as he is designed, he is
definitely the best character in this game.
He has amnesia, he’s trying to get his memory
back, and the aftermath of when he does and
what he does after, like there’s a part
of his character that ripped completely from
a past character, but I was not expecting
them to do what they did with this basic ass
Bob-omb.
Even in his personality and how he acts, there
is an arguable theme of how you make life
with this character too.
Yeah, a genuine narrative theme in a Paper
Mario.
When was the last time that happened?
Super?
There’s another video, really fantastic
video, that highlights this upon some other
aspects of Origami King I agree with & some
I disagree with, though forewarning there
are some spoilers in that video; “Learning
to Love Paper Mario: Origami King” by KingK.
It was a really interesting watch, helps shed
an extra layer of light on the game I didn’t
see, I recommend checking that video out heavily.
But beyond that, Bobby is a great character
and it cements there is genuine good in Origami
King.
Extremely slight spoiler but the trailers
kind of foreshadow this anyways, Bowser and
his forces don’t start becoming any major
influential help to you until like MAD late
into the game, right before the final confrontation
with Olly.
But when they do, they are a definite treat.
Kamek and Bowser Jr. practically carry the
Green Streamer area on their own with their
own little nanny & nephew dynamic and it’s
fun.
Bowser is also as fun & goofy as he usually
is, or at least usually supposed to be, in
Paper Mario.
And some of the Toads are as witty or wise-cracking
as usual.
There’s a surprising amount of charm and
care put into these characters, like this
is why I keep saying at least consider Origami
King because it has highlights that do kind
of tip some strides you’d see in the first
3 games.
And the writing thankfully doesn’t undermine
most of this.
In the last two games, primarily Color Splash,
it’d try really hard to make a lot of funny
jokes and meta humor throughout the entire
game making fun of itself being made of Paper
because it’s called Paper Mario.
It essentially tells the same joke with different
setups, but it amounts to the same punchline
over and over and I’m not a fan of this.
They got stale & old really quick.
In The Origami King, thankfully enough, they
do dial it back a notch or two to where they
focus more on natural humor, natural personality
and writing that gives these characters and
moments much more life and organic substance.
The paper meta humor is still there, it takes
form in other ways in TOK too, but they mellow
it out to where it’s noticeable and focus
more on the actual characters they have.
Even then, the writing overall is still witty
and fantastic.
The jokes and personality given to these pre-established
Mario characters do give the game a stronger
identity than the last two entries.
Despite it’s unnecessary limits and a lackluster
villain, the writing in Origami King does
largely stand firm and the characters Origami
King does have are charming and well-written.
If there’s one or two constant points the
modern games share that are good, it’s their
presentation and music.
This game’s soundtrack is a genuine bop,
some boss themes go Mad hard and there’s
a lot of variety in here.
Godlike soundtrack.
The Origami King’s graphics as well are
fantastic and it’s presentation of the whole
paper aesthetic is genuinely beautiful.
How much detail is in individual paper mâché
mountains and landscapes and even characters
is astounding, the game graphically is a small
step up from Color Splash, but more than makes
up in presentation.
Even if I’m not particularly big on the
whole paper mâché look and the white outlines
characters have, I personally feel it separates
the characters from the world and is more
distracting & artificial than anything else,
I can’t pretend the game doesn’t do the
overall presentation of that style really
effectively.
Strongest Paper Mario graphically in more
ways than one.
But one thing this game does that Color Splash
and Sticker Star didn’t do is have one,
giant connected world.
Every single locale in this game is accessed
and connected via an open ended, more traditional
style of exploration.
The world map from the last 2 got removed
in favor of moving from one area to the next
in a natural manner and it helps a lot more
than it may seem.
The world map giving locales and worlds their
small levels in this 2D Mario-like level select
map felt really formulaic, it made each level
and place feel isolated and disjointed, but
Origami King feels like one massive world
like the original games and it adds to the
narrative & atmosphere alongside the gameplay.
It also adds to the exploration.
As you’re travelling these worlds, other
than encountering enemies, you’ll also be
coming across giant holes, treasure chests
and Toads folded up into various objects or
creatures that you can restore with your hammer.
A majority of the treasure chests offer trophies
of objects and models of characters and things
you find throughout the game, largely just
as a collectible w/ little meaning or substance,
like how Smash Bros. used to have trophies
in a way.
However, filling up these holes rewards you
with coins and saving Toads as well provides
some of that, in rare cases a HP increase,
as well as another mechanic involving the
combat, which I’ll touch on later.
Overall, exploration in this game is fun.
These worlds and places are the biggest they’ve
ever been in Paper Mario, you’re constantly
rewarded with coins when filling up the holes
in the game, and the Toads are folded in various
ways it’s fun in its own way scouting them
out.
It’s similar to the Moons from Mario Odyssey
or Luigi’s Balloon World, it’s like hide-and-seek
largely so you’ll be racking your head every
now and then finding some of these guys, though
it’s not needed to beat the game.
I think Origami King embraces that Action
Adventure monicker more than it’s predecessors
did and with this specific instance, they
managed to make it stick.
As far as the worlds themselves, they’re
solid all around.
You have standard stuff like grassy plains,
mountains, the desert, the ocean, the jungle,
the sky, etc. but some of these places take
it a little further.
An autumn mountain, a japan-like area dubbed
Shogun Studios, a spa resort in the clouds,
there are some interesting ideas here and
there though it is largely much of the same
riff raff Mario games usually do with their
locations.
And this is where most of my positives lie.
The characters & general writing are super
solid all around, the structure of the world
and exploration is good, the locations are
solid enough, the presentation is strong and
the music is godly.
But, yes, I do have issues with this game.
I could sit here and pry on how there aren’t
original characters, how there aren’t really
partners, very little original designs, a
greater story, yaddy yaddy yadda.
I mean I do feel this way with the series
since Sticker Star and I already mentioned
how Olly is a bad villain, but I’d be beating
a dead horse and despite it’s tied to the
same series as the first 3 making it ultimately
valid to compare regardless, the game and
franchise envisions itself in a half different
light since Sticker Star, despite how many
things it tries to do to replicate both the
last two games and the first 3 that I’m
trying to review & critique the game as “unbiased”
as possible, despite again, it would still
be fair to compare to the first entries anyways.
Otherwise, we’ll start off with smaller
issues and work up from there.
The game feels generally slow most of the
time, but specific bits really feel like they
drag on for no real reason.
Paper Mario’s no stranger to pacing issues
in some way, every game in the series has
pacing flaws to some extent, usually involving
backtracking, and Origami King isn’t much
different.
Shogun Studios for instance is a well themed
location, though it requires you to find a
bone to unlock more of it, which involves
a fetch quest of various other items you obtain
from 5 different NPCs across the entire area
you trade them with.
And once you found the NPCs, you have to walk
back and forth constantly until you get the
item required to continue forward.
Better example, the desert.
Once you’re there and explore the place
and find 2 towers, you find the Shy Guy City
that was in the trailer.
However, you enter the big city and it’s
biggest building, and then realize you gotta
go back out into the desert to find this Toad
archaeologist, and then you find him in some
ruins, then you gotta go back into the city
to read scripts on a wall, then you gotta
go back out into the desert again, then run
back out to open the Fire Vellumental temple,
do that, then get back out to the desert,
go to the towers you originally found, find
two more and then open up the main big temple.
A simple pacing halter on the other hand,
in the spa resort area, you’re tasked with
finding 4 spas to restore Bowser Jr., but
then you have to find a 5th spa afterwards
and then out of nowhere, you have to complete
this Shy Guy game show until you can reach
the spa, all before heading towards the last
part of the area to the last streamer.
Like there are moments where the game feels
like it’s padding itself out to extend playtime
and it doesn’t have much of a reason being
there.
It doesn’t help that speed all around and
traversing these worlds is really slow too,
like Mario’s not fast to compensate for
these huge worlds.
There’s a boot car you drive in the desert
and it helps there since the desert is particularly
huge, but there’s nothing like it in any
other worlds to accelerate travel outside
the boat you drive in the ocean, and even
then it still felt like it was dragging itself.
On top of the beginning of this game feeling
really slow and hand holdy with introducing
you to the battle system, which almost re-tutorials
itself at least 2 times, along with text being
really slow and not as easily skippable as
every past game.
Again, some of this is small stuff and past
Paper Marios had pacing issues in different,
sometimes far worse ways, but it doesn’t
excuse Origami King doing essentially the
same thing.
Game does feel slow & unnecessary with it’s
pacing at points and some it’s character
or locations don’t help alleviate that as
much as past entries.
And as far as saving Toads go, you eventually
find they don’t necessarily amount to much
when you save more of them.
Outside the occasional rewards I mentioned,
it’s not that different from hunting for
Blue Coins in Mario Sunshine or the Moons
in Mario Odyssey.
They repopulate Toad Town, which is neat,
but they don’t add much of anything to the
gameplay outside the battling.
Matter of fact, perfect segue, let’s talk
about the battling as this is where most of
my problems lie and/or are tied to.
Combat in this game revolves around a ring
system that acts as a puzzle.
You align enemies in one of 2 patterns to
increase your attack and kill enemies more
swiftly.
The further along you go in the game, puzzles
get a little tougher, but give it a decent
5-10 tries or 10-20 minutes with the system
after the tutorials, you tend to get an easier
grasp of how it functions.
Now the ring system itself I have no problems
with.
It has potential and can be fleshed out into
something even more fun and engaging if they
ever revisit this system in a later entry
of Paper Mario.
But my issue is how they execute it.
I’ll mention one big flaw that was pointed
out before release, there’s no experience
points.
Your reward for battles are coins and confetti,
very much like how paint and coins were your
reward in Color Splash.
Let me specify something about the battling
these last 3 Paper Marios.
Battling in Sticker Star and Color Splash
largely flubbed because of that lack of EXP,
that natural sense of progression, a proper,
legitimate reason to engage in battles, but
that wasn’t the only flaw of the battle
system in Color Splash and Sticker Star.
The gameplay in those games suffered from
also having every attack you make be consumable,
the stickers and cards you can easily lose
in those games that would incentivize you
to not battle to save them, and it also suffered
from the attack variety be extremely small
and heavily lacking in depth.
The last two games’ attacks largely revolve
around jumps and hammers with occasional items
in a really rare situation with you saving
the things for boss battles made battles feel
braindead & not that complicated or strategic,
especially since almost everything in this
game including the combat is tied to the A
button, like the last 2 games.
It hurts the overall engagement, there’s
little pulling you through or making you invest
in the battles themselves, and since you’re
punished for fighting by wasting reserves
and there’s no incentive for them anyway
as the reward for them you can get by doing
practically everything else in the game, the
gameplay was redundant in Sticker Star and
Color Splash.
In the Origami King, battles resolved one
issue in that attacks are no longer consumable.
Your basic jumps and hammers are always at
your use in combat, which is a big relief,
and beefier attacks kind of act like weapons
in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
You can use them in battle several times before
they break and this is fine in my opinion,
it puts value on the stronger attacks at least
and it doesn’t really harm anything in the
long run.
But again, there isn’t XP and your attack
variety is some of the least varied & bare
bones in all of Paper Mario.
Most are still jumps and hammers, jumps for
single line opponents and hammers for opponents
forming a square near you.
You get Fire and Ice Flowers, but those act
in the same manner as jumps and a Tanooki
Tail, which acts like the hammer.
The only majorly useful item is the POW Block,
all you’d really do is apply which enemies
are spiked or which you can jump on.
Like, there’s little strategy in the actual
combat, most of it comes from the puzzle elements
from the system in lining opponents up.
Even then, when you figure out how battles
work and which attacks are more optimal, battles
are piss easy and can largely be done in one
entire turn, sometimes even without the upgraded
weapons.
Even if you mess up alignment and battling
optimally for the most part, you can still
get by just fine with minimal damage.
I messed up a decent chunk, but didn’t get
punished much for messing up lining enemies.
Even when you whittle down on enemies, the
game will reward you with an attack boost
to finish the fight.
Like there’s no challenge outside the lining
element of the ring system itself, which even
then isn’t that difficult to understand
nor is it required to escape these fights.
The battles are barely more engaging than
they were in Color Splash and the puzzle elements
loses its novelty after the first area because
of how little they do with the battles overall.
You get even more coins in doing successful
action commands and finishing battles quickly,
but as far as the incentive’s concerned,
the game vomits, I mean it straight up PUKES
thousands upon tens of thousands of coins
by hitting blocks, visible and hidden, some
of which give a 1000 right then and there,
filling up holes in the world, sometimes saving
Toads, basically exploring which I personally
found more enjoyable.
And as far as the Toads go, you gain an audience
in combat that grows the more Toads you save.
You can donate any amount of coins to these
Toads mid-battle and they auto-line up opponents,
throw trash to deal damage on them, heal you,
throw coins on the field and such.
Battles are already super easy that I rarely
found much of a use for using the Cheer function,
that’s what it’s called when you donate
to the Toads.
Perfect lineup or not, battles are perfectly
manageable and I always had a good number
of mushrooms to heal.
So, it in turn didn’t serve a whole lot
of reason to find the Toads outside the hide
and seek perspective, which is fine, but it
makes their influence and purpose trivial.
The characters that tag along with you along
the adventure can also be used in battle.
This is technically the first Paper Mario
to kind of provide a Toad partner, much less
one that’s an archeologist with a digging
ability, and a Magikoopa, so that’s kind
of cool, but they’re all temporary at specific
times, yet they are there in battles.
The main differences though are you have zero
control over all of them in and outside battles,
other than Professor Toad who just digs glowing
spots for coins, their attack success rate
is random so they can miss and not be of much
help at all at times, they only have one attack,
and not many of them really help battles by
that much, especially when they’re easy
already.
Kamek and Professor Toad hurt more enemies
and each “partner” deals more damage the
further you go, but that’s about it.
I can’t really call them partners like past
games because it genuinely feels like partners
in this game were an afterthought and were
haphazardly thrown in the game to try and
appeal to the OG Paper Mario crowd but doing
the bare minimum.
They aren’t incorporated into the core design
of the battles, they don’t amount to much
of anything in them too, especially since
they all leave you throughout and it isn’t
like you can control them either.
Some add a decent amount narratively & for
character purposes, but they serve extremely
little as far as the gameplay goes.
You can also spend coins to buy time and accessories,
the badges of this game essentially.
As for buying time, it’s there if you want
to properly finish the puzzle and can help
but largely isn’t a major influence in the
grand scheme, though it’s probably the only
way to give this system some form of tension
and engagement.
But again, screwing up isn’t that punishing.
And accessories do help significantly in battles,
especially bosses, but they’re not only
really linear as far as stat progression goes,
there wasn’t really a major need to go out
of my way to use them.
I streamed the whole game and I equipped the
bronze HP, Defense and Time accessories up
until either the second or third area.
I only had either the bronze defense or the
bronze timer enhancement one, I forget which
one if not both.
But then I unequipped them and despite me
buying the silver and gold versions of those,
I never equipped them.
They essentially serve at making an already
super easy game far easier than that.
I only got use out of the accessories that
do stuff outside of battle, like the Toad
alert, the discount card for shopping or the
coin counter that rewards you 10,000 coins
for 10,000 steps.
Confetti as well isn’t a hard resource to
come by.
You can smack a tree numerous times and it
provides infinite confetti so when you’re
running low, you can smack a tree for 20 seconds
or smack flowers, rocks, and other objects
in the world and blocks still provide bags
of them.
Confetti is not a scarce resource by any means,
and this was a problem with the incentive
surrounding the last two games’ combat.
There are accessories and weapons that do
become very expensive later on, but even with
making a conscious effort of avoiding enemies
you won’t find a whole lot of trouble buying
some of these, especially since you are going
to be thrusted in mandatory fights anyways
a decent amount of the time and you’ll get
rewarded in those, not to mention boss fights
which give you a thousand coins, if not more.
So, while attacks have more value along with
accessories and weapons, there’s very little
variety going into them and not a lot of strategy
or depth going into the combat.
The puzzle elements have a low skill floor
with a low skill ceiling that amount to doing
the same handful of patterns/line ups most
of the time, and you’re going into plenty
of fights you can’t escape from along with
being rewarded absurd amounts of coins and
plenty of confetti for exploring the overworld,
there’s still little incentive to fight
you might as well not bother, which is unfortunate.
You do have the option to flee from battles,
but this is seemingly random as when you time
the A button when the Flee flashes white,
it can fail automatically primarily in later
locations and later fights and that’s the
only instance the game punishes you in fights,
it's usually when you try to flee which is
annoying as it essentially makes you go through
the fight to finish it.
Battles aren’t that engaging, they still
feel tedious to bother with, the ring puzzles
are relatively straightforward and lenient,
the combat’s super simple and there still
isn’t a proper incentive to engage in these
fights, especially when the game provides
the same rewards as battles do and then some
for largely just exploration.
I mentioned how the paper meta style writing
is still present in The Origami King though
it is dialed back some earlier.
Toads do mention various lines of creasing
and being folded, I mean the whole game’s
about Origami, but this style of humor’s
also emphasized with the bosses, which is
only one issue I have with them.
There are two sets of main bosses in this
game, the Vellumental Beasts that command
elements, which are these origami beasts of
sorts, and the Legion of Stationary, which
consist of office supplies.
The office supply bosses in particular highlight
the paper meta humor, which just stopped being
funny since Color Splash.
Toads having faces hole punched, taped to
a tower, rubber banded to chairs; we got it
the first time, man.
Not only this, but the bosses emphasize my
problems with the battle system itself.
I will give them this, the bosses aren’t
just thrown in there for comedy, believe it
or not they do tie to the lore of Olly’s
Legion and how the origami in this world is
constructed, every Legion of Stationary boss
being an item you’d use to make origami.
Each supply boss is also very expressive and
they tried to give each one a type of characteristic
or personality, so they did try with making
these bosses stand out in more ways than one.
Alongside that, the boss fights all around
help you understand the battle system better
and each boss provides some mechanic that
changes it up a little bit to make it more
interesting.
There’s at least something to take away
with the bosses than on a surface level.
That said, these are still some of the blandest
bosses for Mario I’ve ever seen from a pure
design perspective.
I don’t think I need to explain how when
you’re fighting a stapler or colored pencils.
Not only this, but not that many bosses provide
stimulating puzzles or challenges to their
gimmick.
Once you figure out their gimmick, you’re
essentially doing the same pattern of layout
and attack 2-3 times until you summon your
1000-Fold Arms to deal the final blow.
That is literally how a majority of boss fights
go, you jump and/or hammer, figure out the
gimmick and use either one of the four Vellumental
powers you gain or primarily the Arms technique
to finish them.
It’s basically that steak boss in Paper
Mario Color Splash, but the template for that
boss is largely repeated in different formats
for each boss.
I already mentioned how the paper aesthetic
and the bosses and paper meta writing makes
the characters and worlds feel more artificial
or distracting.
With this, bosses feel even more artificial
and automated and it makes their fights more
tedious with the little freedom of attacks
you have and how much you repeat essentially
the same method of combat itself up to the
1000-Fold Arms.
All of this ESPECIALLY true with the final
boss.
Donating to the Toads doesn’t help much
either, the most you’ll get is healing and
coins, I’ve tried 3 times.
I’d say the Water Vellumental was the most
honest boss in my opinion, but my favorite
boss was the one before the one office supply
guarding the green streamer, largely from
an atmospheric & presentational perspective.
Outside those two, was not a fan of the bosses.
It sucks too because every boss has their
own unique way of attacking & screwing up
spots and the overall board, but then it goes
back to the same basic combat you’ve done
already and now that you largely know what
the boss will do, there’s no more thought
going into it majority of the time.
It goes back to the little depth and variety
of the combat and ring system I mentioned;
it doesn’t take a lot to figure it out,
you have a small pool of attacks anyways to
make it feel different or interesting on your
own so the engagement suffers, you’re usually
repeating lineup patterns and attacks often
and it’s just boring and tedious.
When you tie this to how you’re largely
fighting the board itself, it makes it feel
more like a puzzle and less like a genuine
fight, normal or especially boss and that’s
disappointing.
This is why I don’t mind the system itself
but dislike how they handled it.
There is room for improvement and expansion,
but what is there doesn’t sustain battles
the entire way through, at least for me.
If there was FAR more attack variety, other
spaces that affect you and the board, and
proper incentive like experience, something
that ONLY battles can provide and are valuable
to go out of your way for, there may be something
fun there the whole way through and the gameplay
overall could’ve been stellar.
But as it stands this game shares a good chunk
of issues Color Splash and Sticker Star had,
but in different ways.
Beyond the obvious stuff this game lacks that
the first 3 have, the pacing of the game can
drag at times, Toad hunting doesn’t serve
a whole lot in the grand scheme, the villain’s
underwhelming and battles are barely much
better than before, with boss battles being
a major disappointment all around.
My favorite parts of the game largely involve
the beginning and the last act of the final
streamer up until the final boss essentially.
And the middle portion has pockets of really
good stuff, but some middle road to mediocre
bits here and there.
All in all, it makes sense why I’m mixed
on this game at the end.
The characters and writing are really good,
the presentation, music and graphics are astounding,
the structure of the world is good, exploration
is fun, locales are okay overall and the game
does fix a few problems Color Splash had,
but the core story itself is lackluster, especially
when you factor the villain himself, some
of the writing & messages are the same, hackneyed
paper jokes that were already stale last game,
the game has pacing problems & a little backtracking
that can drag it down at certain points, and
the battle system still ends up feeling tedious
& redundant due to the lack of proper, good
incentive to take part in, the lack of attack
variety & overall depth between combat and
puzzles, and just being tedious & not that
engaging in the grand scheme as a result,
which also undermines the purpose of Toad
Hunting, on top of all the other thing & details
this game lacks past games did that I specified
numerous times in past videos.
If I were to grade Paper Mario: The Origami
King, I’d give a 6.5 out of 10, or a letter
grade of a C-.
It has genuinely good ideas and strong points
that do give the game a stronger image and
more flavor than modern Paper Mario has ever
seen, there’s a genuinely good game under
here, I don’t hate it, but it’s bogged
down by numerous design flaws that shouldn’t
be there, largely with the combat, that just
hamper and hurt the overall gameplay and experience
to where it’s rough going back at times
along with underutilization of various mechanics,
ideas and the main villain.
It is okay in my eyes.
There’s definitely something in Origami
King for most people to enjoy and get out
of, if not a couple things, but that largely
chalks up to how you may feel at the moment
or how you may feel on Paper Mario as a whole.
It’s another “baby step” to a better
Paper Mario, one most people keep asking for
that we haven’t gotten yet, but it still
follows the same idealism and bloodline Sticker
Star set, even when it fixes some of its issues
as of late.
If you’re open to a modern Paper Mario,
one that can give some good character moments
and writing beyond the paper meta humor, I’d
say it wouldn’t hurt.
But if the current direction is still something
you’d rather not support or if the battle
system is still a big turn off, or even the
core story, lack of original characters and
whatnot, then yeah, I don’t blame you for
wanting to skip out.
All I can say is The Origami King does deserve
consideration in trying out much more than
Color Splash and Sticker Star.
Despite I largely got what I was expecting,
I don’t necessarily regret playing it much
as I got more out of it than I did Color Splash
so take that as you will.
I have a big video planned super soon regarding
this franchise’s current state now, what’s
essentially going to be a follow up / sequel
to “Why Paper Mario Changed,” and it’s
going to be a big one.
I’m not done talking about this game or
series.
Otherwise, thank you for watching and stay
tuned for more content related to Paper Mario,
the Mario franchise as a whole, Super Smash
Bros. and more Nintendo franchises.
Stay super.
