Good Game Design - Paper Mario: The Origami King 

I love that you get on a ship with two world famous sea captains and they are completely unaware of all the islands just outside of town.

DUDE... The music in this game was the craziest part for me. Every boss theme absolutely blew me away! Awesome video! I just finished the game 100% and your vid let me relive a bit of the good times! Rock on! :D

Honestly my biggest issue with random encounters was the lack of an HP bar on normal enemies. Even the museum doesn't list how much health enemies have, so figuring out exactly how much damage I need to do is a lot of trial and error. If I just knew right away when a normal hammer was enough versus when I should pull out the Shiny one, random encounters would be a lot less tedious.

I feel like it is important to talk about how the characters are specifically Super Mario characters and not variants based off Super Mario. There were no female toads and all toads looked the same. No goombas wore hats, the bob-omb disliked going by any names, Kamek even said "DON'T CALL ME KAMMEY" as a reference back to 64. They tried to show the audience that they simply can't do what they used to do because Nintendo most likely didn't want their biggest ip to be made into silly putty and change all the time. The fact that they tried to keep it as close to the Super Mario franchise and still gave you emotional investment into characters you see all the time really shows just how hard they worked in writing and I think that deserves some credit

Just finished the game yesterday. And as a die hard fan of how the series once was, I had a really enjoyable time with it.

I agree. I was nervous going in, but the game was an incredible shock to me. I really enjoyed the game

"There's a little something for everyone"

I had low expectations going into this game, but I was pleasantly surprised about how good it was. DO IT FOR BOBBY

On another note, I've seen a bunch of people describe how they're upset that Nintendo is focusing on the "Paper" aspect to create all sorts of gimmicks and stuff, and at first I agreed. After playing the game and beating it, though, I noticed that I actually really liked a lot of the clever paper-themed ideas they came up with, and none of my problems with the game had anything to do with how they focused more on creating a paper-y adventure. I thought the confetti was entertaining to use, and patching the world back together was satisfying! The use origami-ified enemies to unite all the paper guys was fun, and the paper macho enemies were cool as well! Even if they weren't as creative as I would have liked, the arts and crafts bosses were challenging to fight and satisfying to beat. Seeing the paper family cutout enemies before the scissors boss blew my mind, and I wish they had more enemies like that, where they're thematically appropriate AND a surprise twist on the mechanics! So yeah, if there was one problem with this game from the very start, it was NOT the focus on paper.

I legitimately laughed out loud at the dialogue in this game, it was so much fun and added so much to the game as a whole. I think what's important is that the game wanted to go back to RPG roots, but it wasn't trying to be 64 or TYD- I had to keep that in mind while playing. It's a great game in its own right.

I really enjoyed it. But I still just don't get the fear of showing numbers. The _platformer_ one had a character sheet, told you how much HP healing items restored, and let you check enemies' max HP during gameplay. Hiding numbers just made me have to remember more things to play well. At the very least, they could've given a ranking to each weapon instead of making me remember/guess how various boots compared to their iron equivalents. And list max HP with the other info in the museum. Also I kept feeling clever for finding a side area, only to realize a minute later that it was actually just a required part of the main story. The cafes and toads were fun, but I'd love more meaningful optional stuff to find.

9:44 "Haha, you thought this was an episode of "Good Game Design"? You fool! It was a "You Need To Play" video all along!"

It makes me sad how much of the Paper Mario fanbase has already wrote this game off. I just hit the Scorching Sandpaper Desert and I'm really enjoying my time with the game. It's definitely better than Color Splash (the only other Paper Mario I've played), no doubt. The soundtrack is outstanding! With that said, Bug Fables is an excellent game in my book even if you haven't tried a classic Paper Mario.

No! Bobby! Don't go to that boulder! Oh no, he can't hear us, he has- OUR SPONSER, RAYCON!

I loved the writing and epic scale, it made me feel like I was watching a Pixar movie, full of hilarious charm, fun characters and heartfelt moments

paper zelda 2

It's funny how the last collectable I got, the collectable that put the game up to 100%, just so happened to be the Mario collectable.

For me I think the biggest sin the battle system has is the expectation that every fight is meant to be finished in a single turn. That should be a reward that happens over time as you master the battle mechanics or become more powerful than the enemies in a given area. The ability to somehow strategically use vellumentals in regular battles is a huge missed opportunity, not just a random 1HKO in chain fights. As you said, enemies like boos and the groups of origami change things up a bit, but they’re about it. The battles do not really evolve in complexity with the exception of the bosses, which I both love and hate. Would’ve been much more satisfied if regular battles were handled like the macho origami enemies and the ring system was only used for bosses.

I hope this game gets DLC simmilar to Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion and Mario + Rabbids Donkey Kong Adventure.

The, "Thing" bosses were such a great idea imo. The last 2 games used them as super powerful attacks so when you gave to fight them it's oddly frightening.

If THIS would've been the first game of the new paper Mario's, wouldn't have had such a hard time winning over people. I hope they expand on it, if they keep going this direction. And yeah, indie devs really have held up the torch for those classic feeling games A hat in time, bug fables, one step from Eden, ex-zodiac, Celeste, etc, etc. Even if these older series try to change from their old sources, people are always gonna remember them and want to build off the blueprints they loved.

I hope this game does well. Even if we never get a paper Mario like the old days, I’d rather have this than no paper Mario at all.

So the internet loves this game. For me that is a revolutionary moment in gaming history, because people finally looked at the quality of something instead of what it isn't.

I had an interesting experience with the game. As someone who had only played colour splash (and thought it was pretty fun) I decided I would play both Paper Mario 64 and Origami King back to back for the first time. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I liked 64 more (keep in mind I have no nostalgia bias here). However it wasn’t because of the battle system, it was because of the sense of story and variety it provided. When I completed it I was content, when I beat Origami King I wanted more. More quirks in battle more collectables more interesting environments and set pieces (which felt farther apart). I think liked the core of TOK more and I love many of the moments and characters but it’s bogged down by slower pacing and lack of meaningful progression. It’s a shame it didn’t strive to do more and more with its ideas.

I thought I was the only one who liked battles.

The exploration and humor are the epitome of Paper Mario for me, really enjoyed you taking a look at the bright side when so many others are overwhelmingly negative to this title! As always, excellent video man!!!!

Origami King has quickly become one of my favorite games in the series. I found the battles really unique and the lack of exp wasn't really a problem. The game is really fun.

Its amazing how we went from Color Splash bosses where basically the only challenge was getting a certain Thing card which was annoying to these fun and stragety based bosses to the point where people say their the best part of the game. Now thats what i call going from the worst to the best.

I'm about two thirds through the main story and the second area absolutely won me over. Not gonna lie, I had more fun with this game than PM1. The connected world is great.

I like that this game proved you don't have to do the same thing over again to have fun. They made something unique and fun.

This series kind of shows that being different isn't automatically bad. It's more complex than some parts working better than others. Since we can also inverse the criticism and say the environments in the old games were for the most part going from left to the right. Very fews camera changes since those tried to look like stage plays. And not a lot of activities outside of battles. IMO also the music has been constantly improving throughout the series, at the very least in terms of production values.

"Please don't write off mario's outing as not being more of the same!" Buddy there's been 4 paper marios since TTYD and none of them have been like it.

6:46 the rock paper scissors boss actually isn't trial and error if you notice that while you're arranging the battlefield he'll lightly show which move he's going to do

At least the Legion of Stationary have character to them too lol _Not to mention they’re actually the best_

coming from someone who loved the original and a thousand year door. This game was truly amazing. I feel the writers knew what they were doing when they wrote olivia and designed her. She was so charming and cute that once i got to the end i actually cried.

Hey, at least Bobby went out with a bang... I miss him every day...

"something TOK has that the older games lacked is a plethora of collectibles" *laughs in star pieces, badges and shine sprites*

This probably has to be one one of my favorite paper Mario games

I liked Origami King but it would have been so much better if they would have more emphasis on the story and unique characters/settings. As well as an incentive to battle

Origami king is so good, it actually kinda hurts that they didn't go the entire way to make it as good as ttyd and in some ways 64. The battle system is cool, no exp coins instead which is fine, because they're used a lot. However I will say, pow blocks, fire flowers+ice flowers kinda break normal enemies, you don't have to fully solve the battle puzzles if you have them. I wish allies were useable and had their own health. I get that they'd be really hard to implent into boss fights but I feel like they could've been fine to use in normal fights. Having them not go into certain rooms or areas, and only attacking after Mario with one standard attack successfully or not is p lame. Same with them not having their own health. I kinda get partners not having special moves or items cus they would have to be used much more in that case. It also feels like they could've gone further with the unique designs and added more new characters besides just origami, most of the normal enemies feel kinda generic sometimes with different colours. Overall it's a great story and a step in the right direction. Sadly with every paper Mario forcing a new battle system I'm not expecting the next battle system to be very good. Changing it up is cool and all but trying to re-invent the wheel with battles will inevitably lead them to create a terrible battle system again. Overall great game, it has renewed my faith in the paper Mario series if only slightly.

I see many people praising the first three and complaining about the later three games when I distinctly remember everyone talking about SPM back in the day like it was the antichrist. Mob mentality.

5:06 “It was enough to nudge me toward the Final Solution.” *oh no*

the only tedious backtrack I had to do was when I forgot to check the green streamer's warp pipe.

Gamers after playing new super Mario Bros : this is same old shit we want something new Same Gamers after playing origami king : this is not paper Mario we want old paper Mario back

As someone who hasn’t played any Paper Mario game other than Oragami King, I don’t know how TTYD can be any better.

I just finished it. As an extremely big fan of TYD, I actually ended up liking TOK more by the end

Well, after seeing the thumbnail and watching this video, you've fully convinced me to give this game a shot. I was eventually going to get it, but not as a Day 1 buy. I do miss the story, gameplay, and original designed characters the first 3 games had (yes I'm counting Super Paper Mario in terms of story and characters), but I can see that The Origami King has that same charm, humor, personality, and fun moments outside of battle that the first 3 games and Color Splash had along with a killer soundtrack. And that's probably enough of a reason for me to try it out, even if I may or may not enjoy the battles. Besides, I can always return to the original trilogy or play Bug Fables if I'm missing that classic Paper Mario feel.

"At the end of the day, I had to remind myself that the original games aren't going anywhere, I can always go back and play them if I want to feel nostalgic" This.

Paper Mario TOK: The game where you can see which players of the paper mario fanbase have critical thinking and puzzle solving skills and those who don´t. I´m the former :) . Jokes aside I loved the battle system. Felt so rewarding everytime I solved them.

I really like Origami King. Although its not the same as the original Paper Mario, my favorite by far, it was still fun to play!

I still hope for some more RPG elements at some point down the line (which may never happen again) but I was also pleasantly surprised by Origami King after avoiding Sticker Star and Color Splash like the plague.

I can't compare This game to the older ones, because I haven't played them. but I glad you liked it too. There are a few things worth mentioning, what makes this game a very good game, in my opinion. But spoiler warning 1. I still care for a side character, even weeks after finishing the game. I got a bob-omb Lego figure. And I couldn't be happier. His sacrifice was great storytelling and Olivias reaction to it was great to. And when you revisit the places you where with Bobby and sit on benches Olivia remembers him. (Wait a second, it ties in with the ending... Where Olivia is the one that sacrifices herself...) 2. I have the feeling that they tried to connect the exploration and the combat. Instead of giving you EXP for getting stronger, you get stronger by exploring the world to find heart pieces. The reward for defending the boss battle is having more confetti, with makes it easier to explore.( Maybe a little) 3.the real life objects where great enemies, because you knew the form real life. You knew why they were dangerous to a hero made out of paper, but you also knew where a weakness might be. 4. I am more a puzzle than an RPG gamer. And for me, the combat was great. And I still find toads adorable, so I don't mind rescuing them. After all I wouldn't mind a Origami King 2, because I think there is much more potential in the ring battle and the Origami theme.

Wow, great video! I love this series, and everything was well said. Keep it up!

I liked it, but I still wish they weren’t limited with character designs and that the partners were controllable and became permanent party members.

I love how the old games merged with the modern games (which I loved so much).

Some rando troll: Lol! There's no good game design in TOK! It's just Sticker Star 3!

*tbh i haven’t played any paper mario games before so knowing that starting with origami king isn’t a bad idea is all the more refreshing to me*

My main gripe with TOK gameplay-wise is that there's no resource you get from battles that's exclusive to them. Confetti? It's all over the overworld. Coins? Just throw some confetti in a hole or hit a nearby question block and you'll be set. The point of EXP in the first two (three, technically) games was to provide a sense of progression that you could ONLY acquire through battling enemies, and as with its predecessors SS and CS, TOK simply doesn't have that

Thank you so much for mentioning Bug Fables. I'm a little over halfway through and I've been in love since the start. Thank you for this review as well. I was a little on the fence with this one but this gives me hope. I think I will give it a go sometime soon. You're the man! Keep it up!

This is a good video. In my opinion, I think the Legion of Stationary being bosses is actually genius. I say that because Mario’s pain is relatable & that makes those office supplies intimidating. The “Solo SnapBack” move from Rubberband is a good example because most people have experienced the pain of a rubber band being launched toward you. It was a genius move to implement the bosses in that way.

What a fair reveiw that’s impossible?!

I was all against playing this game, since I had the bad luck of playing sticker star. This video made me want to try it. Now, I'm LOVING IT! Thank you Snoman! :D

I think we all agree that Bobby's death was one of the saddest moments in Paper Mario history

Damn man you're one of my favorite gaming channels....not sure how every video isn't hitting a million views each!!!!

I really do feel like toad cheer was way too overpowered. Its basically an instant win button. If you give them 999 coins which is extremely easy to get. They usually full heal you, do damage to the enemies and finish the puzzle. It should of costed more or something

I'm still trying to decide whether or not The Origami King is better than Super Paper Mario. I'm torn (pun intended).

Still waiting for Paper Luigi: the Marvelous Compass.

its great to hear a different opinion showing more of those pros.most reviews i ve seen didnt mention half of the good things said here. i love you intro.

the one thing i can't get over is how they aren't ever going back to the unique NPCs of ttyd. almost all the background npcs had some unique feature, and many of them even had names. THAT is the thing that makes the entire world feel special and unique. ttyd has the most unique setting and worlds of any mario game in general, not just paper mario. i don't understand why nintendo insists on making the audience only toads and making most of the npcs generic nameless mario creatures. edit: wait whoa this game has achievements? hol up

*SPOILERS* I just finished this game for the first time a few days ago and I thought it was extremely fun! I've finished TTYD and Super Paper Mario, and am a bit of the way through 64, but I thought this game had more charm (at some points) than TTYD and even had scenarios that were up to par with TTYD. Like, the whole second area was AMAZING, and I loved Whispering Woods to death. However, I felt like the end of the game was rushed. I think the first three areas were fine, but the fourth felt like none of the islands really mattered story-wise aside from Mushroom Island and the Diamond Island. The path to the Sea Tower should have been harder, and I feel like the Sea Tower should have had separate segments for each Vellumental instead of throwing them all together. Or, better, it could have just been lengthened out with some nice puzzles. I felt that the fifth area was completely rushed. It became a fetch quest for each corner of the region and then was far too short. I think initially each spring would have been its own side area with a mini quest, and Bowser's Castle was meant to be much longer. I mean, come on, are we really to believe that his whole CASTLE is just a foyer, throne room, and two small side wings? I think they could have easily replicated the Palace of Shadows from TTYD for this, or even for the Origami Castle. I think the ending could've been built up more and the bond between Olly and Olivia could have been emphasized a bit more to help the players feel the emotion. I loved Bobby, and I actually almost cried when he died at the beginning of the yellow streamer. I think the first half was perfection, and the second needed some work. And I think the trophies could have been a bit harder... the Eddy River one and the Shy Guys Finish Last trophies, as well as Scuffle Island all felt worth it, but the others... not so much (excluding the 'collect all ___' trophies). But overall, I loved the game, and I'm excited to see what the future of Paper Mario holds!

You absolutely captured what makes it great. Thank you so much. I just want everyone to love and appreciate how creative this game is.

Yes! Finally! I've been waiting for this.

7:13 "I found this 'spin' on the ring system a great way to 'round' out the combat" I see what you did there :P

I'm having a blast with this game, as much as with the original, which is one of my favorite games of all time. Origami King is really worth checking if you haven't. They did an incredible job (Bobby lives forever in my heart)

TOK is basically spaghetti without the sauce. At least it’s better than the moldy table scraps we were getting before.

So glad the paper Mario fanbase has pretty collectively embraced this game. It just warms my heart.

After watching this video again after beating the game, I finally understand why the combat feels shallow (not saying "bad", I steel feel like it's fun and not that flawed), because the boss fights are so good. Their "gimmicks" are so creative and they have so much depth in trying to optimize your route for pickups, x2/+1 panels, etc. So my solution for the combat is to make it so you can't always finish in one turn with the right solution. Making it more about crowd control and removing the perfect lineup system could make it so much more interesting. Deciding between attacking stronger enemies or eliminating weaker enemies, for example. Also, it needs some of the genius gimmicks from the bosses that make solving the puzzles so interesting. Have walls that stop your attack but also protect you from bullet bill launchers in the same row. Have obstacles that will damage you if you hit them. Have shells that get launched to the side attacks and bombs that explode when hit by anything to chain massive attacks. Have more shapes for attacks than just a 1x4 and 2x2. Simply making multi-turn fights more frequent would be huge, providing interesting decisions about healing items and the like. There are so many opportunities with this ring system that it's a shame they weren't tapped into (except in the bosses). Still, I don't think they were necessarily bad or flawed, just much weaker than they could've been.

You know, as a long time fan of the series I was really on the fence about buying the game. I know it’s different from the games I fell in love with as a kid, and yet there’s still something so charming about the newer games, namely TOK. After watching this video, I’m buying the game. If I don’t like it, at least the music will keep me pushing through.

It was definitely a lot more fun than I expected it to be. And there were several emotional points that hit me as hard as some of the emotional parts of TTYD. The battles are definitely a double edged sword, although the lack of experience never really affected my amount of desire to get into them. A lot of the time they were fun, however this was a very mentally intensive system which tended to wear on me, especially the bosses. I know that often ended up driving me to avoiding more encounters than I should have and I ended up having to grind out encounters to buy things at times. I especially sometimes had difficulty wrapping my head around the ways that the game wanted me to combine sliding and spinning; even more so during the picture fixing minigame. I noticed that there were a lot of very cinematic action scenes which didn't really feel necessary, and by probably around Green Streamer I was getting annoyed at them. I wished that they had gone with full voice acting for the songs rather than the half singing with just sung noises, especially with how much emphasis they put on those songs. One thing I appreciated was the subtle things they did for accessibility. The most obvious one would be the cheering system, but it even extends to the puzzles in the world. If you fail or reset a puzzle several times it will get easier. For instance in the memory matching platforms, it starts by going from back to front, but it will also go from front to back, then eventually will light up all the correct platforms after doing the panel and then dropping all the wrong platforms in the lava. I ended up getting turned around or misjudging jumps into the lava a number of times on that one. In the sliding ice puzzle if you reset too many times then it highlights all the ones which need to be cleared out first. I don't know any more for that one since it's harder to mess that one up and the main issue for me was realizing that I needed to leave some of the snow in to smash off of or stop me, and then experimenting with which ones. Chris 371 10 hours ago Another issue that I had was that I felt like I had very little idea of how much damage I'd actually be doing with an attack, and the lack of info about remaining health of enemies except that they're almost dead definitely didn't help. I wish the partners were less geographically and storyline constrained. At least Professor Toad will be with you throughout the desert, I can't even take Kamek through a second trip through the jungle. They're definitely helpful for cleanup even if they sometimes fail to attack. My biggest complaint probably has to be related to something that I read about and then struggled trying to achieve before giving up for now. Which would be the fact that the secret ending is tied to getting all the trophies. There's a lot of stupid stuff that you need to get really good at to do that.

Too many of my friends write this one off without even giving it a chance and it’s so upsetting, the games really special

I thought this game was fantastic. 40+ hours of gameplay without 100%ing it, plus I love how battle incentives change depending on if you need confetti, coins, toads, or magic circles. And I love the attention to detail in the art and things like the coffee shops

"There is something for everyone" Oh oh

I'm really happy that so many people are warming up to origami king. It's great to see.

I like mangos, but. Mangos are underrated

God, I love this game so much as well! It may not be a return to form, but it’s just as good as TTYD IMO Edit! *sighs* knew I was gunna get attacked

I’m at the second area and really haven’t been enjoying the battle system or exploration a whole lot, and I’ve just been wondering what I’m missing with all the praise this games been getting

I love how Bobby has become the soul emotional and lovable character of the game

I’m still not finished with the fifth streamer, but I love it so far. And thanks to your vid I realized I’ve missed a lot of stuff o_O

I have to write off this game SPECIFICALLY because it's not more of the same. I want more of the same, I like turn-based RPGs, that's my shit, and I want more of it. Going back to playing 64 and TTYD is not "more of the same", it's "literally the same", I've never really got that argument, personally. That being said, I will never judge a game that I haven't played. This might as well be a great fucking game, and I've seen enough praise for it to believe so myself, it's just not the game I wanted so I have no reason to play it, simple as that. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything because this game doesn't have any of the things I really want; the same way I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by not playing the Forza games because I don't care for racing games. Regardless, great video as usual Snoman, can always count on great content from the channel

This game is amazing. I don't understand all the people complaining about it.

I’m still sad about Bobby

The moment that really made the game for me was the Shy Guy Ballet. Swan Lake (Punk Remix) was an amazing choice.

So basically, aside from the super slow tutorial intro, you're saying that they finally nailed what they were going for on their 3rd attempt. Kinda questionable how it took them so long to alter the formula while still keeping it enjoyable, but I guess I'm happy that they finally succeeded into achieving their original vision for the future of the series. I'm sadly short on funds at the moment, but perhaps later on I'll consider buying it myself. Especially if its price drops due to becoming part of a Nintendo Selects collection or something like that. It could potentially happen.

I couldnt agree more Sno. Amazing video

This game has one of the best Soundtracks ever. As soon as the vellumental boss theme played in this video I almost completely lost track of what you were saying and was just bopping to the music 😂

Tbh the tutorials are less annoying than constantly being accosted by Hop in Sword & Shield and that's good enough for me

Wow, thanks snowman! I never thought of going back to that professor toad to get new items. It's crazy that this game still has secrets that I didn't know about even though I 100% the game. But I do wish I got the hidden block sensor earlier. There were times where I spent 10 minutes trying to find a single hidden block :|

I feel like the battle system is under implemented I feel like there should have been tons of different movements so the player can play to their liking with different items that also have different lineups for maybe increased damages or possible debuffs. I also believe the vellumental powers appearing randomly in waves is a bit silly what’s the point of a wave battle if they are to give you vellumental powers every other wave fight. And maybe adding a mastery level for abilities based on uses of your three options but that’s not really all that necessary. If vellumental powers had set abilities for you to use at times that’d be interesting I still feel as the battle system is still bare bones despite it still being able to force critical thinking every so often

That Video Game was Awesome

The musicals scenes where the best part of the game