3/5 ★ – MechaniChris's review of Paper Mario: The Origami King.

This one is fine. Visually beautiful, and it has some fun ideas with the folded paper, but if not for Sticker Star’s truly horrendous combat system, this would easily be the worst combat in a Mario RPG. Also, and this has been a problem for several of these Paper Mario titles, there’s no combat experience to be gained, so the game literally feels like it punishes you for engaging in battle. You can gain some coins and confetti, but both are already so plentiful that you’re better off just avoiding fights altogether. This mainly plays into the issue of speed. The game moves at a snails pace because fights take forever, especially if you mess up the little puzzle, and there’s so much unskippable dialogue that it takes 2 hours to walk from one end of the screen to the other. Somehow this game makes the tutorials in the Mario & Luigi series feel breezy. That said, it IS still Paper Mario. Most of the gameplay is unchanged, and if you like exploring this paper world, there’s still fun to be had, but as for a modern Paper Mario experience, I’d recommend Color Splash over this one any day.