There’s always been something unique in Paper Mario’s wafer thin worlds: a sense of place and personality, an ability to linger and explore, a chance to stop and befriend. In its cardboard castles and papercraft dioramas, Paper Mario’s mix of adventuring and role-playing has always managed to showcase Mario’s surroundings as more than just background scenery, spotlight sidekicks or rivals and make them more than just one-dimensional, and be that rarest of things for video games – frequently very funny. Within its creases and corrugated backdrops, Paper Mario has consistently shaped the Mushroom Kingdom and its inhabitants into something more textured and weighty than its materials might ever suggest. Happily, you’ll find much of the same heart, humour and character once again in The Origami King.
Paper Mario: The Origami King reviewDeveloper: Intelligent SystemsPublisher: NintendoPlatform: Reviewed on SwitchAvailability: Out on 17th July
But Paper Mario has also experienced a tug of war between its adventuring and role-playing mechanics, with recent entries opting to fold away their RPG gameplay and keep it tucked out of sight. For many, this tussle goes beyond simple genre preference – it is central to Paper Mario’s premise, and to its ability to present Mario’s worlds and characters in a way only this series, which comes around rarely, is able to provide. As more of The Origami King emerged during its remarkably short route to reveal and then release, Paper Mario fans (and particularly those of hallowed GameCube entry The Thousand-Year Door) desperately tried to pigeonhole this latest incarnation as one thing or another – adventure or RPG? – to determine the kind of experience it might offer. In reality, it is an odd jumble of both. The Origami King does offer a few welcome concessions to its RPG roots, but it also shies away from growing these further over the course of the game, struggling to ever emerge truly distinct.
Paper Mario: The Origami King – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch Watch on YouTube
The Origami King’s battle system is a good example of all this. Its turn-based gameplay using well-timed jumps and hammer swings will be a familiar sight for Paper Mario purists, while the addition of a grid layout to rotate and shuffle enemies into more manageable groups adds a fun new puzzle layer. It’s a battle system you will see an awful lot of over the course of the game, but one which continually provides a feeling of accomplishment when you line everything up just right. There are a few items (Fire Flowers, POW Blocks and the like) you can use or mostly ignore, and a neat help system which sees you calling on the assembled Toad audience to jump in and mark out a route for you.
You’ll quickly gain access to 1000-Fold Arms, a special move you can perform either with motion controls or a combination of buttons within certain tougher battles and at specific points in the game’s world to uncover your route forward. But the vast majority of your time battling will still be spent jumping and hammer swinging – the game does not integrate or add further special attacks for the vast majority of its encounters. Boss battles bring in four simple elemental powers, which again can be used at a handful of specific moments in the game’s world, but these are rare exceptions rather than the norm.
Many of the decisions developer Intelligent Systems has made surrounding the game’s battle systems feel tied to a larger hesitancy around deeper RPG mechanics – one which leaves The Origami King in a place where your health meter is the only stat number to ever appear on screen. Battles earn you coins rather than XP, to be spent on Toad assistance in battles, better gear and collectibles. Levelling is non-existent, though your health is expanded at intermittent moments by specific characters, some hidden and seemingly possible to miss. Your strength increases each time your health is upgraded, which means you carry your starting level boots and hammer to the game’s final boss fight (and also that these are always your default option if your better gear breaks, because of course, that has limited durability).