I Hate the Battles in Paper Mario Origami King

With enough time and the ability to play with the sliders and rings I think I could solve these puzzles. But the game does not give me enough time or money to do that for every battle. So I end up just letting the Toads do the work for me and then farm for money between fights. This works okay but the boss battles against the elementals and the ribbons bosses don't allow for this and I struggled through with brute force but I hate it and its frustrating and all I do is feel stressed out and stupid because I can't visualize how to move these stupid fucking rings the right way.

I finally gave up around the hole punch.

Origami King was such a disappointment in that regard. The first two Paper Mario games have my favorite turn based battle system, but they won't make a new one like it. I ended up forcing my way through the whole game because the writing and music were fantastic. But I can only say I enjoyed maybe two or three battles.

Even when the puzzles were solvable, they were just absolute snooze-fests. If you solve the puzzle, the battles are too easy. If you fail to solve them, then you just blow through resources needlessly. And without any sort of knowledge of how much health enemies have or how much damage you do, trying to be conservative with your item usage is ridiculous.

The boss battles flip the formula in a much more interesting way, but then they ruin it by having specific steps you need to take to damage them. And how do you figure out which attacks to use? You either pick up a "hint" that just straight up tells you, or you guess and check (wasting more resources). There's no consistent logic to it, since the rules change between every boss. That, and when your health starts to run low, the game dumps health pickups like crazy, so there's not much tension.

Honestly, the game would have been more fun without any battle system at all, it's a waste of time. I just want to explore the world and find origami Toads.

I didn't hate the battle system nearly as much as a lot of people (I actually quite like the bosses), but it's definitely the weakest point of the game. They need to go back to SPM and just embrace that these games are puzzle platformers - the fights with the paper mache guys that just take place in the normal engine are by far the most fun fights in the game.

I loved the battles they kept me super engaged the whole way through. I'd love to see the idea further expanded and iterated on.

Diff'rent strokes I guess

I liked them too, but I can see why they would be polarizing...

Origami King is one of those frustrating cases where I can tell a game is very good but I hate playing it.

I had great times with Origami King, I had a few frustrating times. But overall, I enjoyed the story, the puzzles, and the boss battles to get over any frustration. I certainly got my fill of it, no more, no less. And with Paper Mario, I don't really have to worry about the sequel resembling it in any way!

I understand that some people really like it. Some people are really good at spatial visualization. I am not one of those people. In order to solves these sort of puzzles I need to be able to hold the object turn it around in my hands and work at it from different angles.

The game doesn't allow you to do that and so it's just frustrating and I leave the game feeling stupid for not being able to do it.

It's definitely not a well balanced system. Blocking is really difficult, too, as if you are playing the puzzles right, you should kill most regular enemies with your first round attacks and you don't get to learn the attack patterns.

There is a secret trick if you really need more time for the puzzles: use the screenshot button and then figure out the solution in the photo viewer.

I did, too. Stopped playing eventually.

The regular battles were a little boring and too frequent. By the end of the game, I was spending 500+ coins at the start of every fight, which always puts you one move away from the puzzle solution. The boss fights were great, although I would frequently buy myself more time to think about things. It’s not as good as the TTYD battle system overall, but there are already plenty of games that use that system and I appreciate them trying something new. Really, if they just cut the number of regular fights in half I would be perfectly happy.

Everything else about that game is incredible. It’s the best Paper Mario IMO.

I found it a fun and interesting system, but it got overwhelming to do often, especially since the only thing at stake is coins.

MCBanjoMike said:

The regular battles were a little boring and too frequent.

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Bongo said:

I found it a fun and interesting system, but it got overwhelming to do often, especially since the only thing at stake is coins.

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I just started this game on Friday and got to the...third or fourth named area? Still in Red streamer territory; the one past Picnic (Hills?). These are my takeaways so far, too. The battles at this early level are a little simplistic, so they get really repetitive. Honestly, there are a few times when I have to fight two battles in a row and I can't see any reason that the game would have made me do this. Not awarding anything but coins is a major demerit; for the time and engagement they require, I feel like the battles really need more reward to them; it feels like I get almost nothing at all for each one.

Maybe more weapon types than "line or block" could help change things up? I just got to the point where I have iron shoes and enemies that require them, so things are starting to kinda-sorta get more interesting, but it sounded like those are consumables, too? That could lead to some Oof moments down the road.

I also haven't fought any bosses yet, which some people above say is a high point, so I guess I'll find out soon!

The exploration, the environments and visual design, basically everything else so far is all charming and delightful. There are already a lot of tags for "come back later to figure this out!" (or maybe "I'm too dumb to figure this out") things around, fighting the big paper mache goombas was a lot of fun, etc. But a lot of times it really does feel like the momentum grinds to a halt every time I have to fight more than one battle in a few-minute span.

The bosses are better, it's true. But man, I'm finding the battles more and more of a slog. Each time I get caught in one I notice myself getting annoyed and frustrated. Not a good sign! I'm at the end of the Water Vellumental's temple and I'm not sure I'll be able to get much farther, even though I'd love to since the writing is so good and I love all the exploratory stuff.

Just pay the coins! You don't really need them for anything else, and it would be a shame if you missed out on the story and settings of this game because you got bored of the combat.

It's not like I was going to play it myself anyway so I just watched a Let's Play and man

I ended up just skipping the battles partly because they don't ever get more interesting and also because the player was just pound-head-on-desk frustratingly bad at the puzzles themselves

Yeah I eventually got bored of this game mostly because of the battles. I don't even mind the puzzles! But there's so many of them. It's like if a Professor Layton game was all sokoban.