Have you ever just completely lost patience with what you're doing while in the middle of doing it? Like, you realize suddenly that you would rather be doing anything else than what you're doing at that moment?

Origami King started off so promising. The presentation is wonderful, music is top-notch as it's always been for this series, writing is genuinely very funny and there's a lot of just contagious fun that the game is having with the Mario series. As someone who was burnt by Sticker Star, even when I knew this wasn't an RPG in the style of the first two games, I was still game to try what this game was doing. And I thought I would be able to tolerate the battle system.

But then something happened where in the middle of spinning that fucking ring for the 50th time I just kind of snapped. I straight-up hate the ring puzzle aspect of these battles, it always feels like busy work and for some reason my brain just can't solve them while having that timer breathe down my neck. Of course there's an option to pay for the game to solve it for you, or to pay to get more time, but it's when I realized I was paying EVERY time that maybe my time could be better served elsewhere. Even outside of the ring nonsense, these battles felt so weightless and nothing. It was all busy work and no variety, and maybe that's unfair to say when I only got about 5 hours into the game, but I can't be bothered to find out if it gets interesting at all.

At some point I have to ask why this series bothers with turn-based battles at all. It clearly resents ever being an RPG, so why not just go the Super Paper Mario route and have it all take place in the overworld? The overworld puzzle solving and adventuring was my favorite part of this game, I'm sure they could find a way to build the game entirely around that. Instead, every game since SPM has been like "here's our new nightmare battle system that you'll tolerate!" It's a sad state, honestly, especially now that the Mario and Luigi series is dead, this is the only thing close to a Mario RPG series now. Basically, either give up on the RPG dream entirely or become something different altogether, because I can't stand this middle-of-the-road compromise nonsense anymore.