Paper Mario: The Origami King

[Neon Ignition]

It's been a long time since I played a Paper Mario game. I dabbled with the handheld games to varying degrees but the last time I went fully through an entry on console was The Thousand Year Door with Super Paper Mario and Color Splash still on my backlog list. With that in mind and a decision made to wait to see what patches might do for the performance of Deadly Premonition 2 (yes, I haven't forgotten that's out too!) I figured this was a good one to start this morning.




Immediately it's nice to see the humorous nods and cheeky humour back. The game is very quickly shown to be a good looking title for the Switch. I've only had a few examples so far of the battle system which at first feels like quite a change up from the normal turn based action but you quickly get used to it and it reveals itself to be largely very similar to what has gone before. I know franchise fans can be much heavier in scrutinising each entries improvements and otherwise with each new entry but on first impressions I'm liking this quite a bit.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm now in the middle of the Dungeon in 'World 2'. The game has six of these after the intro and hub town which you work through in a linear fashion. You do some field work before completing a dungeon which gives you the ability to make your way to the final boss of the area you're in. It's only just now beginining to dial up the complexity and difficulty of the combat system and still falls into the very easy category but I'm enjoying this quite a bit and it still has plenty run time ahead of it.

[Atticus]

I've never played a Paper Mario game before so I have no glory days to compare this one to. Wanting something light-hearted I thought I'd take a chance on this. Only a little way in but really liking it so far ... it's got loads character and it just keeps me smiling. Really relaxing to sit down and play. It's a happy experience.

[KIT786]

finished this today and i've gotta say i found it real joy to play.. looks gorgeous, plenty of bits that made me chuckle and just the right amount of challenge I've been looking - bit on the easy side, but still enough to make you think.

Loved the boss battles, but regular battles could get a bit tedious at times. strangely having completed the game (not 100% it), there are 3 options in the settings that are still question marked out

[briareos_kerensky]

I wanted to post something about this new Paper Mario before, but never found the time...and right now I've just completed the 5th streamer and I'm heading towards the last portion of the game.

What a journey it was! Full of charming visuals, catchy songs, some humour that works, other humour that doesn't quite make it, and a lot of padding. A ton of it.
Paper Mario Origami King is not bad, I'd say it's better than Sticker Star and Color Splash, but I have a major complain on how the game develops: in your journey from point A to point C, you don't go through B, but through the whole alphabet backwards. It's exhausting, you think you've finally reached your goal, but no, here's something to keep you busy for half an hour just for the sake of it. I feel than half of the content is just there to pad the running time of the game, and while every single moment has been crafted with delightful detail, it's bothersome to go through: it's like you are on a perennial sidequest when you instead want to proceed with the main story.

Origami King's combat is fun for a short while, but then you realize its downfalls and you start to question why there's even the need for it.
For most of the game it's only Mario, with his standard jump (four enemies in a row) and hammer (four enemies in a 2x2 area) attacks. There are no character levels and all extra, more powerful weapons have limited durability. Enemies are positioned on a dartboard-like plane, with Mario in the centre. Before every turn, you have to line up enemies within a limited amount of time by moving the dartboard's tiles around; do so and attacks will be more powerful. As per Paper Mario tradition, pressing A at the right moment will further improve attack, or improve defence if it's the enemies' turn. Every group of four enemies gives Mario an extra action, so let's say you have 12 enemies, you can divide them in 3 groups, so you get three actions.
Most enemies go down with two standard attacks, lined up or not. So, why bothering lining up them or use extra weapons? I...don't really know. I line up enemies, I use the most powerful weapon, I time my attack correctly, and they are still 1 or 2 HP from dying. If I used the standard weapons they'd have more HPs, but extra or standard weapons still use two turns to kill an enemy group. Depending on the enemy, the lining bonus doesn't really make a difference in the number of turns to take them down, and right now if I can figure out how the game wants me to line up enemies in a few seconds I do that, if not I just go with what I can get.

Bosses might drag a lot if you don't catch their gimmick, and if you do they are smooth sailing. Origami King is far from challenging, though it has a couple of hard game over moments that thankfully the game literally tells you about...so why having them in the first place?

On the plus side, the presentation is absolutely superb. Nintedo really nailed the whole "paper" aestethic, in the same way they did with wool and Yoshi. The "pata pata" sound when you collect paper scraps and how you throw those around is strangely satisfying. I found disappointing that songs don't even have some kind of gibberish spoken lines to go along with the melody, considerign all characters have that for standard speech bubbles.

I don't know, I can see some good things in Origami King but I find the padding excessive, and almost every single element of the game drags for what feels like an eternity. There are some design decisions that you wouldn't really expect from an experienced team...or better, the team's decision to make the game accessible to everyone and not overly complex or deep in the end hurts the product.
But I'm bringing this to completion, unlike the previous two games, which is already something...I think.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm just about to finally approach the Desert Temple, the lead up to that has been the games lowpoint so far.