January 27, 2026
I finally finished playing Paper Mario: The Origami King just the other day. I haven't played a paper mario game before despite hearing all the good tings about the franchise. I was pleseantly surprised about TOK. First, the graphics and the world are absolutely beautiful. It is super creative and I've frankly never seen anything like it before. The jokes were funny and punny, and the world was really fun to explore. I liked the different areas you get to explore and you never know whats going to happen next. The story was fun and the ending was quite moving (perhaps a tear was shed). The battle system is something that gets spoken of frequently, mostly as a negative thing. I thought it was an inventive and entuitive battle system, but it did get a bit annoying at the end. The puzzles started off easy and as the game was wrapping up I did find myself using my growing collection of coins to have the Toads fight for me as the puzzle got harder. That said, I did miss that there was no way to level up mario. You just level up his health and get stronger weapons that break over time. It was fine, but I think it would have made me want to do battles more. The boss fights were pretty fun and it felt kinda zelda esque having to collect the different elementals. I'm looking forward to playing the thousand year door once I can find a used or discounted copy. That said, I highly recommend playing TOK. 4.5/5