Toadspeed, Paper Mario. Toadspeed...
Jul. 22nd, 2020 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrsluigivargasI finished Origami King last weekend I really liked it! I think I was too stupid for some of the puzzles, but overall I had a fun time! I still prefer Bug Fables a bit more, but I defo don't regret the $60 this game cost me.
I'm going to ramble about it now, but I'll put it under a cut because it's a bit long and aimless and there's probably going to be spoilers here:
The red streamer area was literally all tutorial, which kinda sucked, but the game really took off after that. I really liked the blue and yellow streamers the most; the samurai theme park you explore for the blue streamer is a very interesting setting, and exploring the desert for the yellow streamer was very fun in a boot car . The honorary mention goes to the purple streamer, because the process of getting to it was almost literally The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, lmao.
Another thing that was interesting was the amount of paper-themed body horror there was? There was the whole turning into origami thing, Toads with their faces punched out, the Paper Mistake, whatever the fuck those black cutout enemies near the end of the game were…there were a bunch of scenes throughout that were meant to be creepy/unsettling and that was pretty cool. It was a nice contrast with the more light-hearted humor and jokes that the game had.
Also, the environments and music are gorgeous! Autumn Mountain was stunning, and the desert in the dark had very satisfying blues and purples. And the lighting in the final area was *chef's kiss*. A bunch of the music has vocals and the singers sound amazing. And some of the music has lyrics, too! I almost wanna try a hand at covering them. The dance numbers are very cute also! I think this might be the most Mario ever danced in a game, aside from the DDR one, of course.
One thing is, as I've caught glimpses of people complaining about the game on Reddit and Twitter and such, is that its hard to tell what people actually don’t like about the game because all they do is compare it to the old games. Which, as someone who hasn’t played any of those older games, is annoying.
Like! People want partners back, but I don’t understand why? There's the character design angle where people want more than generic toads and enemies and stuff, which, yeah sure, that's fair. But also the partners in the first three games seem kinda boring? From what I've seen in Let's plays, they don’t really add anything to the story (outside of their initial narratives when you first recruit them, I guess). Even in TTYD, where they can offer commentary on things that are happening, it still seems very generic. Their characters seem stuck. Some people say that Goombella's tattles offer some of her personality, but compared to, say, Bug Fables? Kinda falls flat, imo. So then at the end of those games when the partners all gather together and are like "Mario you were a great friend and we'll miss you," it's like….yeah sure okay if you say so I guess.
I really liked Huey from Color Splash because yeah, he's your only partner, but he and Mario get to bond and hang out! You can actually get the impression that they became friends! So when he goes away at the end it's actually vaguely emotional. It's the same with Olivia in this game; we get to see her learn things and grow confidence first hand. Even the temporary partners, while the time spent with them was brief, were quite entertaining and lively. Having fewer partners allowed the existing partners to have more of a place in the narrative and have their chances to shine.
Like, take Bobby the Bob-omb, for example. His character arc was the best in Paper Mario history and I'm not accepting any arguments to the contrary.
...
...But really though, I think the story hit a major high point with him. I didn’t expect a Paper Mario game to deal with grief and loss and self-sacrifice like this, but it did! Pretty well, I think! And then they reference it again near the end of the game and my heart breaks again! It's fine. Everything's fine.
Professor Toad and Kamek & Bowser Jr. were also awesome partners! Professor Toad actually looked like a professor in this game (unlike Color Splash's professor), and Mario working together with Bower's minions/family is always a treat. Bowser himself was fun, too! I think there's a brief moment in the game where your party consists of Mario, Luigi, Bowser, and Olivia, and I wish they could have hung out some more because the potential is staggering. They shared one cutscene and it was hysterical and I want more. (Nintendo, please.)
And the people who complained about coins being superfluous obviously hadn't played/seen anything after the second streamer, because while the game showers you with coins, everything is so bloody expensive! It's ridiculous! Add that to the fact that you might be using coins to pay for the toads or extend puzzle timers, and the coin economy isn't actually as horrific as some people make it out to be. (Though tbh, I was a bit worried in the beginning too, seeing that I found myself with 1000 total coins immediately after the first tutorial battle ended, lol).
The bosses were pretty fun as well. I really liked the Disco Devil (the hole puncher); the build-up was great, the music was awesome, and the fight itself was interesting but not unreasonably challenging, once you got the hang of it. I also really liked the Elastic Entertainer (the rubber band) because the character design was super cool! The Dual-Bladed Duelist (the scissors) has a cool personality as well, although is OHKO move was pretty intimidating. I only didn’t really like the Shifty Sticker (the tape), because the 'Brooklyn accent' joke had already been made two or three times in the game so it felt a bit stale when I got to him, or the Fanged Fastener (the stapler) because it's a dog and I don’t care for dogs that much.
Also, again, I was definitely too stupid for some of the puzzles, but that was what the coins (and screenshotting) were for! And also if you fail the overworld puzzles too many times then the game tries to help you out, which I thought was cute. It was appreciated since there are sliding puzzles in this game and I'm rubbish at those. It was kind of fun to see how the game would make it easier after so many failures. The hints they gave weren't actually that bad/intrusive (except the sliding puzzle one. That, I think there was an option to have it practically solved for you. But again, sliding puzzle. So.)
I think the only thing for me was the wealth of ways to get a game over in the overworld. Some of them seem kind of random? Like there was a part where there's a 3-way fork in the road, and if you choose the wrong way then you die, but as far as I could tell, there wasn’t really any hints about the correct way to go? You kinda just had to *~know~*. And that sucked. But it didn’t amount to too much of a time loss or anything, so it was water under the bridge, for me.
Oh also there was the fact that they gave you detailed hints during the boss battles, but only after you've locked in your movement for each round. So, for example, you would be merrily on your way walking to a 1000-fold arms space, and then the hint you ran into along the way would be like, "DO NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, use the 1000-Fold Arms Technique!!! It will be USELESS, make the boss mad, and you'll DIE :) !!!!" But there's no way to stop Mario from moving after you've locked in your route, so you're just like, "well, shit. Fuck me, I guess" and you've wasted a turn! I admittedly closed my game several times to restart boss battles because I was caught flat-footed by some of their underhanded techniques. I got so mad at one of the bosses that I just went and googled the strat, haha (there was a tough overworld fight right before it and I Did Not want to repeat that).
The final boss was…okay. There were three phases; the first phase was pretty reasonable, I think (aside from Olly auto-healing if you took too long to make a path for Mario). The second phase made my arms hurt a tiny bit from the motion controls (so much waggling!), and the third phase was a puzzle on which I panicked and failed 3 times. They put a picture on the ring, and then Olly messed it up, so you have to fix the picture. You only have, like 30-40 seconds to do it, so if you mess up then there's almost no chance to fix it before the noxious gas rises up from the depths of hell and kills you instantly. Luckily, this final boss had checkpoints between phases. It was still mildly upsetting though. It took me three attempts. The quick time events were fun though!
I don’t really wanna touch on Olly's motivation for turning the entire Mushroom Kingdom into origami and killing all the Toads because it's admittedly kind of silly, lol. But I saw a Reddit post about it yesterday that made it seem less silly, so kudos, I guess.
Speaking of the Toads! Finding them in the overworld was really fun! Finding them was as fun as, if not more, than finding Koroks in LoZ: Breath of the Wild. It was great to see Toad Town slowly fill up as you progressed through the game (and the music filled out to match, too!). The Toad designs varied a bit more, too, at least the important ones were. I did a good job finding most of them during my playthrough, and I went back for some stragglers after I beat the game. I got a trophy and all the concept art for the trouble, which was nice. Maybe one day I'll fully complete the museum…! *shakes fist at the sky*
(I probably won't do that)
Also, I know this is definitely not going to happen, but I would pay good money for a Paper Luigi DLC for this game because oh my goodness Luigi's B-plot is buck wild and I want to see how it all went down in excruciating detail. Like, he beats us to locations that he definitely shouldn't have been able to beat us to. It was equal parts amazing, confusing, and mildly terrifying. I loved it.
The red streamer area was literally all tutorial, which kinda sucked, but the game really took off after that. I really liked the blue and yellow streamers the most; the samurai theme park you explore for the blue streamer is a very interesting setting, and exploring the desert for the yellow streamer was very fun in a boot car . The honorary mention goes to the purple streamer, because the process of getting to it was almost literally The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, lmao.
Another thing that was interesting was the amount of paper-themed body horror there was? There was the whole turning into origami thing, Toads with their faces punched out, the Paper Mistake, whatever the fuck those black cutout enemies near the end of the game were…there were a bunch of scenes throughout that were meant to be creepy/unsettling and that was pretty cool. It was a nice contrast with the more light-hearted humor and jokes that the game had.
Also, the environments and music are gorgeous! Autumn Mountain was stunning, and the desert in the dark had very satisfying blues and purples. And the lighting in the final area was *chef's kiss*. A bunch of the music has vocals and the singers sound amazing. And some of the music has lyrics, too! I almost wanna try a hand at covering them. The dance numbers are very cute also! I think this might be the most Mario ever danced in a game, aside from the DDR one, of course.
One thing is, as I've caught glimpses of people complaining about the game on Reddit and Twitter and such, is that its hard to tell what people actually don’t like about the game because all they do is compare it to the old games. Which, as someone who hasn’t played any of those older games, is annoying.
Like! People want partners back, but I don’t understand why? There's the character design angle where people want more than generic toads and enemies and stuff, which, yeah sure, that's fair. But also the partners in the first three games seem kinda boring? From what I've seen in Let's plays, they don’t really add anything to the story (outside of their initial narratives when you first recruit them, I guess). Even in TTYD, where they can offer commentary on things that are happening, it still seems very generic. Their characters seem stuck. Some people say that Goombella's tattles offer some of her personality, but compared to, say, Bug Fables? Kinda falls flat, imo. So then at the end of those games when the partners all gather together and are like "Mario you were a great friend and we'll miss you," it's like….yeah sure okay if you say so I guess.
I really liked Huey from Color Splash because yeah, he's your only partner, but he and Mario get to bond and hang out! You can actually get the impression that they became friends! So when he goes away at the end it's actually vaguely emotional. It's the same with Olivia in this game; we get to see her learn things and grow confidence first hand. Even the temporary partners, while the time spent with them was brief, were quite entertaining and lively. Having fewer partners allowed the existing partners to have more of a place in the narrative and have their chances to shine.
Like, take Bobby the Bob-omb, for example. His character arc was the best in Paper Mario history and I'm not accepting any arguments to the contrary.
...
...But really though, I think the story hit a major high point with him. I didn’t expect a Paper Mario game to deal with grief and loss and self-sacrifice like this, but it did! Pretty well, I think! And then they reference it again near the end of the game and my heart breaks again! It's fine. Everything's fine.
Professor Toad and Kamek & Bowser Jr. were also awesome partners! Professor Toad actually looked like a professor in this game (unlike Color Splash's professor), and Mario working together with Bower's minions/family is always a treat. Bowser himself was fun, too! I think there's a brief moment in the game where your party consists of Mario, Luigi, Bowser, and Olivia, and I wish they could have hung out some more because the potential is staggering. They shared one cutscene and it was hysterical and I want more. (Nintendo, please.)
And the people who complained about coins being superfluous obviously hadn't played/seen anything after the second streamer, because while the game showers you with coins, everything is so bloody expensive! It's ridiculous! Add that to the fact that you might be using coins to pay for the toads or extend puzzle timers, and the coin economy isn't actually as horrific as some people make it out to be. (Though tbh, I was a bit worried in the beginning too, seeing that I found myself with 1000 total coins immediately after the first tutorial battle ended, lol).
The bosses were pretty fun as well. I really liked the Disco Devil (the hole puncher); the build-up was great, the music was awesome, and the fight itself was interesting but not unreasonably challenging, once you got the hang of it. I also really liked the Elastic Entertainer (the rubber band) because the character design was super cool! The Dual-Bladed Duelist (the scissors) has a cool personality as well, although is OHKO move was pretty intimidating. I only didn’t really like the Shifty Sticker (the tape), because the 'Brooklyn accent' joke had already been made two or three times in the game so it felt a bit stale when I got to him, or the Fanged Fastener (the stapler) because it's a dog and I don’t care for dogs that much.
Also, again, I was definitely too stupid for some of the puzzles, but that was what the coins (and screenshotting) were for! And also if you fail the overworld puzzles too many times then the game tries to help you out, which I thought was cute. It was appreciated since there are sliding puzzles in this game and I'm rubbish at those. It was kind of fun to see how the game would make it easier after so many failures. The hints they gave weren't actually that bad/intrusive (except the sliding puzzle one. That, I think there was an option to have it practically solved for you. But again, sliding puzzle. So.)
I think the only thing for me was the wealth of ways to get a game over in the overworld. Some of them seem kind of random? Like there was a part where there's a 3-way fork in the road, and if you choose the wrong way then you die, but as far as I could tell, there wasn’t really any hints about the correct way to go? You kinda just had to *~know~*. And that sucked. But it didn’t amount to too much of a time loss or anything, so it was water under the bridge, for me.
Oh also there was the fact that they gave you detailed hints during the boss battles, but only after you've locked in your movement for each round. So, for example, you would be merrily on your way walking to a 1000-fold arms space, and then the hint you ran into along the way would be like, "DO NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, use the 1000-Fold Arms Technique!!! It will be USELESS, make the boss mad, and you'll DIE :) !!!!" But there's no way to stop Mario from moving after you've locked in your route, so you're just like, "well, shit. Fuck me, I guess" and you've wasted a turn! I admittedly closed my game several times to restart boss battles because I was caught flat-footed by some of their underhanded techniques. I got so mad at one of the bosses that I just went and googled the strat, haha (there was a tough overworld fight right before it and I Did Not want to repeat that).
The final boss was…okay. There were three phases; the first phase was pretty reasonable, I think (aside from Olly auto-healing if you took too long to make a path for Mario). The second phase made my arms hurt a tiny bit from the motion controls (so much waggling!), and the third phase was a puzzle on which I panicked and failed 3 times. They put a picture on the ring, and then Olly messed it up, so you have to fix the picture. You only have, like 30-40 seconds to do it, so if you mess up then there's almost no chance to fix it before the noxious gas rises up from the depths of hell and kills you instantly. Luckily, this final boss had checkpoints between phases. It was still mildly upsetting though. It took me three attempts. The quick time events were fun though!
I don’t really wanna touch on Olly's motivation for turning the entire Mushroom Kingdom into origami and killing all the Toads because it's admittedly kind of silly, lol. But I saw a Reddit post about it yesterday that made it seem less silly, so kudos, I guess.
Speaking of the Toads! Finding them in the overworld was really fun! Finding them was as fun as, if not more, than finding Koroks in LoZ: Breath of the Wild. It was great to see Toad Town slowly fill up as you progressed through the game (and the music filled out to match, too!). The Toad designs varied a bit more, too, at least the important ones were. I did a good job finding most of them during my playthrough, and I went back for some stragglers after I beat the game. I got a trophy and all the concept art for the trouble, which was nice. Maybe one day I'll fully complete the museum…! *shakes fist at the sky*
Also, I know this is definitely not going to happen, but I would pay good money for a Paper Luigi DLC for this game because oh my goodness Luigi's B-plot is buck wild and I want to see how it all went down in excruciating detail. Like, he beats us to locations that he definitely shouldn't have been able to beat us to. It was equal parts amazing, confusing, and mildly terrifying. I loved it.
