Paper Mario: The Origami King

Origami King is a huge game created from dozens of small entertaining levels, missions and simple quests and other things to do. While still working with years-proofed mechanics, it is not afraid to bring out something new and fun. [Issue#306]

An endlessly enjoyable story, a unique take on combat that fuses puzzle-solving with RPG traditions, and a beautiful world full of adventure makes Paper Mario: The Origami King yet another must-play Nintendo Switch experience.

But what I actually want you to take away is that this game works despite itself. You shouldn’t miss out on the characters, writing, and world because a small fraction of the experience doesn’t work. By the end, I had largely forgotten about standard combat. I think this is the rare game that improves as you continue playing. And that culminates in a thrilling finale that comes as a huge payoff for the story. So don’t sit this one out. Pick it up, play through it, complain about it with me, but then stick around for all of its joys.

Apart from the combat part, Paper Mario: The Origami King is fun, adorable, and full of surprises.

Paper Mario: The Origami King is an adorable adventure, a breath of fresh rhythm on Nintendo Switch. The artistic direction, the well thought-out fighting system, the puzzles that require a reading of the environment and the atmosphere through the many sets make this game a real fun video candy-filled with humor and secrets, and very good experience.

The best thing I can say about Paper Mario: The Origami King is that it has some major problems, but the story is great enough and so worth experiencing that it's worth trudging through the negatives to experience it at least once. Like a lot of first-time origami projects, it starts rough, but it's worth seeing through to the end.

While Paper Mario: The Origami King makes excellent strides in terms of humor and adventure game design, it’s still sorely lacking aesthetically and features a horrendous battle system that only gets more frustrating as you play. I’ve given up on the series returning to the style of my childhood’s classics, but if the series ditches battles entirely it could make for some extremely fun adventure games.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The game was good, but I am still waiting for a true spiritual successor to The Thousand-Year Door. The world and environments were beautiful, and both the story and music were great. Where this game falters is in its gameplay. While I appreciate the creative combat mechanics, it felt like a puzzle game rather than an RPG. The companions felt very dull in battle—having them didn't feel any different from not having them. There is no leveling-up system like in previous entries, and although there was a variety of monsters, fighting different enemies felt identical. I stopped playing after finishing the main story and didn't bother with optional content because it just wasn't that fun.

The combat gets so tedious that it zaps all the energy out of the game by the time you get towards the end. it's a shame because it's a stellar game otherwise. Not as good as TTYD, but still good.

This Paper Mario Game was one of my biggest disappointment in my video game history. At first you are amazed about the beautiful graphics and artstyle but then when you enter a battle you can't believe what they have done. I really hated the battle-system so much that i cound not go on with this game. For me it's by far the worst Paper Mario game ever created!

What the game did right is exactly what we expect of a AAA Mario game, bright colorful world, fun uplifting music, generic characters (recolored toads in silly hats), and loads of collectibles. But we really shouldn't be praising Nintendo for what they have been doing since the WII. Intelligent systems did make a change to the Paper Mario formula but unfortunately they spoiled it. They screwed up the combat system, like all the other negative reviews. They went with a weird ring puzzle design where you attempt to line up the enemies in rows and 2x2 squares. The ring is big with lots of open spaces but they limit the amount of moves you can make per-turn allowing you to only solve most puzzles one way (like a jig-saw puzzle). They added sub weapons that you can use like fire flowers and tanuki suit tail spin but they attack in the same formation as your jump or hammer making them not very useful items. Combat partners are a joke this time around being very useless almost laughable. And to top it all off you get nothing other than coins for the 2-5mins you could be spending every encounter, no exp to make you stronger, no unique items to grind for, just wasted time and more coins for your already overflowing coin pouch. Overall this game is like a house with a nice façade but the inside is a mess.