Topic: Paper Mario: The Origami King

I thought the little BotW reference in Autumn Mountain, after you rescue the toad climbing the cliff side as a beetle, was pretty funny.

@status-204
You should go for it. I'm biased because I absolutely love it, and obviously I can't guarantee you will feel about it, but I would encourage you not to miss it.

@Quarth
Lol yes! They did such a great job with Kamek in this one! I loved his writing and I loved that part of the game.

@status-204 ill 2nd rallydefault. And im glad your not listening to all the negativity. It really is a remarkable game i thoroughly enjoyed. Just go in with an open mind and you'll have a blast.

Finished it after nearly 30 hours of playtime! Gotta say this game exceeded my expectations.

As I've told before, I've only played Sticker Star before this and yeah, that game sucks and this doesn't. In fact Origami King is great, brilliant, wonderful, beautiful, magical!

The characters are one of the things that makes this game great. I really loved Olivia's character arc and the ending got me a little teary eyed, she's such a lovely addition to the Mario roster. And Bobby, oh Bobby...

The humor, the dialogue, so many funny moments!

A colourful world, all parts seamlessly connected. A real goodlooker, graphically and musically speaking.

Any negatives? The battle system isn't perfect. I enjoyed the boss battles, but the regular ones were sometimes a chore. But it didn't take away anything from the rest of the game.

A 9/10 from me.

@Quarth
The entire section of the game with Bobby is probably my favorite. Such a great character and handled so well, in my opinion.

I really like the battle system. I guess I'm just at a loss as to what people wanted it to be. I'm not a Paper Mario veteran, so coming in with fresh eyes and no expectations might have helped me. From what I understand, a lot of Paper Mario games have tried different battle systems (I may be wrong), and maybe some had traditional RPG battles where you line up against the opponent and used menus to select attacks. Is that what people wanted? And I came across plenty of battles, even the normal ones, where it was tough to figure out the solution, so I don't know if the people who don't like it are puzzle gods and never felt a challenge. Very possible as I'm not a puzzle person.

I even think they did a good job of staggering the battles. There are good swaths of the game where you don't do any of the normal battles for some time, whether that's because of real-time battles or minigames or boss battles. If you find all the hearts you can become powerful enough where all but the end-game enemies can just be stomped on to avoid the battles altogether.

The one thing I can say is that there is a certain part of the game, totally optional, where you can obtain A LOT of coins. After that point, even with buying all the collectibles, you don't have to do too many more normal battles to get enough coins to get through to the end. So when it comes to reward, I would say perhaps at that point in the game there is a dip in how many battles you need to do.

Is there even any point of battling if you won’t earn experience? Should I try to minimize battles?

@status-204 I think there's two reasons.

1. Having only coins as a reward all the time isn't as satisfying as gaining experience/leveling up, where your stats increase and the possibility of learning new attacks or abilities that give you more choices in fighting enemies. I know you can buy weapons like POW Blocks and Fire Flowers, but the lack of attack options you get can feel underwhelming to some.

2. The lack of progression/self-growth in video-game terms. As in you/your character gradually feeling stronger as you progress through the story via a levelling up system. Most RPGs implement this because it can connnect with the player on a personal level, increasing positivity and the drive to continue playing. Without this, it can be difficult to keep the player's interest in check, especially if the difficulty of the battle doesn't connect with the pacing of the story. In Origami King, most normal battles in the beginning are no different than normal battles near the end of the story. It's only the Boss Battles that have variety.

@TJWorks
1 is a good point, 2 makes me think you haven't played the whole game (Origami King). Is that true?

@rallydefault I have played the whole game. The normal battles are the same the whole game. The only two factors that change are the enemies and the puzzle solutions, but neither is radical enough to keep battles varied. The boss battles switch things up by adding a new mechanic that affects the battle ring, each one exclusive to each boss. The later fights ramp up the difficulty either by making solutions tricky or threaten you with one-hit K.O moves (or very damaging attacks), which correlate to the sense of story progression in the final hours of the game.

@rallydefault Yeah, especially when you get to know his backstory and what a bob-omb's fate is.

The battle system was hit and miss for me. In the boss battles, where they tweak it after which boss you meet and make you think outside the box, it was really engaging. It was more the regular battles that wasn't all that fun for me. Might be that the time limit stressed me, making it hard for me to solve the puzzles and often it didn't matter if I solved it or not, as I could easily defeat the enemies anyway. The game is generous with hearts, so even if I took some hits, I was soon fully restored. But they were okay.

#bobbyandoliviaforsmash

@Quarth
Yea, I agree for the most part. I did still find fun in the normal battles because I wanted to get better at the puzzles, and I was starting to recognize the common solutions per enemy type, so even if the battles weren't progressing Mario, they were progressing me... which, not to be super hippie or anything, is kind of what I love about video games. Just getting better at them and "leveling up" as a player.

@TJWorks
Did you not collect any/all of the hearts? Those progress Mario to be stronger. I certainly felt that. As he got stronger, he was able to defeat certain enemies outside battle automatically. And inside battles, his basic jump and hammer got stronger to defeat some enemies in one hit that used to take more, just like any RPG. And then see above for progressing as a player. I guess I just have a very different opinion on what it means to progress in a game than you do.

@Snaplocket
I too finished the game and I loved the battle system. You sound very attached to the critic and user reviews.

@rallydefault Ehhh, I guess you can count that as self-progression. It doesn't make much difference though since you can recover health very easily in Origami King. That's why I didn't really consider it.

@rallydefault I guess it was mostly about me not being good at timed puzzles. 😅

@TJWorks
I don't know, I liked finding the hearts. It definitely feels more like an adventure game where you progress and grow through exploration rather than grinding experience in a traditional RPG setting. I got all the hearts (I believe you can get them all well before the final castle if I'm remembering correctly) and Mario definitely feels stronger than the early and mid game. He does enough extra basic damage that you can one-shot some of the middle-tier enemies, and your health pool is obviously much expanded. You're right, it is easy to regain the health, but again that feels like an adventure game characteristic to me. Like Zelda if you're not on a hard mode, just go whack some pots and you're back to full health.

The more I think of it the adventure of Origami King reminds me a lot of a Zelda adventure.

I think, in general, the people who wanted/want this to be an RPG and the people who like this being an adventure are just not gonna see eye-to-eye on a few of the core structures.

@Quarth
Lol no worries, you can't be worse than me. I'm being serious. Something in my brain just switches off when it comes to visual rearrangements and stuff like that. You would think it would make me absolutely hate this game lol (Full disclosure that I will own up to: that one part during the final boss I had to retry like five times haha).

@rallydefault Well, I actually like puzzle games too (my user name is a puzzle game for Game Boy), even though I'm not good at them. Yeah, I also had to redo the third phase of the final boss — glad we didn't have to start it all over from the beginning. 😜 That final battle was EPIC!

I finished the 4th streamer earlier. Intelligent Systems seems to really want to do a Zelda game based on that particular section of the game, and I think they would be able to deliver. I do like now that there are a fair number of enemies I can just stomp on or hammer to defeat without having to go into the ring battle, which leaves usually the newer, stronger enemies for those encounters which is helping them stay fresh. Boss battles continue to be fantastic, and so far they are my favorites in the Paper Mario series and some of the best in the Mario franchise in general. Looking forward to what's next in the final streamer area.

I don't read too much of this topic, because I'm in the middle of the game and I dont want spoilers.

But boy... I'm having trouble getting through this game. Dialogues are sluggish and repetitive, combat feels more often than not like a chore (have to admit that every now and then I'm in the mood for the puzzles, but not very often) and walking around and exploring/backtracking takes ages.

The progression system is fine by me. I don't miss the exp and leveling up. So that's something

In general, the game feels just reeeeaaally slow to me and that's probably the main reason that I'm not really enjoying the nifty jokes. It's like spending a lot of time cueing in a supermarket while you're in a hurry, when the cashier starts making jokes. I'll probably finish the main story somewhere the coming weeks, but I'll probably trade it in after that since I don't see myself replaying it.

@Don no exp, but it gives you loads of coins, and it logs the enemies if they’re new. You can view those in the museum.

@Apportal
That’s really strange that they took away experience points. It pretty much takes away the major incentive of battling. I understand they want to do new things but that shouldn’t include eliminating experience points.

Man, everybody talks about Bobby, but what really did me in was that ending: Olivia being forced to fight her brother, hearing his dying words, having to fold his lifeless body into the thousandeth crane, and then quite deliberately killing herself with her last wish, presumably because she doesn't want to live in a world without her brother. The very bittersweet epilogue afterward just twisted the knife further.

I expected a good game, and I got a great one. In certain respects, I even liked it better than TTYD.

@status-204 The soundtrack remains awesome throughout the game.