Paper Mario: The Origami King (2020)

Ugh... Paper Mario. I'm trying so hard to love you and want to continue playing you, but you make it difficult.

Your dialogue is so clever and I really enjoy the exploration aspect. But these dang ring battles are really getting on my nerves. I wouldn't mind so much if it was easier to avoid enemies, but they just seem to take so much time. I know I can have the toads help.. I just wish there weren't so many dang battles - or they gave something besides coins. They shoulda just saved the ring battles for the boss battles, because those are cool.

Also the text is really... REAALLY slow. I'm thinking of just watching a let's play instead so I can get the story without having to trudge through all these dang ring battles. Stay tuned.

Started playing this based on a couple recommendations and it's really cute and the dialogue is great. I just have a few gripes:

• Why can I not speed up the text? This is soooo annoying
• At first I was all about catching every toad because I thought there was some purpose beyond "gotta catch 'em all" but I guess there really isn't much reward besides art and satisfaction
• The puzzles are trickier than I thought. I've already had to use a walkthrough a couple times and the circle battles are definitely challenging for me too.

Funny dialogue, a delightful world, and a pleasant atmosphere reminiscent of the ol' Paper Mario. That's the pros.

The cons? The combat is a stinker. There's very little consequence for any of your weapon selections, the support characters do absolutely bupkiss, and the slide puzzle revolving circles are a headache. Towards the end I really thought I would have gotten more use to the mechanic, and I still sucked at it. Some of the bosses were genuinely annoying, particularly the Fire Vellumental, and it's always frustrating to have characters remarking on how annoying the level design and filler material are.

There's also some wild cognitive dissonance in that the game spends a lot of time endearing you to a Bob-omb, remarking on how "short" their lives are and the bonds they share with each other given their predicament. The efficacy of one huge emotional beat is reliant on how well you take this in. Then later in the game, aboard Bowser's airship, you plug a whole dang army of these happy little suckers into a cannon and blast them off to what has been clearly established is their literal and unequivocal death.

I couldn't shake that, and found that some elements of the ending were similarly thoughtless. Also the villain is a total drag, with a lot of unfounded angst and a superiority complex that makes his monologuing incredibly grating. It's just not fun to hate him.

Anyhoo, besides the BIZARRE SUICIDE REFERENCE, it's a fun and goofy game that made me chuckle more than a handful of times. Buy it on sale, if at all.

Really having a great time with this game. Basically my first Paper Mario game (a few hours only with Super Mario Mario on the Wii and wasn't totally impressed). I love the level design, and the conversations are actually fun and hysterical. The pun department is really on their game!

My favorite part hands down is searching every nook and cranny for collectibles and hidden Toads. I had no idea this game would be such a collect-a-thon but I'm loving every second of it. Oh yeah and a status screen that shows percentages of items collected? Uh yeah, sign me the fuck up. It's awesome!

I do enjoy the battle system, but battling currently feels like a waste of time. It seems far more efficient to ignore the enemies if there's no leveling system or anything. Maybe this will change.

Decided to buy this and give it a fair shot, and see if I could appreciate it for what it is.

I know full well that it isn't the Paper Mario I grew up with, so my hopes weren't high in that regard.
Mainly I was just hoping for it to do what it does really well. And so far, after 5 hours, it does what it does well... but it's not really for me.

It really does just feel like an adventure game now, in the same vein as point-and-click adventures (which just isn't a genre I ever personally cared about), with the wacky character situations, quippy dialogue, light-weight story (so far), and strong focus on flair / surface details almost to the extent where that feels like its selling point. Also the soundtrack is good -- what would you expect, it's Paper Mario.

That stuff is nice on its own, but with extremely basic chore-like gameplay, it is very mind-numbing of an experience for me that I don't value (it doesn't help that it's extremely hand-holdy). I caught myself multiple times having the deadest straight face all the time playing it. And any semblance of an RPG that it does have is more what feels like shoe-horned puzzle elements -- the battle system mainly. Once I do one battle -- hell, once I play one turn, the rest is all generally the same to me. My issue with them is that they don't create any illusion of player freedom. The nature of the battle puzzles implies a solved game each time it starts, and then it's just a matter of doing it. (It's difficult to explain.) The lack of any type of EXP incentivizes me to avoid enemies all the time, making battles more of a scripted experience, which is ... idk, fine I guess.

That's just the whole experience so far.
Just fine I guess.
Gonna return sell it later to get some money back. :p