The presentation is absolutely impeccable, the ridiculous commitment to the paper aesthetic, the writing, the music, all fantastic. I really loved Colour Splash's attention to detail, and they've managed to capture a similar level of polish here. At the same time though, they've somehow managed to make the gameplay even worse than the deflated kiddie pool of the last few games. I don't know why Nintendo are so committed to keeping Paper Mario as far away from its RPG roots as possible, but I'd be fine with it as long as the new gameplay systems they introduced were better, or at the very least on par with what came before. But they're consistently worse, the ring puzzles are a tacked-on excuse to try and make the battles palatable, but they somehow managed to make them even more boring than they were before. Instead of being able to quickly get them out of the way when I accidentally walk into a goomba, I now have to spin some rings around, solving the same 5 copy pasted 'puzzles' over and over again for no reward. How have they not just removed turn based combat at this point, it would make the games so much better.
The interconnected world is cool on paper, but it just ends up making the level design ridiculously dull. Instead of the tightly designed, distinctive areas of colour splash, you've got these large open areas with nothing in them. The glorious 'filling in pieces of the map that are missing' mechanic returns, even though it adds nothing whatsoever. The boss fights are thankfully not quite as bad as before (honestly though a dead rat would have improved the pathetic excuse for bosses in the last game), but for some reason Intelligent Systems decided to give the bosses a completely different gameplay style from the regular battles. Cool conceptually, but there's again nothing here that justifies that change, it's still boring and never feels remotely satisfying to pull off anything.
Crucially, the game is also missing a hell of a lot of the same charm that Colour Splash had. That game was deeply flawed but also had a boss fight where you grilled a giant steak to perfection. In Origami King... you fight some pencils...
Completely bored throughout the 10 hours I played. Nice looking water though... so there's that.
The interconnected world is cool on paper, but it just ends up making the level design ridiculously dull. Instead of the tightly designed, distinctive areas of colour splash, you've got these large open areas with nothing in them. The glorious 'filling in pieces of the map that are missing' mechanic returns, even though it adds nothing whatsoever. The boss fights are thankfully not quite as bad as before (honestly though a dead rat would have improved the pathetic excuse for bosses in the last game), but for some reason Intelligent Systems decided to give the bosses a completely different gameplay style from the regular battles. Cool conceptually, but there's again nothing here that justifies that change, it's still boring and never feels remotely satisfying to pull off anything.
Crucially, the game is also missing a hell of a lot of the same charm that Colour Splash had. That game was deeply flawed but also had a boss fight where you grilled a giant steak to perfection. In Origami King... you fight some pencils...
Completely bored throughout the 10 hours I played. Nice looking water though... so there's that.