Paper Mario The Origami King First Impression

I was excited for Paper Mario The Origami King.  I thought that the game would be good after the poor reception Paper Mario Color Splash received.  However I was severely disappointed as I struggled to find a reason to play the game.

I purchased Origami King and played it from midnight to 3:00 AM so I made it a decent way into the game before sitting down to collect my thoughts about it.  Despite the amount of time I played, I was still receiving tutorials and reminder messages for very basic things like the flow of combat and how to open the menu.  I understand that this is a game that appeals to a younger and more casual audience, but after the eighth time of being told to press + to open the menu, my patience wore thin.

Origami King suffers from a problem with motivating the player to engage with the world.  The Mushroom Kingdom is plagued with holes in the environment you can fill with confetti.  Filling the holes will net you coins 100% of the time and occasionally a path to an item or collectible.  However, coins are plentiful in a quantity that would make the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic look frugal.  I easily earned over 10,000 coins before the 90 minute mark.  This nullifies money as a motivator to fill in holes in the environment or engage in combat. 

Combat also lacks strong motivators.  There is next to no tension involved in battles as once you solve the ring puzzles to slot the enemies into their proper positions, you are guaranteed to wipe them out in one hit as Mario is much more powerful than the monsters.  There is no reward for combat except for the useless coins as there is no leveling system.  Mario does not get stronger by battling enemies, making them a nuisance to such a degree that I completely disengaged with the combat to solely focus on pushing through to the next story moment.  

Combat does reward you with confetti to fill in environmental holes, but as there is no reason for doing so, this reward also cannot serve as proper motivation for the player to engage with the world.

In short, Paper Mario The Origami King lacks any of the traditional motivators for players to engage with the world of its game: exploration, economy, or elimination.  There is no reason for the player to do anything other than walk to the next story moment.  A story which has major tonal dissonance and as of time of writing, lacks anything to grab the audience other than the bog standard “Save Princess Peach” plot of all Mario games.  I’m going to stick with the game until the bitter end because I paid $60 plus tax for it, but I would highly encourage you to spend your money elsewhere.

First Impression Score: 20%