Image of the character Olivia from Paper Mario: Origami King — Olivia

The battles have a lot in common with past games.

A WORLD MADE OF PAPER

While certainly not the primary complaint leveled against recent series entries, the push for further and further into emphasizing the paper-ness of everything in Paper Mario's world has been an elements that several vocal fans have decried. I personally haven't minded it much. I praised the diorama look of Color Splash in particular, and liked that it carried on the efforts of games like Kirby's Epic Yarn and Yoshi's Wholly World to put an extra bit of creativity into something as basic as what walls, floors and stairs look like.
Still, Paper Mario was not originally intended to draw y our attention to the fact that the characters and the world they inhabit are literally made out of stuff from an elementary teacher's supply drawer. We mentioned this a few pages ago, but the first name for Paper Mario was "Mario Story" - the paper look would have felt at home in a children's book. The first game gave buildings in the environment a pop-up book effect to further drive this home. Paper Mario was a story being told from a book first and foremost - the characters and what happens to them were the point, not the pages they were "printed" on.
Paper Mario: The Origami King, in this regard, takes one step forward and one step back. If you thought that Color Splash leaned into the paper aesthetic too much, you'll be happy to see the environments in this new sequel dial that back. They're not screaming "Hey, this is all made of paper you know!" all the time. On the other hand,, the villains being an army of origami soldiers is the most paper-emphasizing thing the series has ever featured. So there's that.

A TWISTED TALE

Let’s go ahead and talk about those villains next, since we’re on the topic! The subtitle “The Origami King” refers directly to the new big bad of this adventure: King Olly, seen just above and to the left. He’s a floating, folded, fearsome piece of paper who is also apparently a master of disguise, able to fold and refold his paper body at will to masquerade as any person or creature he chooses. He’s got some beef with how things are run in the Mushroom Kingdom, and so he leads an invading force of Folded Soldiers (origami versions of classic Mario series foes like Goombas, Shy Guys and Koopa Troopas) into Princess Peach’s domain to terrorize the non-folded paper people who live there.
It gets worse. Paper Peach, who has consistently been an ally to Paper Mario throughout the series and often a secondary playable hero, has turned to the dark side! Whether by coercion or by choice, she’s folded herself into the creepy (but still totally cute) Origami Peach, and as this new quest begins, she offers Mario the option to join her in this cult as well. Our hero refuses, of course, and after being blown away from Peach’s Castle, his adventure to restore order in the Kingdom begins to unfold.
On the balance of experimental vs. traditional, this story setup has to land on the experimental side of things. If this were a true old-school Paper Mario sequel, then we’d probably h have the good-old goody-two-shoes Peach kid-napped and whisked away to the villain’s dungeon somewhere, awaiting rescue. For that expectation to be subverted immediately by seemingly casting the princess as the secondary antagonist right from the start is bold and new. I love it! It’s not traditional at all, but I still think it’s a great call.

BAMBOOZLING BATTLES

Now, back over to the purely experimental side of things for a look at the most bizarre battle system this series has ever seen. Say hello to The Donut! Or maybe the Dartboard? We’re going to need some kind of mildly derogatory name established for Origami King’s ring-shaped battle arena, because I’m sure people will be wanting to complain about it for years to dome.
When it comes to attacking Mario’s foes, the battles have a lot in common with past games: He can choose to strike with either a hammer or with stomping leaps, and you’ll be able to find and equip pow-ered-up version of both of those types of attacks once again, like Hurl hammer that turns our hero’s close-range melee strike into a ranged assault instead. The new twist - is twist - which is literally a twist - is the fact that before you choose your attack, you have to spin and slide segments of the circle-shaped battle-field around to gather your enemies together into groups or lines. And you’ll have only a few seconds to do it!

Battles, then, are two-fold in The Origami King: First, quickly assessing how you can most efficiently align a scattered set of foes, and second, picking the best option of at-tack to do the most damage to the most targets once you’re cone shifting them all around. I like the ingenuity at work in designing such a wild new take on Paper Mario battle scenes, but I’m once again approaching this new news with caution, because my first instinct is to be skeptical about whether or not a system like this will be able to remain interesting for the duration of an entire RPG adventure. Will we just get tired of all the twisting?