Paper Mario: The Origami King

Paper Mario deserves better. The prestige of a Final Fantasy veteran appropriating his magic onto a handicraft world deserves better. The unforgettable wit and lovable cast expanding Mario lore deserves better. And we know that Intelligent Systems can do better than committing themselves to a misguided identity crisis.

Despite being charming and oftentimes funny with some great set piece moments sprinkled throughout, Paper Mario: The Origami King’s repetitive combat and dull sense of progression hampers an otherwise enjoyable journey.

With a rich world to explore, secrets to find and fantastic writing at every step, Paper Mario: The Origami King often feels like Nintendo at its very best. But a baffling battle system and forgettable characters get in the way, holding back what could have been a sincerely exceptional adventure.

A fun game despite the RPG dynamics and depth that were thrown into the background.

Paper Mario: The Origami King offers a surprisingly charming and fun adventure with some fun platforming mechanics. I only wish the game had focused more on the role playing aspects or simply cut them away, as the battles become too dull to enjoy after the first hour or so.

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a charming Mario adventure marred by a difficult and tedious battle system.

Intelligent Systems have come close to perfecting the look and tone of Paper Mario with The Origami King, but at the cost of landing on a gameplay identity that encapsulates the series' legacy while providing fun innovations to the formula. As such, this game falls below the plethora of first-party Switch games that have taken their series to new heights, but that doesn't mean it's a soggy, crumbled piece of paper either. Paper Mario: The Origami King is a hilarious, dazzling joy ride, that frustratingly doesn't solve all of the issues from recent entries.

There’s a lot of joy to be found in Paper Mario: The Origami King, but its shallow combat and monotonous nature makes for a glib experience that crumples under pressure.

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.

As a longtime fan of the series, Paper Mario: The Origami King has its trademark humor and charm, but misses its appealing RPG gameplay.

A visually beautiful and hilariously well-written experience let down by an overbearing and clunky fundamental gameplay system. Unfortunately, Paper Mario: The Origami King falls flat in its attempts to bring one too many things into the fold.

Paper Mario: The Origami King may not be the best game in the series, but it remains a pretty good adventure thanks to funny scenes, a clean realization and diverse and varied situations.

The Origami King is a truly likeable game despite the shallowness of its new spin on gameplay. Its characters are winsome, its visual design is gorgeous, its world is fun to explore, and its storytelling is outside the box and playful. At the same time, however, it could be so much more. Combat is largely unfulfilling, and your journey as a whole lacks meaningful choices. For a series with RPG roots, that’s a real shame.

A solid, wonderfully charming adventure-come-puzzle title. Thankfully, for series’ fans, it’s closer to Color Splash than it is to Sticker Star, but the game still doesn’t come close to The Thousand-Year Door territory. Perhaps this is down to The Origami King’s need to do everything at once, rather than focus on one core element of gameplay. Until the series can truly settle and develop an identity to call its own, Paper Mario will always be a little creased in the corners.

With a new open world focused on exploration, a revised combat structure and a greater emphasis on plot, The Origami King firmly establishes Paper Mario foremost as an action-adventure game, drastically slowed down by the pacing of turn-based combat.

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a solid, but unremarkable sequel. It's like a table of snack food at a party, where you'll happily nibble away just because you're stood next to it or feeling a bit peckish, but it's not exactly going to fill you up. The new battle puzzles and the boss fights in particular stand out, but the world and endless Toads fail to spark the same delight. This feels like a missed opportunity.

There are elements acting as a glue-stick, keeping Paper Mario: The Origami King from completely falling apart, but it is in desperate need of a vision. If you really need a Mario fix, look to the superior Super Mario Odyssey, which is already available on the Switch.

If you’re a fan of the series then you can’t go wrong, but it’s not the strongest game in the franchise with its plain bad battle system, regardless of how charming and beautiful it is.

As is the case with Paper Mario: The Origami King, Nintendo’s ability to make consistently beautiful games will almost always manage to keep their scores above average; but, their recent refusal to make a game that does not insist on dragging the player through extremely easy gameplay, holding the player’s hand the entire time, will continue to keep their score low. This is not even mentioning the abysmal battle system.

In the end, Paper Mario The Origami King is a fine game, but throughout the years Nintendo has delivered games that are far better. If the game was a bit more challenging it would have gone a long way for the overall enjoyment.

Can a game show significant improvement over its predecessors while further entrenching itself along the wrong path? Origami King certainly tries, making a game that’s a blast to read and gorgeous in screenshots but just not that fun to play. In many ways, it delivers the quality and polish you expect from Nintendo. As a full package and a time investment, it’s hard to recommend.

I wish this game lived up to the slogan „A new paper-crafted Mario adventure unfolds on Nintendo Switch!“. The storytelling really does not unfold enough making this insufficiently interesting game. Beautiful to the eye but empty.

The genuinely thought-provoking Ring Battle system, engaging puzzle design, and care given to Olivia's characterisation all make The Origami King the best Paper Mario since the series' Wii outing, but that wasn't a high bar to begin with and the series is still struggling to come up with an engaging gameplay loop in light of the lessened RPG elements. Without experience or levelling, random battles lose their lustre fast.

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a light-hearted and casual action-adventure game with the most basic of RPG elements thrown in that will appeal most to younger Switch owners and newer Paper Mario fans. It’s a visual feast, easy to jump in and great for kids. The combat is far from challenging, and there’s far more of an emphasis on light puzzle-solving and breezy exploration that hooks you in with constant paper puns and a fully realised, papercraft world to explore instead of a compelling epic narrative worthy of a storybook.

The Origami King contains some of the series’ standout moments – almost all of them related to its enjoyable script and wonderful, varied environments – but it also frustrates with some disappointing new features and all-too-familiar missteps.

Paper Mario: The Origami King once again takes the series in a completely different direction. Mushroom Kingdom is bigger and more alive than it’s ever been, but it comes packaged with a combat system that quickly becomes stagnant.

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a fun, colorful JRPG that trips itself up by either overthinking or underthinking one of its core elements. Besides the highly entertaining boss fights, the unsatisfying, puzzle-based combat system misses the mark.