Paper Mario, as a series has had more good entries than bad, but with the last few making up the bad, it was going to take something special to make people keen on the series again. With The Origami King, the question is, did they succeed, or did they fold under the pressure?

The story starts off in a traditional way, Mario and Luigi are heading to Toad Town, in order to celebrate the Origami festival, but upon arrival, there is no one in town. A quick search leads the intrepid brothers to the castle, where they split up after being locked inside, Luigi goes to find the key, Mario heads for the Princess. Upon discovering her, Mario is quickly trapped in a basement room, but after finding Olivia is able to bust out of the room and soon discovers Bowser in his new and unique state. After making it outside Mario, Olivia and Bowser discover the cause for all the origami, King Olly, someone who believes everything would look better folded and he summons streamers from around the world to wrap and abscond with the castle, causing Mario and crew to be thrown from it. As you move to return to town, you learn more about the world and what is going on and once your mission is set, you have to unravel the streamers, you need to start exploring the world, in order to sort them out.

With a grand adventure ahead, Mario and Olivia are soon heading towards the first streamer, but the journey is very much a part of the quest in this game, as the world has been cannibalised for the Origami army, or the Folded as they are called. Being granted a confetti bag by Olivia helps, as you can collect scraps of paper, from fallen enemies, destroyed items and even trees, letting you patch up the world as you go. As you patch up things though, you might discover paths or hidden items, that will either given you coins, or let you discover hidden Toads, there are plenty of them around the place. The Toads that refused to fold to the will of King Olly were either folded into something else, a butterfly, snake or such, or crumpled into a ball and thrown away and finding them will help you out greatly, more on that later. The other thing you will find or be rewarded with when fixing holes are coins and you obtain them faster than you can spend them in this game and they too are important.

Paper Mario as a series has always been RPG-lite, meaning it has role playing elements, but never extreme ones like Final Fantasy and that is the case here, while Mario does not level up, he still grows, usually through gaining a new heart. These can be found by exploring the world and sometimes there are things you can’t access until you have cleared out more of the world or obtained some new powers. This time, rather than giving powers to Mario directly, Olivia is the one that obtains them, using her Origami powers to transform into new shapes, which grant powers, some of them are for specific uses, but the most common one is the 1,000 Folded Arm technique, which lets Mario access new areas. This power tends to make use of the paper-ness of the world, ripping pieces of paper up to expose new things behind it, be they hidden toads, stairs or whatever, the fun is determining how to activate the power, if there is not clear power up circle present.

Speaking of circles, battles are now a circular affair, mixing part puzzle and part battler, in order to give you more than just spamming attacks. Basically, you need to mix the different rings, in order to move enemies into 2x2 grids or a line of four and getting the line up right, will grant you a damage bonus. Then you need to select your attack, or item, in order to get the job done. Hammers for example are great at bashing a group of four enemies, but they don’t reach those at the back of a line, so are best used on the grid. Those enemies that fly are immune to hammers, well most of them, so jump attacks are best used, the catch with all this though is that you only get a finite amount of time to move and moves to make and it is random, depending on the number of enemies you get. The time and number of moves, depends on the number of enemies in a wave, if you get a wave battle, you might have to do this two or three times in said battle, but the randomness of the lines and such will vary each time. This system, though it takes a bit of getting used to, adds a really fun element to battles, it is entirely possible, that once you have everyone lined up right, you can take out all the on screen in enemies in your turn, ensuring you take no damage. If you have members in your party, like Bobby or the Professor, they will have a go at attacking, if you leave an enemy standing, but they will not always be there, so best not to count of them.

Boss battles take place on the same field, but they are done in reverse, rather than you standing in the middle and bringing the enemies to you, you start on the outside and work your way in. The catch is that you can only move if you step on arrows to push yourself in a general direction, building a path up to an action, but the more challenging bosses also have attacks they are protected against, so you need to calculate that into your decision as well, on top of the move and time limits still. The problem is that in order to gain more time, you need to spend coins and while coins are almost unlimited, you could easily burn through a few thousand in one battle, if you add more time or bribe your saved toads to cheer you on. That is something you will want to do more, as cheering toads will also provide you with buffs and support, restoring health and such, but if you don’t fill up the stands that surround the battle fields, you will get less. Thankfully finding toads is simple and you can’t spend more than 999 coins per cheer, but as you can do it at the start of each turn, again, you can burn through the coins.

The other issue that I have with the game is that at times it hold your hand something chronic, then with the other hand, gives you freedom and no explanation on what to do, it is a mix that seems to have trouble finding a balance. The guided feeling comes from Olivia, who is always popping out to provide her thoughts on where you need to go next, if you enter a room that you don’t want to stay in, if she thinks you need to stay, the game won’t let you out until you accomplish whatever task awaits in that room. The freedom comes when you enter the desert and seas and of course as large as those placed can be, makes sense, the problem is that all the exploration means nothing, if you don’t kick off tasks in specific orders and if you happen to miss one, it will send you in circles until you trigger it.

Something that the series has excelled with in the past is the paper aesthetic, making the most out of it as possible, this comes down to two simple thing, the characters all being flat and the world not being expansive. Of course, with the addition of Origami to the mix, there is now depth to the characters, but again, that only applies to enemies as all flat characters are from the land of paper.  Each location within the world is constructed like it’s a diorama, with clearly visible seems and such, this does not apply to the larger open scale spaces, but for everything else it is true, and it helps sell that paper effect. The edges of the worlds are generally made to look like they are cardboard, rock walls will have tears in the paper, made to mimic tears in paper and so on and as you start exploring the world, things get more and more complex. Taking a boat down river and seeing the water and trees with their red and brown leaves, is honestly a beautiful site, but they also take time to throw in some more exuberant locations, like a casino type town, mystical locations and a shogun-esq theme park.

While the visuals are stunning, they are not perfect, mostly you notice when the camera zooms in close on things, Mario is really the only exempt one in that list, because with the rest, each time you get close, you notice rough edges and colours that don’t seem so pronounced. When the camera is zoomed back, things look amazing, but the closer you get to something, the worse they look, the strange thing is with the Origami enemies as well. Now these folks look fine, though I would be curious to see if they actually made them in reality first, before they were made for the game, the problem is, as the world is made of static or flat items, seeing enemies that are part 3d and part 2d feels weird, worse is that they don’t click entirely right. The larger enemies and bosses are not a big deal, but the smaller ones, there is something off about them and it is hard to describe, but once you see it, you will see what I mean. The other thing I don’t like, is the inclusion of real-world items in the game, they brought it in with Color Splash, kept it going with Sticker Star and they are still here now, while thankfully not as abundant as they were in the previous two titles, but seeing something realistic in a world made of paper, just feels wrong.

On the sound side, the traditional Mario sounds are present, as well as the standard Paper Mario effects, but there are a host of new ones to enjoy as well. While there are no speaking roles, outside of grunts, groans and the occasional wah-who, the noise that you hear when text is being displayed on the screen, seems to no longer have a harshness to it, making it a much cleaner and easier on the ears. The music is the star though, with some genuinely nice melodies to enjoy as you play, with the battles having pride of place as the better themes, even some classic Mario themes make it back into the mix. There is a sequence that contains a plethora of music, which you can change as you desire, you just have to listen one specific song, a lot and that can get annoying. What is not annoying are the musical numbers, they often come out of nowhere and are hilarious to boot, even the local version of West Side Story is a hoot.

Paper Mario The Origami King is a big return to the series, after a few less than ideal entries and while the battle system takes a bit to understand and even more to master, it is honestly one of the best parts about the game. But when you consider that the rest of the game is packed with humour, wonderful design and fun characters, it would have to be something special and it is. The Origami-ness feels like it could easily have been part of the world all along, given how well it all comes together, just try not to take to close a look at things and you will enjoy the game immensely.