I think the Origami King's successes are odd in that they are closely tied to a lot of it's misses.
The Hub:
The hub area isn't as good as 64's. In that game, every area was directly connected to Toad Town, including the ice area which was accessible through gameplay via the town's sewers instead of through warp pipes. And the sewers did not just exist as window dressing either - but as an entire dungeon which you could slowly chip away at as you progressed through the game to find cool new upgrades, as well as warp point shortcuts for areas you had already accessed through Toad Town prior. By comparison Origami King just acts as the "set up" for most of the game, because most streamers don't really connect to it, and the pipe system in the museum is a simple fast-travel mechanism with no extra detail added onto it. There's also other problems with Origami King's rendition of Toad Town. For example, between the hub being bigger than 64's and the players movement also being significantly slower, along with the fact that there's generally less things that are integral to player's progression in Origami King, a lot of Toad Town ends up being dead space - areas you won't go to very often, nor will have a reason to care about. This not only means less depth to the area, but even simpler consequences - like rarely hearing renditions of it's theme (I may have heard the coffee shop theme a single time). You hear the museum rendition a lot, but that's cheating. Compare that to 64, where hearing renditions of Toad Town is much more natural - as they all occur around a variety of areas you'll want to go to often or need to go to.
In fairness though, this is all in comparison to 64, which had one of the more impressive hubs I've seen in a video game, only countered by the likes of Dark Souls and Majora's Mask (this one is clearly the best). Origami King's hub is a very good compromise, it does enough to go beyond what I would expect in a lot of games. Firstly, because it feels necessary to go back to Toad Town at all. While it does diminish as the game goes on, stocking up on resources is a pretty common concern for the player in the first three streamers. Second, because of all the nice details. The theme evolving as the game goes on and Toads fill the town gives it a more natural sense of progression - and it's one of few things done better than the original. Seeing Toads be quirky is enough of an award for spending relatively little time trying to collect them. And while Toad town doesn't connect to every area directly, when including it's town port this kind of ends up making the world more believable since you aren't always moving forward linearly like you do for the first two streamers, and the backtracking ends up highlighting Toad town anyways with the Princess Peach excursion and the Purple streamer.
The Tunes:
Paper Mario: The Origami King's OST is pretty good. It's not one of my favorites, but in fairness it has a lot of songs that are decently memorable and land with a lot of Nintendo's best. I don't think the game does the best job of highlighting it's own music though, in all honesty.
The Event Battle is a good example of what I'm talking about, I think. As great as the main song is, it's ~thinking~ variation ruins the excitement the track gives off. It maintains the flow, sure, and I can respect that they might have realized that repetition or annoyance might set in if the player had to listen to the regular edition of battle themes too much. But, overall I believe it tempered my possible love for the soundtrack a bit.
Still, the battle themes are, pretty consistently, one of the main highlights of Origami King. I particularly love the Great Sea Battle Theme variation, and the Purple Theme Variation isn't far behind.
I do think that a general problem with the OST is, a lot of songs for me lacked direction, felt a bit aimless at times or just had rather extensive sections that were a bit boring. It wasn't uncommon to have a track where, the beginning is amazing, the ending is amazing, and maybe a short section in the middle is amazing, but the bridges connecting these sections were a bit bland.
That's probably why my favorite song in the OST was a short variation that played during the Sea Tower dungeon:
This track just feels much more personal, to the point, and like a punch in the gut.
A couple of other tracks standout as possible all-time classics as well:
That's a lot of amazing themes! Though admittedly some of them don't always hit me right all the time (more so talking about the more energetic boss-themes). Still, a very very good OST overall. And that's not even including the Toad Town/Main Theme variations, which are one of the game's bigger accomplishments (especially the museum rendition!).
If I had to add one more complaint it would be that, while the music still sounds good and is of good quality, I don't think any of the area themes are really that great. They all fulfill their purpose, but they kind of come in one ear and out the other.
I think I would say the consistent theme for me was that, "area" themes were usually nice but immemorable, whereas stuff like city themes were some of the best tracks in the game. So Autumn Mountain didn't do much for me even if it sounded pretty, but Shogun Studios was one of the earlier highlights of the OST. Scorching Sandpaper Desert sounded epic, but ultimately wasn't nearly as memorable as Snif City. This is something that could definitely be improved upon with the next game, because you actually spend a lot of time in the "overworld" areas. So for the music in them to be mostly immemorable, even if they sound nice, is a bit of a letdown. Between that and the ~thinking~ variations, as well as some songs lacking direction or feeling more like one-shot parodies of Hollywood archetypes, the OST felt a bit limp at times for me. Still, it's pretty good as a whole.
The Paper Aesthetic:
A lot of the love and praise around Origami King, and to an extent the newer Paper Mario games as a whole, seems to be centered around Intelligent Systems eye for aesthetic sensibilities and their attention to detail. But really, while I can't help but agree that Origami King's presentation is one of if not it's greatest accomplishment, I think this is also one of the most inconsistent aspects of the game. Around the midway mark, during the Scorching Sandpaper Desert section, I sort of came to the realization that - if you took away the multi-layered paper-rendering of the environments - most of the game, if not all of it would look unremarkable. Maybe even bland. That might be a weird complaint, after all if you take away any artistic intention in any work you could easily ruin the overarching point of it and make the result seem uninspired. But the issue here is that it gets to the point where it feels like Intelligent Systems put almost no effort in environmental design, putting all their eggs into the paper texture basket, something particularly strange given how good of an impression the initial areas make. How many times do we see the same looking stone Toads? The funny thing is, I can ask that question to someone who's played the game, and they'd have to reply back "at what streamer are you talking about?". Because it happens three separate times. In Scorching Sandpaper Desert, it's the monolithic Toad towers, which despite conceptually being weird and creepy all-seeing eyes of the desert end up just looking boring. I'd use the analogy of toys with their heads popping off the neck to describe them, but that sounds more intriguing then what we actually get from the Toad towers. The second time it happens, it's at the Purple Streamer and Green Streamer areas, which share the same statues. In fairness, the fact that they share the same statues is fine due to some really cool lore given at the beginning of the Shangri-spa resort. But that's the problem. If you're going to reuse assets, make the assets more cultured. Aside from some very basic design elements (the Toad statues having "wings" and the Toad towers being ... uhh ... tall?), there's nothing that makes these designs pop. And if you're not going to make the designs themselves more detailed, why not give each use of the design a unique spin? A crack on a Toad's forehead? A piece of stone having fallen out? Either making the actual model more interesting, or making each use of the model more individualistic would have sufficed. But instead we get neither. At first, seeing these giant Toad faces look at you from afar is one of the coolest visuals in the entire game, but once you actually get close to these towers, well, the illusion of coolness is gone. There's such a lack of intricacies that it feels more like a "cute Mario plaything", rather than a living world, despite one of the major themes in the game quite literally being making the world of Paper Mario seem more "three-dimensional" both in visuals and in complexities of it's characters and various factions.
And that might sound like a nitpick. But that's two examples, and those examples extend to almost every part of the game. Another example is the Princess Peach. A part of the game which is purposefully supposed to be "horror-esque", but relies entirely on it's music to convey that feeling. Once you get on the ship all you see is some ... mild destruction? Mild destruction that, for the most part, does not even really convey some horrifying evil at play in the area, given that the entire game's world is mildly destroyed. In any other game, a decently-sized-but-still-modest hole in the rear of a ship is a sign of danger, in Origami King it's another hole to fill, so why not at least punctuate the idea you're going for? In the ship everything is fine as well, except for Toad's being "scared to unconsciousness", which is kind of lame especially when a similar concept is done much better in the Holepuncher dungeon. The most you get is a black oil leak in a single room, and foreshadowing akin to Nightmare's in Fusion, only much worse because it's done right before the attack and not done consistently throughout. It gets annoying having to let the music pick up the slack for a lot of the game's intent with it's environmental design. Holepuncher's dungeon is also fairly generic, with vaguely egyptian murals and coffins that are used constantly with almost no variation, but it's a bit more acceptable there because of the spider webs (and the no-faced Toads help, which are separate from the environmental design). And yet another example: Shogun Studios feels like such a fun theme-park that is fully realized (aside from some minor nitpicks, like how some of it's main attractions aren't very eye-catching outside of their sections of the park) ... except it's layout is completely unrealistic and stupid. And you don't even need to be a theme-park aficionado to understand this. Who makes their info center some random house on the left side of the entrance, with no eye-catching visual que to guide visitors there? Who makes about 35% of their theme parks allocated space into rooms with seemingly no purpose, other than to maybe act as a hotel? And if that's the case, who puts the hotel service in the middle of a park, obstructing the way to various attractions? This isn't even a small detail, the game went out of the way to make this park feel like a real place, why was no attention put to this? This is what makes Origami King so weird. It's visual design looks great. It's paper aesthetic is amazing. It's environmental design, is anything but, and relies on the origami and paper side of things as a crutch, which leads to "boring levels" that just happen to also be "pretty". A contradiction, one might say.
The character design is a contentious issue and really it's been maybe one of the more overplayed. But in fairness, I think it's overplayed because it's such a ridiculous thing for Nintendo to get caught up on, and honestly no matter how much the game references it whether as a joke or a subtle nod it doesn't excuse how silly the whole ordeal comes off as. I think it's especially egregious because art design is often one of the most beloved and defended tools in Nintendo's war-chest, and part of a great art design is memorable character designs. Whether people want to admit it or not, writing doesn't just impact a character's memorability or likeability, and it's silly to act like better writing addresses the criticisms older fans have.
A bigger problem though, honestly, is just the times where the Origami shtick just doesn't quite land. A surprising amount of enemies just look odd and silly, and I don't think that was the intent. Boo's, Spikes, and the various non-Koopa bro's just look bad, because whereas all the other enemy types have an interesting mixture of latent creepiness and minion-disposibility, those enemy types just look stupid and inbred. Another example is the Cutout soldiers, which look disturbing from an overhead view, but just bland and awkward outside of combat. I can't imagine that any of these reactions were really what the developer wanted, there's definitely self-aware moments that are supposed to make the origami creations seem absurd and out-there, but for certain creatures to look bad or boring constantly is just an unintended consequence of making fairly literal adaptations of ideas into origami. None of this is even to mention the construction supplies, which is such a big can of worms and so self-aware that it's just too hard to touch, and I'm still not sure what my opinion on them really is, so I'll leave it be (luckily for any readers).
It's worth mentioning that, having a thick white border outline for any paper character is a huge eyesore that takes you out of the world all of the time, and man is it a disappointment when Intelligent Systems clearly put so much work into making most of the game's aesthetic blend into the environments to be more organic.
At the same time, separating the enemies from the allies using the paper and origami as "factions" has to be one of the most brilliant decisions I've seen made in a game's aesthetic. Not only does it instantly contextualize every paper or origami-being as story-centric just through the theme of their contrast alone, consistently reminding you of the divide between the world's inhabitants, but it also easily explains why species which would normally fight Mario working under Bowser are not direct enemies in this game. You can't do the "us versus them" subject matter much better, it's a perfect melding of story and aesthetic and it makes it believable that all of Bowser's minions would not only be non-violent, but downright peaceful and friendly as well, since during such an apocalyptic time the foreseeable future would look doomed to be tainted with Origami attackers. Thinking about it now, it's kind of funny how getting rid of one type of violence may end begetting another type of violence; just a more familiar, well-known older violence. Of course we're not supposed to look at those simpler times as bad necessarily, given that the concerns brought up by the Mushroom Kingdom's inhabitants and their depressed attitudes are generally not reflected during normal faction vs faction scenarios, but it's still a neat concept to chew on.
The Paper-Thin Story:
The overarching plotlines of Origami King are the worst written I've experienced in any video game, hands down. The games plot was cool as a catalyst for some quirky and more mellow storylines. The more serious moments are mostly a letdown from a writing quality standpoint. I'm going to be honest, it actually makes me kind of infuriated how much I've heard praise go on and on about Intelligent Systems writing capabilities (not just on VGChartz but all over the internet, including analysis videos) only for nearly every serious moment in the actual game to be ruined in one way or another. I feel like that was always one of the major defenses for the newer games, the fact that Intelligent Systems writing had gotten better with the likes of Super, and then had improved from Sticker Star with Color Splash. But if this is the best the team can produce, if Origami King is the peak of the franchises writing capabilities, then a lot of that praise just seems fraudulent.
I don't think Bobby's arc is very well written, honestly, aside from his death which is a very well done piece of emotional manipulation, something I can commend as that's very hard to do. But otherwise, so many elements just were not thought through. The most blatantly obvious is how hard it can be for people to connect to characters who are not only essentially useless, but actively obstruct the player from continuing the game. Bobby was annoying. He was a little shit that almost never helped in battle, or worse would be actively sleeping whilst Mario was in danger - even in moments where it's established in cutscenes before battle that Bobby knows the dangers and is scared of them. It just made his character look insensitive and obnoxious, and I realize it's partially the point but it went too far. Especially given how Bobby pulls you all over Autumn Mountain against your will just to obstruct the plot, not even just in Chestnut valley (where it's fine because it feels like the point of the sequence) but even just dragging you all around Autumn mountain without letting you explore at your own pace. He doesn't even go into the temple with you. Again, I realize this is sort of the point, I think they were trying to make Bobby essentially a kid that Mario and Olivia were his caretakers, like parental figures or at least guardians. But it's done in the most obnoxious way and even despite all of this, it never feels like that theme is quite driven home, it's something you are thinking about but it's never really delivered on fully.
But that's ... all something I can forgive, if the death scene was done good enough. What I can't forgive is the ramifications that are brought after it. Mario being forced to make Olivia go on is possibly one of the most insensitive scenes I've ever experienced in game history, and I think what I dislike about it so much is that it talks down to the player so hard. Like "Ok, this is Paper Mario, now it's time to be happy and fun again!" This is after, mind you, a 25 minute tangent just to get a single item and progress the game. You literally backtrack to get to an entirely new area, go through a mini-dungeon and fight a unique boss just to even get to this scene, but Mario can't be bothered to continue on his adventure without Olivia for a few minutes? It's not like Olivia is herself on the brink of suicide, she is just grieving, but nope we have to rush her as fast as possible to get back to the main game. Mario is a fucking douchebag. I'm not even actively advocating for extensive gameplay without Olivia as the only solution (though that would probably further strengthen the theme that everyone is important in their own way and that partners need each other, a good idea after Bobby's self-sacrifice), but the solution sure as hell isn't to remind the audience that this is a Paper Mario game, so we can't make it to depressing. We can't make something actually daring, we have to make sure Bobby comes back as a ghost so that everything's alright in the end, we have to make a joke so everything is fine in the end. And keep in mind, this is all after we're not only forgiving Bobby being an annoying piece of shit, but we're also forgiving the game for rushing his backstory right before. Which is something I'm fine with being lenient on .. but why does the after math suck so hard? I think the worst part is, it's not like Olivia really rethinks and reflects on these events. Her character doesn't change at all from this. In the end, what opens up with Bobby's death, is closed because of a joke about a Goomba mask looking funny. Almost literally equating the value of Bobby's suicide to a joke.
Later on, the point is further ruined in a rather tasteless joke about how Olivia sees all Bob-ombs as the same, because other Bob-ombs look like Bobby so obviously she's happy to see Bobby again. Another example of making Bobby's death into a giant joke. Origami King's use of character model retreading in general isn't done to great effect when it comes to actual thematic relevance, it's sometimes funny as a joke but the few lines Ollie has that hint at some sort of racism theme aren't really explored substantially. That's at least more interesting than a few throwaway lines made to excuse a mini-game in which we see Bobby's kind mercilessly killed (meta-textually for nothing but the player's enjoyment). The sad thing is, the idea of throwing away the lives of a short-lived species for the sake of "making an impact" isn't even a bad theme, sacrifice has been done before and done much better. But this scene is just a significantly worse version of Final Fantasy IX's ending, where after an entire game of Vivi having an existential crisis his death is lightened up because .... he had children. I guess. At least in that game, the sad final monologue is delivered by Vivi, and his death isn't really forgotten (and is a recurring theme even during his life). More importantly, Square didn't look at Vivi's kids and think "You know what's a good idea? If we make killing each of them quickly and successfully into a mini-game after making an entire character based on their species centered around the frailty of life and the sadness of death!"
Frankly, I'm not really sure how Bobby actually being dead really makes his story much different from the other not-so-dead characters in the OP when, him having characters just like him is used as a joke to alleviate his death and make the audience more comfortable with the slaughtering of his people.
It's a good example of the "It's Mario!" trap, it's easy to say it's great writing because we don't expect much from a Mario game. I honestly don't think anyone who could analyze the scene knowing what was already going to happen and taking into account the writing quality before and after the event could walk away thinking the overall plot succeeded in this regard, it's based completely off the initial shock value. And I can't get upset at people for being emotionally attached to such a well done moment, but it's just a single moment in a larger thread; and that thread is trash. That's what frustrates me about the praise of this scene. Paper Mario wants to have it's cake and eat it too, and that's what's so egregious about it.
King Ollie is the worst villain I've seen in a video game, and that's saying a lot because his presence isn't experienced throughout most of the game. He's not even particularly irritating, he does make the scenes he's in worse but he's not in a lot of scenes to begin with so it doesn't effect my enjoyment of most of the game. But his motivation is the stupidest thing in the world. He is racist against paper people because a paper person scribbled on him ... but all he had to do to not be a racist genocidal maniac is ... look at what was written on him. Ok. *sigh* I can't believe something as basic as a villain's motivation is ruined because Intelligent Systems is so stupid. This doesn't even make sense. If we're supposed to see Ollie as a child, then who's first reaction after being born is to instantly assume malice of their creator, to instantly assume that the person who gave them life, who allowed them to experience the world wished ill on them? Even if that's just a nitpick, it just further reveals how fucking dumb this whole idea is. Are there no mirrors in the world? Couldn't Ollie just find a way to fold himself in half and see what the scribbling said? Or why not just hang around and ask his creator? Jesus.
And for them to ask the audience to feel sad for Ollie ... a guy who tried to kill his sister with no remorse and for little real motivation is so dumb. God, I'm mad just thinking about how much this main plot is a failure.
Speaking of Olivia, every time they try to do some serious touching moment with her character I just felt like rolling my eyes. I love her character, she's cute, charming and has funny things to say. Originally I was a little worried that being a little too on-the-nose for a comedic relief character might make a lot of her commentary not land, and there are certainly parts where it misses. But by the end of the game, when a lot of serious things were happening and Olivia kept inserting small-monologues into the dialogue, I was just frustrated. It's like, it's bad enough that Ollie is the most generic racist anime villain ever, but that Olivia has to insert the "..all the things I've experienced" and "I don't know if I can do this without help..." is so generic. It's bad anime writing, except it's worse here because we never really get the sense that Olivia actually learned anything from this journey. Her character didn't change at all, so why do we constantly need to be reminded of how much she's overcome or how much friends she's made along the way. The game throws away most of the friends when they aren't convenient anyways. It's all so undercooked, like it was taken from a different game and inserted into Olivia. I guess thinking about it now, you can maybe stretch it and say that Olivia learned the meaning of sacrifice through Bobby, I never got that impression though and literally didn't think about that till writing this paragraph, it's never addressed by the developers and never subtly hinted at and by that time Bobby's death was made into a joke anyways.
By the way, Bowser shoving aside his kid and saying he'll be fine in a moment intentionally meant to be creepy and a little scary is such a huge tone clash and one of the, again, more egregious parts of the games writing. In general, Bowser was mostly very cool when he was in the game, but I wish he was in it more, I think he could have been done even more justice. I found it a bit jarring that the partners we had spent so much time with were kind of tossed aside for Bowser. Still, I think the scene at the crater was mostly very well done, and I absolutely love Bowser in the Ollie sequence.
The craftmaster was, for me, one of the parts in the game where I wasn't really annoyed or bothered by the sequence itself, but inversely I couldn't help but think of the implications it had on Origami King's storytelling approach as whole. "This is something that Paper Mario 64 would have made fun of" is a thought that I couldn't escape from, in that game the useless and boring backstory conveyed through a long-winded monologue is used as a prop for a joke about how unnecessary most JRPG exposition sequences are. Even back in 2000, when the genre was still at it's peak, and it's conventions were considered the gold standard for video game storytelling, that game had already figured out how meaningless exposition dumps don't really provide the player with any emotions or motivation. Paper Mario 64 had a lot of faults, but I couldn't help but think of the irony that a valuable lesson that game had taught fell on deaf ears within the same franchise. None of that is to say that it's a hardfast rule that every game, or even every Paper Mario, has to stick to. It's not like either method of storytelling in regards to exposition dumps is inherently better. But in this specific example, I think the craftmaster is the exactly the kind of thing 64 would have made fun of mercilessly.
The cooler parts of the story were when it delivered something interesting to chew on, whilst not also presenting large gaping holes by taking itself too seriously. The Green Streamer's backstory has to be one of the most memorable pieces of Mario history I've ever experienced. You quite literally have an entire faction enslaved under indentured servitude because they caused property damage to a heavenly spa. It's hilarious, kind of dark, and makes a lot of sense. You basically get a worker's uprising as one of the most memorable scenes in the game ... and it's done from the perspective of minions you usually see as evil! Bowser must be a pretty good boss if working as simple maintenance employees at a spa is worse! The feeling of oppression is unironically done justice, and this is a good example of how the game being cartoony and silly can make a serious theme still land whilst also giving it enough room to breath so that it can be funny as well.
The Gameplay:
Origami King's gameplay is by enlarge great. It makes use of player feedback to make even the least important mechanics feel satisfying. Of course, the nitpicker in me wants to complain that filling holes, finding Toads and doing battles don't really lead to great awards or mechanical depth. And I do think these are legitimate problems, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't fine with it for the most part. The visual feedback of filling holes is great, along with the satisfaction of trying to get the coins right as they come pouring out by pressing the jump button at exactly the right time. Battles are usually hard to miss and admittedly I don't think this was the right call for the developers to make, to essentially say instead of making battles more rewarding we'll just make Mario so slow that he has a hard time dodging enemies. From what I understand this is something that's been consistent since The Thousand Year Door, given that Mario only had his dash in 64, although even in 64 some paths were so linear that dodging enemies, especially whilst backtracking, could be legitimately hard (fuck you Yoshi's Island level). Still, the battle system especially in the first two-thirds of the game at least feels a lot faster than 64, and dodging enemies at least isn't an issue while backtracking this time, both of which I believe make the problems of Origami King's battle system less of a nuisance than 64's, even if the overall battle system is less developed
Collecting Toads takes the ideas represented in games like Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey and adds a lot more to these games respective collect-a-thon elements by making a quirky affair out of every collection. With so many Toads in the game, it would be hard to make each one rescued have some kind of intrinsic value to the player, and that's certainly not what was accomplished here. But that's ok, because the extrinsic value is more than enough. Seeing all the new lines of dialogue and some of the wacky things the Toads are up to always put a smile on my face (ok not always but you get it).
I will say this though. In Okami, one of the things that is consistently rewarded for the player is to help propagate nature by restoring it to it's former glory. This rewards the player not only mechanically, but also visually: as the environments always become more lively and beautiful the more you fix them. In contrast, rescuing Toads, though it may be doing a good service, often makes the environments of Origami King more bland. Because any "Origami creatures" end up just becoming another Toad on the side of the Road. I think Intelligent Systems should have put more consideration behind this, because a lot of environments feel less natural and it's sad to see that some developers made specific designs for every region only for those designs to transform into a basic Toad.
The battle system in Origami King is, generally, great. At least to me. The biggest problem is just that there's not enough latent progression throughout the game. It's actually surprising just how little there is, as the mechanical depth given to the player is mostly the same from about 5 hours in to the end credits. 64 had it's fair share of problems with this as well actually, a lot of partners ended up having overlapping abilities or abilities so similar in concept that your partner list could have used some serious streamlining. But it wasn't as much of an issue there given the fact that you'd get new upgrades for your weapons at separate times, which would produce interesting scenarios where the player would want to find ways to use the boot or hammer and ignore the other weapon depending on whichever technique was stronger at any given time. Every level upgrade was also a pretty big deal given how tight the damage and health point numbers were, so even if the player wasn't learning new mechanics they still were progressing a lot more than in Origami King. You'd also get new partner abilities in the overworld. Still, it was a problem to an extent in 64 as well, just less so.
What I think saves it though is that, as previously mentioned for most of the game the battle system comes off as a lot faster than 64's, and because the speed of battle is mostly dictated by the player's own skill-level since most of your time is spent solving the ring puzzles, it never feels like a waste of time that battles are taking so long. Timing button presses is a form of skill too but, it doesn't feel fresh or new after a while, whereas in Origami King losing a puzzle ring is almost always due to a new set up that you don't get or a puzzle set up that you don't remember, and you actually have to remember them because they're not telegraphed to you. It's an even purer form of skill, and that makes some of the longer battles more acceptable. The bosses are about as good, maybe a little bit better, at introducing new concepts as well: which is to say that like 64, some bosses are more or less retreads of prior concepts with one or two unique spins, whereas others feel entirely new. I wish some of the concepts didn't come off as retreads but, there's a lot of variety and considering there's basically three separate boss types in Origami King (with two of them more or less being mini-bosses, Vellumentals and Paper Machos), it's hard to complain.
Vellumentals are probably the lesser of the three, but aside from the abysmal awful one-of-the-worst-boss-fights-ever fire vellumental boss ........ they're still pretty good. The real takeaway, even better than the Legion of Stationary, is the real-time action Paper Machos. Holy shit these boss fights are so good. I'll admit that, visually, I only really thought the Goomba and Koopa-Troopas were interesting as Paper Machos. Probably because the Goomba already have weird proportions, and the Koopa Troopas looked kind of cute as giant soccerball players. Once the concept of what were essentially giant freak mechs became used over and over again, it did feel less special and it made me wish Intelligent Systems would get more creative with their designs. Still, the quality of the Paper Macho battles is amazing (except the Blooper). The highlights are the Giant Pokey and Buzzy Beetle. At first the Giant Pokey fight was a bit lame because the Bootcar controls aren't very response and don't give much feedback. But seeing all the ways that Intelligent Systems added layers upon layers to the battle, and even the ways they accounted for unique ways the player might fail (like the Car being able to be blown away in non-scripted scenarios, or the Pokey coming out of the ground and hurting Mario if he doesn't get up in time). Mario having to blow a whistle to someone his car out of a tornado is one of the strangest-yet-coolest things ever, it's a bit unfortunate that the menu pauses the game and that the car has to load out of shot, at least if I'm remembering correctly. The buzzy beetle is definitely the fight with the most depth to it, and it's magical spell is so cool.
I will say that, the Paper Macho boss fights really make me wish that the game had a dash mechanic. When I started the game and realized it didn't have a dash mechanic I was worried that the boss fights wouldn't use the slow mobility to great effect, and they actually do, it's easy to get hit during a lot of the more action oriented moments in this game without being precise. Still, I would have preferred if they just made the bosses faster and more aggressive, while giving the player more movement options. It doesn't add too much depth, but having to time your button presses to cancel out of the dash-buffer like in 64, in the midst of a Buzzy Beetles big-ass magic spell being shot at you would be awesome. You could even make the magic spells recharge faster!
In general Origami's King ability to use multiple different types of gameplay styles is one of it's biggest advantages, it's so refreshing to see a developer that realizes not everything can be crammed into the same narrow vision of a game. That, not every square concept has to be fit into a circular hole.
I will say, the controls in this game for the vehicles are .... pretty bad? Ok, not bad. They're functional, but very mediocre. The car has too much delay between the boost, the boost doesn't even give the player good feedback, and moving around feels weightless with little delay between turns. The boat is better, but not acceptable until the upgrade you get for it. Which probably should have been installed to begin with. Even the turret section isn't great to control.
Last but certainly not least in terms of importance. I think the sequel to this game really needs to focus on making sure coins and health points are a lot tighter. This is something 64 did well and it's really a shame it wasn't done nearly as well here. It's weird because in the first few hours of the game the health system, while a little inflated, was actually adjusted pretty well for how often you'd fight enemies and how much damage they'd do. Part of the problem might be more so the upgrades, they raise your health quite a bit and that's on top of optional +10 health upgrades that you can find and are super easy to get. Still, whether it has to do with the initial amount of health, or the upgrades given out throughout the game, going back to a simpler number system, one that focuses on numbers in the tens instead of in the hundreds, is something I hope returns with the next game. It gives more impact and weight to each piece of damage taken or dished out. Coins on the other hand have the issue of being way too plentiful. Not only is there too many coins, but the hint system is completely broken. I don't mind too much because luckily I didn't start using it till random battles later on in the game stared feeling a bit pace-breaking, and for that exact reason I think it's conceptually a great system, but I wish the coins were a lot tighter. Especially because right before the game's finale, you get a shit ton of weapons very easily. If both the coins and inventory were tighter, Origami King would be better off. Particularly because, there's already a brilliant system in place to stop you from losing too much of your inventory too fast, since you get a huge damage bonus from solving puzzles correctly (this is one of the game's very best mechanics, though I do find it a bit odd that "great" and "perfect" puzzle-solving rankings are not awarded different multipliers). And the pace at which your inventory is degraded is, for most of the game, pretty on point. Enough to where you have to go back to Toad Town every once in a while and experience the changes, but also not so often that the degradation puts a serious damper on the game. I find it frustrating that special items you find also don't have unique properties. I get that they're not really that "special", but really for the sake of variety, I think making flowers and tails harder to find, but also making them more useful would have added some much needed diversity to the battle system. The first thing I think of when I think of flowers in Mario is the ability to not just shoot projectiles, but to be able to do so for a decent amount of time. Why not make it a two term move? Why not make tails able to hit 6 tiles horizontally instead of just 4? It's just so weird that disposable items are practically the same, with very small differences, as equipment, and a bit of a disappointment.
Other Musings:
One of the things that kind of bothered me but ultimately wasn't important is that when you collect "Toad forms", like the various ways they inhabit the world, you don't get to see the way in which they were folded. It's super lame because that's one of the more unique ways collectibles could have been approached in a game entirely centered around Origami.
The Vellumentals looking so boring is kind of a mixed bag because the idea of only truly completing a character design when you add the "Olivia component" onto it is fascinating. I don't feel too strongly one way or another; really the developers probably could have found a way to make base Vellumentals more striking without making them too detailed, but at the very least I was presented with a cool concept I haven't seen elsewhere.
This game is very annoying about wasting the players time. Between there being a lot of unnecessary prompts in sections like the Toad's notes (where not only do you have to select yes after specifically pressing a button centered around the Notes themselves, but you can't even pick what notes you have to see and wait through a selection of other notes to get to the notes you want) and a strangely high amount of small fade-to-black transitions/large loading screens I have yet to see on another Switch game, the players time isn't respected very well.
The final area is a mixed bag. The actual dungeon design of Ollie's castle is pretty bad, and not even in the usual way. It's short and not dragged out like a lot of RPGs/action adventure games, yet it also isn't as clever in places as it's contemporaries. Instead, you just go down mostly linear corridors and constantly have to use magic circles to use the 1000x arm fold move. It's as if the developers thought that abusing the move would somehow serve as a valuable crutch for interesting level design but .... it doesn't, especially since the move isn't that intriguing by itself, it's basically just used to contextualize otherwise cinematic events. Why overuse it so much? It's funny, I think in an effort to make a fairly short dungeon that is easy and linear, Intelligent Systems actually highlighted just how obvious it was that the dungeon was padding to get to the main meat and potatoes (the ending). It's pretty subpar all around, even if unfolding pieces of paper to make a new bridge path is a great concept that should have been used more in the game.
Luckily, the final boss battle is pretty amazing. The Bowser section is one of the most creative things I've seen. It strikes a good balance of being a little challenging so the player can feel tension, whilst being cinematic enough that the player can experience most of the ending in one shot (fuck that final phase though).
Something I really like about Origami King is that, because it kind of pulls in both an RPG and action adventure direction, the dungeon designs tend to favor a more action-adventure approach, but with an ever-evolving context for the situations the players are in, more similar to an RPG, but without grinding pacing to a halt. This makes the more, easy and streamlined approach of the games dungeon designs a lot more tolerable. In the best dungeon in the game, for example, you solve a puzzle thanks to the general aloofness of your partner, find the defaced bodies of Toads, unlock a path to the boss, and then have to almost literally "raise the dead" through music to get a large enough crowd for the boss to come out. That amount of new ideas per dungeon isn't necessarily the norm, but it is a good example of how Paper Mario's easiness can be alleviated from boredom by engaging in new ideas, whether gameplay-oriented or story oriented, pretty consistently.
The actual stories for the individual streamers, are pretty nice. Ok, the setups are almost always generic. But they're basically excuses to get some funny dialogue and skits, and that's always cool. Nothing is mindblowing about them but, they lead to a lot of memorable moments. I especially like what is essentially just a huge bro-sess with the green streamer, where we get to learn more about Kamek and Bowser Jr. Kamek not being a female is a shock to me, especially as he basically acts as a mother figure to Bowser Jr. Now that's how you do a plot twist. Olivia is also a really fun companion. A lot of genuinely funny moments come out of her.
In Conclusion:
If you want a plot where none of the questions or themes brought up by the game are answered in a satisfying way, Origami King is your game. If you want a pretty fun adventure title that gets a lot of things right most games don't ... Origami King is also your game. This is what makes the game so weird. It's like a walking contradiction.
A lot of people have games that they really enjoy and don't give a second thought to how the mechanics work together. I generally don't, especially when mechanics that don't serve an express function waste my time or don't gel well with other parts of the game. Origami King is sort of an exception, though. It has a lot of design philosophies that I admire a lot. It's too bad that it has a lot of flaws, some being mild while others are bigger still. But I believe the best way to describe it is, Origami King is a low skill medium reward game. You aren't usually going to get the highest highs of gaming out of it, but it's never dull or boring either. It's always charming. And when you do get a super high high, it's almost certainly because it has some of the coolest scripted sequences in gaming, and the kind of boss battles Nintendo really needs to learn from in their mainline Mario games. Seriously, don't let Intelligent Systems outshine you here! It's a nice, relaxing game that is always at the very least fun. And sometimes it's nice to have those. If you improved the story for the next one, tightened up the mechanics a bit, and made more unique environmental/character designs, you could seriously have one of the best games ever here. Let's be real, that probably won't happen though, because they'll just throw everything out and start from scratch with the next one.
Oh yea ... and I'm not sure why they butchered the aftermath of Bobby's death so bad when, they already had a permanent painful send-off with that ending. Is it a little contrived? Sure. But damn .... ouch. OUCH. I felt that.
8.8/10
