Paper Mario: The Origami King Review (Nintendo Switch).

Paper Mario: The Origami King is Intelligent Systems' latest entry in the immensely humorous Mario RPG series. It's the sixth entry in the series at this point and despite the lackluster reception to the most recent games, Origami King continues the trend of implementing new gimmicks and themes for every entry, both for better and for worse.

Like with most Mario games, Paper Mario: The Origami King starts off with Princess Peach once again finding herself in trouble and in need of Mario's help. However, this time it's not the big ol Koopa causing the issue, but instead Olly, an origami obsessed king who is hell-bent on taking over the kingdom.

This involves taking both the civilians of the mushroom and koopa kingdoms and folding into new entities. Along with the help of a now-folded Bowser and King Olly's sister Olivia, it's up to Mario to save his home and unfold the mess folded onto the kingdom.

In classic Paper Mario fashion, its writing is the star of the show complete with humorous self-aware jokes and paper puns as far as the eye can see. From the goombas that have always wanted to fight Mario and are more like fans than enemies to the just completely out of nowhere comments toads have when you rescue them, The Origami King had me chuckling any chance it got.

Where Sticker Star used stickers and Color Splash used color, Origami King uses confetti and origami. It's with every new entry in the Paper Mario series that some sort of new paper theme gets used and Origami King is no different. In just about every nook n' cranny on your adventure, you'll find little cracks and tears in the paper world.

Just as abundant are the handful of confetti bunches scattered everywhere, ready for you to collect. These pieces of paper help fix up the gaps left in the world and reward you with coins and other rewards. In a way, it's another form of currency on top of the traditional coins.

Now as the name suggests, origami is the theme at the forefront here both in terms of the villain and the puzzles. Just about every enemy you face is a folded up version of a character you've come to know and love from the Mario universe. These fights are presented in a 3d space following a turn base system though on a revolving ring.

While a lot of the base mechanics of Paper Mario are here like the boot landing jumps and the hammer dealing a wider amount of damage, the revolving ring is the new mechanic. At the start of every battle, you get a chance to move the rings around to better position enemies around you for an attack.

It was fascinating at first but over time it felt more like a chore that just lengthens the playtime. It didn't add that much strategy to the combat nor did the different moves/items that for the most part, remain the same the whole game. The ring mechanic itself feels like it's solely there to perfectly position enemies for a bonus hit, ultimately making the point of it to make an already easy battle system easier.

My biggest exception to this were the boss fights that flip the script on me and had the boss at the center while Mario slowly made their way to them. In these moments the ring mechanic became much more fascinating and I felt a true layer of strategy.

While these weren't very common, I looked forward to everyone solely because they did offer that change of pace. Outside of combat, Paper Mario The Origami King offers a linear approach to its storytelling with puzzles that feel self-contained within the area you're in.

You're not really backtracking around entire worlds trying to find the right item, instead, everything seems right in place for when you start solving a puzzle. All of these features felt like quality of life improvements that both catered to veterans but also more to the casual audience wanting to get into the series.

Ultimately while I did love a lot of the writing Paper Mario featured this time around, I partially longed for more of the permanent partners that became so popular in the first few installments and more RPG centric mechanics. Paper Mario: The Origami King instead offers temporary partners specific to each location that more or less focus on story than to combat.

Likewise, there are RPG mechanics here but they feel pretty barebones. Paper Mario: The Origami King knows it has a charming visual style and it uses it to full effect. We've seen the series use the paper theme countless times but the idea of everything being made of paper or some sort of variation of it isn't lost nor is its magic.

Seeing the puffs of smoke coming out of a go-cart just being crumped up pieces of paper or the way just about any giant living thing is a paper mache project, it never fails to make me smile. It only got better the deeper I got into the 28-hour campaign though I'll try to let you experience those surprises for yourself.

The animation work, most notably in the cutscenes also came out incredibly well. Perhaps it's been that long since I've seen a CGI Mario but it looks like it belongs in an animated film. If anything it gets me thinking about that Illumination Mario film that's being made at the moment.

When it comes to performance, you can expect to see dock mode run at 900p and portable mode run at around 640p. Both ways to play target 30 frames per second performance though you'll see the occasional dip during the heavier animations in the boss fights.

Typically these fights lock at 30 fps but fancier attacks drop it down to the mid-20s. Outside of these instances, performance is great and despite the less than 1080p resolution, Paper Mario shines thanks to its vibrant and colorful art style. The Paper Mario series has never slouch when it comes to having a great selection of music and The Origami King is no different.

Immediately when I heard the remix of Peach's castle theme, reminiscent of the original Mario 64, I had the biggest grin on my face. It's almost like stepping back in time. It's not just the nostalgia tracks though, the new music here is filled with bangers with my personal favorite being the funky new battle music.

For as much as I didn't like having to use the new ring mechanic during battles, I found myself constantly hitting every enemy just to hear this music again, it's that good. Paper Mario: The Origami is another solid entry in the series that caters both to the casual audience and the veterans of the series.