I have some very mixed opinions on this one but on the whole I did enjoy it. Once again, a big step in the right direction! ... but with a few hitches…

[There will be spoilers in my review, but I won’t spoil any major story moments.]

So first I’ll start off with what I enjoyed:
I love the atmosphere. I enjoyed how the areas felt connected, and how unlike the previous two games they didn’t feel like obligatory Mario game world themes. I loved the unique characters (which unlike the previous 2 games, this game did occasionally have!) I also in addition loved the variety in NPCs because it’s no longer just Toads in this game since Bowser’s troops are in truce with Mario since there’s a bigger bad. I absolutely loved each of the partners and while I wish their actions in battles were chooseable, I am still happy with the fact that they assist in battles. They are kind of like the temporary party members in the Mother series in that way. I felt that each party member was unique and memorable, but most-of-all was Bobby! I loved Bobby and I really wished that I could keep him. Unfortunately party members in this game are temporary and you part ways with them after you finish a chapter. I also especially loved the second and fifth chapters! Their general atmosphere and especially their characters. I will say though that there was a moment in chapter 5 that I did not particularly enjoy, but I’ll get into that later.

I think the new wheel based battle mechanic was an interesting idea and the version for boss battles was pretty fun. The first chapter’s battles are kind of boring because the puzzles’ answers are all given to you for free, but after chapter 1 some of the puzzles were actually pretty tough, that being said battles were rarely hard and after a while they do get boring… That being said I did occasionally find myself in need of coins and so despite the only reward for battles being coins the incentive was there. (Doesn’t make it any less boring though)

I think I definitely enjoyed the secondary battle type that they introduced a bit better though: the Paper Macho battles. Basically they’re non-turnbased battles in the overworld with larger enemies. My only issue with these was that the weak point wasn’t always obvious and the hitboxes were a bit wonky at times.

As for my gripes and general ideas on what could have been better:
Badges being in was neat, but what I dislike about them is that there are very few and most of them are just varying degrees of upgrades to your health, battle timer, and defense which there’s no reason to equip the earlier version when you have later versions. In general there’s no strategy behind the badges which was the appeal of badges in the first two games. I like that we get a weak hammer and jump that are always in our inventory and never break, but the weapons and items system in general kinda stinked in general in this game. The breakable weapons based on how many times used in battles is fine, but I would like to be able to repair breakable items. Also the items are the exact same as the weapons… the fire flower and ice flower function just like a jump but with elemental effects, the Tail item is just the hammer. The only unique items are the pow block and the healing items like mushrooms. Which on the topic of, I rarely felt incentivized to use mushrooms because the early game enemies rarely did any damage to warrant it and the late game enemies would punish you way too hard if you used a turn healing instead of attacking, and on top of that in battle if you paid the toads enough they’d usually heal you without having to waste an attack turn, and on the overworld, there are quite often benches you can sit at to recover to max HP for free. Also about that attack turns thing: I wish that you had a consistent amount of attack turns in every battle instead of it fluctuating in each battle…

In general while the battle system was neat, I wish that they didn’t do the turn based system if they didn’t want it to be like an RPG. Like… they were trying to not be an RPG back in Super Paper Mario but there what they did right was taking out the turn-based system but left the experience points and leveling, incentivizing battling while keeping them fun.
Another thing is that I find it annoying how they keep trying to bring up the ‘new quirky battle mechanic’ outside of battles in these newer Paper Mario games. In Chapter 5 you have to do a quiz show, which in and of itself is fine; every Paper Mario has one after all. What annoys me is how it requires you to use the battle system and in a largely different way from how you normally would instead of just answering questions in a normal way or doing a normal minigame… and you have to operate under a timer… and the punishment for failure is immediate death (even though the host of the quiz show is on your side and NOT a bad guy this time…)

Also a small gripe, but I don’t see a reason why in these last two Paper Mario games, why to bloat the amount of health Mario has/gets by default and how much damage he deals and takes… why not keep it simple?

There are some other things but they’re either major spoiler related or I can’t think of them...

In general though I did enjoy Origami King, but it is still so far from what I’d like out of a Paper Mario game.