An Overly Long and Critical Review of Paper Mario: The Origami King

Considering the creativity of the english language when naming groups of animals, I was severely disappointed that a group of toads wasn't called a load. :C

Dang you suck at this game. Those puzzles are easy lol

The last 3 Paper Mario games are a joke. I don’t consider any of them to even be the same series as the first 3

I remember really loving Paper Mario a long time ago but it didn’t have this horrible rpg combat system. I can’t remember which one it was tho. Either GC or Wii.

I have yet to play Super or TTYD but I have played 64 and it was incredible, to the point that when I play Origami King the world just feels so empty

You're just bad at the game

Is this the best and most Paper Mario of all time?

Yeah, I think.

I like the paper aspect

I love how everyone forgets super paper mario exists

I'm playing through the game for the first time now, and I have to say I 100% agree with your assessment. If anything, anytime I get frustrated with this game, I feel like the developers have a complete lack of respect for the player's time. The battle mechanics are a waste of time, the ring is a waste of time, the questionable choices in pacing is a waste of time. There are many good parts to this game, but they get dragged down by the sheer amount of instances where I feel like my time is being wasted. Such a shame too.

Nah mario and Luigi still better

While Origami King is a near perfect game in my eyes, I am not oblivious to why people dont like the game. For me, there has never been a game, from Nintendo or other company that I have enjoyed throughly as much as Origami King.

I love this video though Arlo. I just found you and I love your videos

I don't care if I sound pretentious, I'm not gonna sink to the level of playing a game where I fight fucking office supplies as a replacement for bosses

This critique is good but I wish you applied this same critical analysis to all games, instead of just loving remakes because of nostalgia.

It’s a simpler Mario game than the 3d games, yet has a frustrating difficult puzzle system. So it’s too niche and simple for most adults and too difficult for kids. Lose-lose it has no target audience

Good on you for sticking to your guns and saying your criticisms.

It's not criticism coming from hate, its criticism coming from a place of passion and wanting better. Anyone who doesn't understand that is stupid and their opinions literally don't matter.

I know this is two years late, but I hated Olivia on every aspect. Didn’t help I was on a kick where I had just been playing games without the forced tutorial and her being the character for that ruined her very existence for me. And then the forced emotional moment that could be seen from half a chapter away really made me dislike her even more as they tried to use her as a way to get sympathy out of the player. I don’t get why people love her.

This is one of the best reviews ive ever heard in my life

Haven't played this but..

If you spend the coins to have the toads do the puzzle for you, can you just play the game as a turn based, attack and block reaction kinda thing?

They had a good setup of the game with the Origami stuff and to me it never had a good payoff. They went too much in the direction of just paper gags and too much jokes about it being a paper world. I wanted the thousand year door type level story and characters but no because of ego we got a bare bones version of what Paper Mario was suppose to be.

The japs fear the blue muppet

So it's a puzzle game, not an RPG.

To me, Paper Mario games have not faltered in creating a masterpiece. Unlike Animal Crossing that did not fully put a complete budget into solution to those games. Seems very nice but there are always those additions that are correctively nice or falsely bad. I am mostly done with games. Games don't amuse me as mostly are always something that is irregular or abnormally put into the game that hits my feels of the mind to be wrong. This or that could be great or grand but are usually wrongful for me. I have put about 28 years into playing games and I always knew that its not going to be perfect. Unless I do something to my own game, and I rather not do so. I don't have the impulse for software creations. I am much smarter than software or hardware and much older by genetics and mind on matters of spirituality and equanimity of religiousness. I would only put about 10 minutes into a game. Their too easy and hurts my mind on the type of game too, because their so easy to get the understanding and would have that structured understanding into effect as affectively bad on me. By the contents of the software.

Better than ttyd tbh

I recently replayed most of the paper mario games and TOK was the most conflicted experience i had. like i REALLY did enjoy the story and world simple as they seem but the fights were so rough man. this was my first replay since beating it at launch so i forgot little things like how you cant use 1000 fold arms on colored pencils to attack bc itll just close the lid, or that tape makes half your movement options unusable and it was such a chore to do. the world and puzzle solving gameplay in it was so well made but the combat was so unfun and followed that stupid "easy if you already know the solution and insanely aggravating if you don't" thing that the 2 previous games did

Basically in Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam it was confirmed that Mario Story/Paper Mario is a magic storybook that exists in the M&L Universe. In that game all of the paper characters fly out of the book, I like to think when they were putting them back in side (Including the chunks of the paper world that had flown out with them.) That some real world stuff found its way into the paper world and then was later found and enchanted by Ollie. ((Kinda wish they'd hinted at that in game as a nice tribute to Mario & Luigi RPG. RIP))

Honestly we can all agree that this game was a step in the right direction, let’s hope that the next paper Mario game is as successful as the thousand year door

Okey bommer 1 exp was planned for the game and 2 i heard that paper mario was passed to a new team

I know that this comment is going to get buried in the 7000 other comments on this 2 year old video, but I wanted to make this comment now that the TTYD remake has been announced.

One underlooked aspect of the "Everything is Paper" aspect is that it allows the team to really stretch the "cartoon" in cartoon violence to its absolute limits. There are faceless Toads, ripping all the feathers off a phoenix, breaking the "jaw" of the stapler-dog, and even Mario getting cut IN HALF by Scissors. Heck, the entire scissors sequence is full of paper-gore. Going all in on this aspect has undoubtedly enabled the team to do SOME things that they otherwise definitely would not be able to do, even within the bounds of the Mario IP circa TTYD. There are ways in which Origami King has pushed the Mario IP further outside of its comfort zone than ever before, telling its story by the pure visceral Feeling that can only exist within the bounds of this papery universe. There's little doubt in my mind that this is what the team was TRYING to do with the "Thing" stickers/cards in the previous two games. To use the mismatched aesthetics created by the paper universe to push the bounds, not of what characters you can see, but of what you can do to those characters.

And the thing is, I think Nintendo didn't like it. I think once Origami King was out there, the reaction to it, the positive reactions to it especially, the reactions to the moments in it that are even weirder, more adult, more...non-Mario in places than TTYD or Super Paper Mario were allowed to go, I think that stuff spooked the IP squad. Which is why we're "regressing" back to the old formula with the TTYD remake now. I'm scared that Paper Mario is going to use this rewind of the clock back to the RPG formula to "cover its tracks", and we're never again gonna see a Mario game this violent or mature in the ways Origami King is.

Which...that's kinda the opposite of what I want. I don't really care about seeing Goombas in hats with names and stuff. I didn't care about Rogueport because it had Robbos or Twilighters or whatever, I liked Rogueport because it was grimy, had a gallows in the center plaza, and is full of mafioso and catcallers and run-down slum shacks. I don't really care if Mario goes to space or the caveman era or whatever, I care about walking through the empty ruins of Sammer Kingdom for two entire uncomfortable, eerily silent minutes. And I don't care about Goombella or Watt, really; I care about seeing Kamek treat Bowser Jr. like a grandson and Olivia mourning someone she's never going to see again. If we LOSE that stuff trying to go back to "the old way", then I don't want the old way. If whatever Paper Mario game we get after the TTYD remake is one step forward and two steps back, I consider that a bigger loss than badges and experience points.

Arlo, git gud

Great review

I was really into origami back in the day so I thought it was an ok gimmick.

I know this review is definitely mixed, but I'm still excited for the Thousand Year Door remake next year (hopefully sooner rather than later)

That rubberband boss i kept losing at the very end because i didnt know that i had to grab the rubberband as it was moving. I just assumed my attack wasnt working and i had to find the right attack through trial and error. These boss battles give you no indication of what move to actually use. After that, i just decided i was googling the solution for every boss battle. Which wasnt very fun, but it was way less frustrating.

What I don’t understand is how Nintendo doesn’t understand that the vast majority of people want paper Mario to go back to its roots… yet they just CHOOSE not to. These games would sell better like TTYD. People would enjoy the games more if they were like TTYD. It almost feel like Nintendo is just testing whether people are just going to pay for anything

Dear Paper Mario Fans. Thousand Year Old Door Remaster is coming to Switch and it is important that it sells well. This will dictate how Paper Mario 7 will become.

Let's make TTYD successful and bring Paper Mario back!

If they split the old and new paper Mario I'd be fine. Go back to the old rpg style for paper Mario and then the new whatever you want to call it could be a Zelda-like but with Mario

I genuinely dont understand the masses reasoning behind why they like the game the 4.7 reviews bewildered me given the game is such a meh of a game.

This game was the fastest i put a paper mario down, after the first boss i was like yeah ive had enough. Nintendo just hates paper mario at this point

“hint button” that whole time stopping thing was a wink wink from the devs

i love this game, so excited for TTYD remake!

Honestly, the whole issue with all the ways to get around the ring puzzle makes it seem like one of the lower level devs knew how bad everything was and put in multiple methods to bypass it - some of which that weren't particularly obvious.

The whole philosophy of the game's design - all of these New Paper Mario games, really - seems to be that someone higher up does not find any actual enjoyment from RPGs but has elected themselves the designer for this combat system anyway. Everything sucks because this person literally cannot tell when the system is or is not working well; to them, there is little difference between Color Splash and TTYD. It's all the same boring turn based commands anyway, right?

I feel like the change to a durability-based item system and an always-available basic jump and hammer attack do work in the game's favor compared to the previous two games, and helps make combat not suck as much. Of course, "not sucking as much" is still a far cry from TTYD's "really dang good" battle system.

Many of your criticisms are very valid, and I agree with the vast majority of them. I disagree with your stance on bosses, however. You say that "Things" are still somewhat, subtly present but I disagree.

Bosses are how the ring system should work, where you pathfind instead of making squares/lines. You have to strategize to determine which actions Mario will take during his turn. If you find the weak point esoteric to uncover, then there will be hints on the board. You then will spend a turn positioning yourself to find that hint (looks like a letter with a "?" seal on it) and it explaons how to exploit that weal spot, that way there's no ambiguity. It's not super different from having Goombella study a target. The weaknesses are not arbitrary or inaccessible like with Things cards/stickers. The game gives you everything you need in that battle, and does not pull something like Sticker Star/Color Splash where the game lets you initiate the boss without the Thing, creating a scenario where you can't possibly win. Bosses in this game have a weak spot and you must exploit them according to specific action buttons on the ring, but it's never unfair or found outside of the battle itself. You might waste a turn or a magic circle, but that's because you were positioned incorrectly (unlike normal battles, your position on the ring actually matters) and while it's frustrating to have to start over, especially when magic circles need to be activated in later fights, it's not unfair. You don't lose out on the Thing and have to replay a level or buy the Thing to get it back, then redo the boss. No, you just spend one, maybe two extra turns trying to regain leverage. And once you know the boss's weakness, which can be deduced FAR more reasonably than what Thing SS/CS bosses are weak to, there is a consistent strategy to plan for.

I truly don't believe that this game's boss combat resembles the Thing mechanic much at all. I think Things just left a sour taste in your mouth, and that something resembling it, i.e. bosses having a weak point reminds you of the Things. That's totally fair, but as I've stated before, there are plenty of mechanics that set these ywo combat systems apart. Things are by far the worse-designed concept.

This is the first Paper Mario I have ever played and I thoroughly enjoyed it. If thousand year door is even better, that’s a win in my book hahaha looking forward to playing it on Switch

The most infuriating part of this game is honestly if you're a completionist, you can't use accessories. AND IT DOESN'T EVEN TELL YOU!