Paper Mario: The Origami King

[OCH]

 

Ok then. So first play session done and this definitely feels like a sequel to Super Paper Mario. With the interactive battle system of TTYD or Mario & Luigi. I thought the battle system was a bit easy... Until one new enemy left me scratching my head long enough to discover there is a timer to your actions. Early impressions and all that, but the music so far isn't doing anything for me. Usually Mario OST are quite catchy and memorable. But the music original to this game... Meh. I'll go for a slightly longer play session tomorrow. But overall, I like it. 

[OCH]

The First Boss...

 

I've never felt so stupid playing a video game before. Puzzle Quest, Meteos, Bit Runner etc Put them in front of me and I'm well away. There is something about this battle system I'm just not getting? Potentially making all of these fights a lot harder than they should be. They change up the battle system with Bosses. You go to them, instead of the default bring enemies to you in regular battles. The first one is fun and I finally (also) understood how the Toads work. As interesting as the battle system is though, I am possibly wishing for the more straight forward version from Super Paper Mario...

[DANGERMAN]

I'm not sure what I think about this. There's a lot of dead time in it, a lot of dragging you around for no reason or throwing tasks at you so inconsequential it barely feels like gameplay. But then there's moments where you have to work out how to get items, generally not the most difficult things ever, although there's a couple I haven't managed to do, and these bits are great, it reminds me of Luigi's Mansion in that regard, there's bits where it all comes together.

 

I've also managed to fail 3 or 4 of the line-up puzzles before battles and haven't even got to the first boss yet. I can see why people have been avoiding battles. The only reason I've seen to seek them out so far is because it might net you a secret. They're fine, but I'm not sure I'll be feeling the need to do them in 10 hours time

[OCH]

15 hours ago, DANGERMAN said:

throwing tasks at you so inconsequential it barely feels like gameplay.

 

The confetti? That is definitely the impression I'm getting from that particular "ability" at least.

[OCH]

Boss Two done..

 

A bit more fun than the first one. But I'm still not getting a very strong positive vibe from this game. There is no real "wow" to any of it so far. Which I definitely had with SPM and M&L beforehand. Part of the reason was my expecting the dialogue to be funny. Confusing the Paper series with the Mario & Luigi series, I suppose? Even the bizarre dance numbers are just... odd. 

[DANGERMAN]

5 hours ago, OCH said:

 

The confetti? That is definitely the impression I'm getting from that particular "ability" at least.

Yeah, even finding the toads. Some of them are good little puzzles I suppose but there's not a huge amount of pay off for finding them. You have more cheering you on for the few times you do that, but the damage they do isn't that useful 

[OCH]

I'm guessing I'm only a little bit ahead, but I'm getting sick of looking for the toads already. No spoilers but there is an item that helps find them. Except it gives more of a general indication, without spacial context.

So that is two for two new features that I'd say are more 'miss' than 'hit'.

[Maf]

Wow I can’t do the battle system in this game at all. I’ve even gone to the battle lab to try train and it took me 500+ seconds to do 10 of ‘The Ringer’ easy puzzles. Then I went to do a speed ring test and in 90 seconds got the first one only. The second puzzle was a puzzle I already solved in The Ringer puzzles but forgot how to do it.

 

Its one of the most insane combat mechanics I’ve seen in a turn based game. I can’t wrap my head around it at all.

[Maf]

About 3 or 4 hours in and have just beat the first boss. Holy muthafucka this game is depressing. I only really have 2 opinions on this game one in regards to the battle system and one for everything else. For everything else it’s great, really enjoying it. Some good funny lines here and there, music is pretty nice, the game is ridiculous and it’s fun running around the areas finding secrets and whatnot.

 

Then there’s the battle system and holy fucking shit. I am absolutely stunned at how hard this game is. Considering this is a game for kids I need every handicap going and I still can’t do it half the time. Almost immediately I fell into hitting the hint button in battles. Not because the hint is ever any good but because it stops time and lets me think it out for free. And even then sometimes I just give up on solving the puzzle because I just can’t. There are so many literal moving pieces I just can’t think about that much stuff. 
 

Also it’s ‘puzzle difficulty’. So you either see it straight away or you don’t. And when I do get it straight away it makes me feel bad because it’s usually only the simplest of ones and when I don’t see it and having to cheat it makes me feel really bad because I’m not smart enough to play the kids game properly and then when I can’t solve it at all it makes me want to jump under a train. It is embarrassing how bad I am at this. 
 

Then it gave me the first boss which is pretty much a freebie but that was even more ridiculous because how it basically becomes it’s own type of puzzle. I wonder how hard these bosses are going to get. Because presumably there isn’t going to be much practice for them and even on the freebie I was completely stumped. There’s a bit where the companion character says “Great, it looks like you got the hang of it!” And I lost my shit. Hang of it, I barely know what’s going on!

 

I really don’t know. It a lot of ways it seems pretty fantastic except for the main challenge of the game that makes me feel like a fucking idiot. I mean it’s not like I don’t know this but I really don’t need a Mario game rubbing it in my face every few minutes. 
 

I think my success rate at solving the battle puzzles has to be less then 20%. And that’s with cheating and freezing time. I sit there and stare at it for 5 minutes and then just give up. The game is kind of punishing, too. When enemies get the chance to attack in one turn I lost over 20hp of my 50hp health bar because of how many enemies were left on the board when it was their turn to strike.

 

Sigh. I don’t know, man. For a game so bright, happy and quirky it makes me feel like shit. Just so much negative feedback trying to play a kids game. I think you can either do these types of puzzles or you can’t but for me I can’t imagine playing another game this hard this year. This game is savage. 
 

EDIT:  Check this shit out

 

 

That’s what the hint screen looks like. I just sat there for about 10 minutes trying to solve this puzzle. I can only move the board 3 times and need to make either 5 lines of 4, 5 blocks of 4 or some combination of either. This was as hard as it got but after 10 minutes I gave up. 

[bellow]

Jib that hardcore cartoon nonsense as play ghost of Tsushima with me.

 

It's summertime after all. The killing should be easy.

[OCH]

15 minutes ago, bellow said:

Jib that hardcore cartoon nonsense as play ghost of Tsushima with me.

 

That or be part of the July Forum playthrough of FFIX...?

[bellow]

My idea, I admit it. But I burnt myself out by playing 4 FFs back to back. I've only just got out of the psyche ward.

[DANGERMAN]

Lads, just one week where you don't mention Final Fantasy, please 

[Maryokutai]

Looking at the battle system and the impressions about it I get the feeling I would have preferred this if it was just a simple, conflict-less adventure game. I get that they don't want to redo the RPG-style for some arbitrary Nintendo reasons - "we don't want to release the same game twice", they said, after five thousand 2D Marios and Animal Crossing games - but why do they even implement a proper battle system with separate gameplay mechanics? I suppose Super Paper Mario felt too close to other Mario games but as a move away form the RPG roots it was a far better compromise than whatever came after IMO.

 

I wish this game had a demo to be honest. I still can't figure out whether I'd be able to deal with the battle system or straight up hate it but I won't pay full price to find out.

[OCH]

2 hours ago, Maryokutai said:

"we don't want to release the same game twice"

That being the reasoning they still use for why there is no new F-Zero.

 

I think the Mario & Luigi series was a better RPG than the Paper Mario games are. Every Paper game they can't seem to decide what kind of RPG they want it to be.

[Maf]

I agree that the Mario & Luigi series was better. But those games had almost the opposite problem where they didn’t mix it up enough and by the time Dream Team came out it was just a bit boring. Also they changed the art style and ruined it, that didn’t help.

 

At least with the Paper Mario games they really do try to change it each time. I can’t call them lazy with this series. Even if overall I think the series is less good. I like every Paper Mario game and remember none of them. 
 

(That being said this game might be fucking brilliant but that is a very early impression)

[OCH]

Boss Three...

 

I'm actually finding this game is getting really repetitive now. I don't think the battle system helps, wherein there is the default system and the boss system. No real variation aside from solving the "puzzle" of the former and working out the gimmick of the latter. Up until now I considered Fi (Skyward Sword) the most irritating sidekick Nintendo had created. Olivia has since claimed that distinction. For crying out loud, I actually just zone out or skip through her dialogue now. Even the butterfly (Tippi) from SPM had a less grating personality.

 

I'm genuinely at a loss here. I haven't had such a lacklustre vibe from a Mario game before. I think this is why I am now limiting my play sessions to a boss at a time. I'm really just not feeling engaged by this at all.

[DANGERMAN]

I've just got some treasure ?  a figurine of a pile of boxes ?

 

It's a bit of a flat line of a game isn't it. For the most part it's not bad but it is boring. That said there's some bits that are bad, a few things that are getting really tedious. Increasingly it's the weapons. Some enemies you can't jump on unless you have steel boots, steel boots break after a few uses. If you don't have enough and you're miles away from a shop, as far as I can tell it's tough shit. 

 

Man, they really needed to sort the combat out, it's the only thing I can think would improve it, if the fights were interesting

[OCH]

The Cheers do give you weapons... Sometimes. But that entire mechanic is so random it is virtually unusable. Barring the occasions it moves the map for you or does the Pac-Man trail. The combat is the strength and weakness of this game. The system breaks up the monotony of the level design and structure. Yet it is so repetitive that a large group of enemies, or worse the Wave mechanic, just becomes a chore.

[Guest]

On 19/07/2020 at 22:03, Maf said:

EDIT:  Check this shit out

 

I just did that part and am about 10 minutes further. When I saw that image last night I was like oh fuck. But when I came to it myself this morning I did it in no time. iirc I ended up with a line of shells, a line of koopas and a line of 1 shell and 3 koopas behind it. I was surprised because I’ve been struggling to line up enemies myself. I wouldn’t mind if there was no timer but with that counting down I can’t handle the pressure!

 

That said I’ve never died in battle even without lining up a majority of enemies. I’ve used coins for more time but that just gives me extra time to get it wrong in a different way. I thought the stopwatch accessory might slow time or even stop it but it only adds 10 seconds ? Blocking helps a lot and you seem to be able to do it pretty easily.
 

Anyway I’m loving Origami King. How anyone could call it boring idk but reading the mostly negative impressions here I guess the combat might be marmite? Outside of that the world is so charming and a wonder to discover the secrets of. The writing is funny and entertaining as well as amusingly animated.

 

I guess if you open the map and see you’ve barely discovered any treasure, blocks or toads in an area and don’t care then you’re not going to get much out of this and it will be boring to traverse. I for one enjoy putting the time in to explore every possible lead to a toad being in a ridiculous situation.