Paper Mario: The Origami King

The Origami King suffers from one-note combat and few real choices, but its personality and visual design are a joy.

The Origami King keeps its RPG systems and character work light, but revamped combat and solid gags throughout are the course-correction Paper Mario needed.

Nintendo sketches another warm and colourful Paper Mario adventure, though never traces its full potential.

I want to share it with my nieces and nephews, as well as my grown friends. But I hesitate due to the frustration of the combat and those imposing boss battles — those moments where I wish I had someone else to take over on the controller.

Paper Mario: The Origami King is fun, light-hearted and a celebration of Super Mario with a strong story, great humour and brilliant characters.

As usual, Nintendo's quirky writing is full of laugh-out-loud moments, but your quest is full of tiresome backtracking

It might be made of papercraft, but Origami King has a lot of structural integrity, and unexpected depth. If you don’t fold at the tricky battle mechanics, the reward is an elevated, postmodern delight.

The Origami King contains some of the series’ absolute standout moments – almost all of them related to its enjoyable script and wonderful, varied environments – but it also frustrates with some disappointing new features and all-too-familiar missteps.

That simplicity is overridden by originality and vigor, then – but I also know all too well that some fans of the older Paper Mario games will once again walk away a little disappointed. This is still undoubtedly no Thousand Year Door. Perhaps the next outing can bring back a little of that RPG depth – but regardless of that, this is still the best Paper Mario game in years.

There's room in my heart for both styles of Paper Mario. The old games still exist and this newer, sometimes thinner formula is fine too. That said, it's possible Nintendo and Intelligent Systems have folded this subseries every which way they can at this point. I hope the next one is a little more fresh.