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Paper MAR10: The Origami King
58 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they jump into the mushroom kingdom and GET FLAT for this week's episode! Happy MAR10 day!
FULL SPOILERS: Paper Mario: The Origami King
Intro:
- Paper Mario: The Origami King - Peach's Castle
Outro:
- Paper Mario: The Origami King - The Missile Maestro (and Thinking version)
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Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:31
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going to be sleepy. I'm very tired. Very tired, yeah. Tired and achy today. I don't know if this is part of the cover where we're pretending that it's nighttime or if you're actually just very tired and it's the middle of the day. It was just a lot of being in the car yesterday and driving and my back felt it.
00:01:00
Speaker
Also, like I woke up, did like dog morning routine. And then we both separately went back to our beds were like, peace. Yeah, as per the agreement. And like I got up around, let's say 1130. You know, got a shower, got some lunch, and
00:01:22
Speaker
And she's still there. She's just slowly oozing out of the bed. Just slowly, her body's just sliding as she becomes part of the carpet.
Podcast Theme and Episode Teaser
00:01:32
Speaker
Yeah, we were watching we were watching Dave's dog yesterday. And so she probably was just like, all right, now that I'm back to a familiar environment, I'm going to just get full rest, recuperate, get used to being back where I was, because I know, like,
00:01:48
Speaker
When I was young and when I was, yeah, literally, when I was younger and I'd have like a sleepover or something like that, it's like, great, this is a super fun time. It's awesome. Whatever. And then you get home and you're like equal. I'm just going to relax. Everything is, you know, a little bit closer back to normal. We have less caffeine. We're not playing video games at three a.m.
00:02:15
Speaker
Um, I can do that my own time. Thank you. But that's probably how she feels. She just, she wasn't up for all the land land games we were playing. So yeah, she doesn't have a lot of stuff installed on her laptop, unfortunately. And she said the wifi wasn't too great. Um, if you want to look into that, wow, I have a wifi receiver in the family room where she was should have been fine. But yeah.
00:02:42
Speaker
That is kind of the nature of Wi-Fi sometimes. But yeah, well, hopefully through an invigorating episode of Soapstone, we can wake you up.
Paper Mario: The Origami King Overview
00:02:55
Speaker
And you, dear listener, unless you're listening to this to go to sleep, in which case, wake up. Can't wake up.
00:03:06
Speaker
But maintaining a trend that we've been on for a couple episodes now, we're going to talk about a game. I will disclaim about this game to my shame that Dave loaned me a long time ago and I took forever to play, but finally I made it.
00:03:29
Speaker
And if you never pay attention to the titles, it's Paper Mario, the Origami King, or Andy Origami King. I was really hoping you would continue the rhyming scheme. Dave, let me borrow a game, and much to my shame, and here is its name. Yes, right. I'm sorry, it's on the game.
00:03:51
Speaker
Yeah, the rhymes start to get a little bit thin at a point and a little bit less level framing cream. Yeah, right. Oh, man. Would you say Paula is tame? Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was there was a series of YouTube videos. It was like in the style of tame and Paula. I know the name of the band, but I actually don't remember what any of their music is like. Yeah. I see there was some indie outfit.
00:04:20
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It's like it's it's indy in quotes, but it's like as absolutely mainstream indy as you can get. But there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Good on them for exposure. I think the videos I was thinking of were like it was like quotes from Alex Jones and stuff like that. And they're just like in the style of Tame Impala or something. It was very fun.
00:04:43
Speaker
But yeah, Origami King is the first paper Mario game I played since in 64. Did you play any others in the series or was this your old? Now, this is my Virgin experience, first venture into the space. And I had played Super Mario Odyssey, which is again like I didn't grow up with too many 3D Mario platformers. I didn't grow up on 64 era at all. I played Super Mario.
00:05:10
Speaker
And that was it. Yeah, there's just a surprising amount of polish and charm to these games, Paper Mario especially. But I'm like, oh, I'm going to be looking out for this type of stuff in the future if they ever do more titles. Because it was really good. I think Nintendo, it's pretty well known that Nintendo is very protective of their IP, obviously.
00:05:37
Speaker
Mario is Mickey Mouse. Like Mario is to Nintendo as Mickey Mouse is to Disney, right? So they tend to be very aggressive about making sure that whatever their mainline Mario games are, that they, even if they're not received super well, that they're well developed and usually they are received super well.
00:06:00
Speaker
I'll look up for Origami King because I think that there was a little bit more critical reception for that. But in general, Mario games do really well. Yeah, so it got an 80 on Metacritic for the Switch, which is actually kind of low for a Mario game.
00:06:19
Speaker
So if you want to take the position of a defender of Mario, why do you disagree with that 80% on metacritic for Mario? What did you like about Origami King? And I have more recent examples I can jump in. He's the coolest.
00:06:37
Speaker
So I kind of mentioned this earlier, but I think a big part of it is the charm. And because it's Paper Mario, a lot of the stuff in the game is just very flat. Ha ha. But like Mario doesn't really emote too much. A lot of the characters don't emote too much. They will definitely bring it in where it makes sense. But a lot of times, like, they will have just dry humor of like, oh, you find a Toad? Oh, here's their funny thing about the situation they're in.
00:07:06
Speaker
And it's just it's always very charming. And then there's also a lot of. Not even subversion, just things I didn't expect. That where the game is going to go, because it's very open and it's a fantasy and what they want to explore. You saw a donkey's video a long time ago, there's like the the singing trees, which are like.
00:07:25
Speaker
All right, what? The game has a lot of moments like that, but they're all very fun, well scripted. It helps break up pieces of the story and the gameplay.
00:07:37
Speaker
Just adds a lot to it. Yeah, I think that's fair. It's very much not afraid to dip into production value very randomly. You're like, oh, I'm just talking to a person and here's the full scene with music. And there's actually a lot of excellent music in the game as far as background music, but they also have musical scenes.
00:08:02
Speaker
Mm hmm. Which are our big standouts for me. A lot of times if a game takes control away from me and is like, all right, now we're going into the musical number. I'm like, great, but I didn't know this was a musical or it like I kind of want to do the gameplay or something. This game didn't bother me with that. The musical numbers were all quite good. So. Yeah, it definitely absolutely has its upsides. I agree with all of your points there.
00:08:32
Speaker
And it's come a long way since N64. I do think that N64 probably still holds up to a certain extent because it had that sort of paper style. And I can't remember if this is one of the ones that required the expansion pack or not, but it probably did because I think it was towards the end of the lifespan of the console.
00:08:55
Speaker
But any game where you have a unique art style kind of helps you age a bit. Yes. I think one of the biggest examples of that from the GameCube era is Wind Waker. Very much its own cartoony, cel-shaded vibe. I remember playing a demo of in Walmart where you have to
00:09:16
Speaker
explore on a castle, not get caught, which I was asset. But that still is highly regarded as a very good Zelda game where people are like, this is good. We want this now. I think at the time some people were like, this ain't my Zelda. Yes, that's what I was going to mention. There were a lot of people that were upset because everything was like.
00:09:40
Speaker
People were trying to push the graphics envelope with Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask and all of that. And then Wind Waker was like, we're not going for hyper-realism anymore. We're just going to go for something stylized. And pragmatically, that makes sense. The console is only so powerful. You're not getting Zelda in Crysis.
00:10:01
Speaker
I feel like Twilight, was it Twilight Princess was the last one they really tried. They're like, we're going to make link, try to look really graphically good. And then they, anyways, there's a, now they went for stylized and that's definitely the case for Paper Mario. All of the enemies are either origami or, or,
Combat System and Mechanics
00:10:22
Speaker
or paper in the previous games. Um, but yeah, the big difference for me coming over from that first game is.
00:10:31
Speaker
a bit more characterization for the characters in Origami King, which is a high point for me, and completely redone combat. I haven't played combat in a game at all like Origami King.
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't know really what to expect with that. But at least early on, it felt pretty snappy and quick. Basically, you just have to rotate and line up the enemies. And they literally show you the solution and then kind of shuffle it around. You're like, oh, let me just put it back into configuration where they're all in a straight line or kind of all blocked up together. And I will shamefully say it took me way too long to figure out how to do that consistently.
00:11:17
Speaker
If you figured it out, you didn't better than I did. I mean, I got to the point where I could get several configurations, but I did rely on their toad cheer mechanic to solve some of them. If I saw like a bunch of enemies spread all over the screen, like there were several times, okay, two mechanics we can mention here is
00:11:39
Speaker
Pretty early on, they give you an upgrade or device or something that allows you to just spend coins to give you more time to solve the puzzle. And I spent like a lot of coins asking for more time.
00:11:54
Speaker
And another mechanic is for all the toads that you rescue, which I'm sure we'll mention, you can pay them all a bunch of money and they'll basically solve the puzzle for you, give you health, sometimes give you other items, and then allow you to just attack as usual. Yeah, it's a nice, I guess, handicap option because it's pretty easy to get coins throughout encounters, just finding them from like whack and stuff.
00:12:21
Speaker
But yeah, you never feel like, Oh, I'm completely broke. Yeah. So it is always an option. Uh, if you are struggling with that, um, enemies also drop a lot of coins. I think that's the primary way. Sometimes you can get them in like large packs, like here's a bundle of a thousand coins or something. Um, but towards the end game, you clear an encounter. You're easily getting like 400 coins per per clear. Um, and sometimes a lot more than that.
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah, I will say I do like the combat system. It is very cool and unique. And then when you have a boss encounter, it is a just kind of one additional mechanic or an evolved version of the standard enemy combat, where you will have like some directional arrows that you need to line up to maybe get certain power ups or to be able to attack the boss.
00:13:12
Speaker
It always feels like a fun thing. I would still struggle on some parts there. There's some bosses I had to do some retries on. I'm like, oh, I'm stupid. I missed the obvious thing. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. But I know you're having your notes and I agree with, but they're definitely maybe just a little bit too many random encounters where it's like, oh, here's a pack of like three waves of enemies. You're like, all right, I want to just go.
00:13:40
Speaker
It is weird when you're kind of going through maybe in a dungeon and you're solving a puzzle or trying to find the next place to go. And it's like, bit, bit, bit, bit, bit, bit. It goes into it. Oh, OK. I will say, just to make sure I don't misrepresent it, there are kind of pseudo random encounters. You see them on the overworld, generally. There are a couple times you break a pot or something like that. There was an enemy in it, and they immediately attack you.
00:14:05
Speaker
The game doesn't do many like Final Fantasy style. Oh, you're just walking around and yeah, you can't like whatever Final Fantasy match the analog stick and then magically get into combat. Yeah, but it does feel at a point. You're like, I'm kind of good on that part. Mm hmm. They do give you an option. I guess I can. I didn't think about this the first time we talked about it because we did a little a little pregame talking about this. You can run away from encounters.
00:14:34
Speaker
I did it literally once. And I think it literally despawns the enemy. So that's almost a hard counter to any argument I could make here. Oh, well. So I didn't know that was a possibility because of how brave and courageous I am. You have to like it's literally charge a bar to run away. So you don't you don't just tap it and accidentally leave a fight or something.
00:14:57
Speaker
But I saw that it was visible even for boss fights, which I didn't do. And I can't imagine it despawns the boss. I guess we'll never get that next power up that's needed for this storyline. But to maintain my point, the ability to avoid combat
00:15:16
Speaker
is not an alternative to fun engaging combat, right? So for Paper Mario in this case, I love the boss fights. We'll talk more about the boss fights. The standard line up the enemies and then hit them with a hammer or jump on them gameplay was not really for me. I wasn't super big on that. It was relatively engaging, but it just kind of wore itself out. The fact that I could choose not to
00:15:44
Speaker
have those fights by running away is not a good solution compared to having a combat system that I would find more engaging for longer. Right. But I do concede that, you know, this is basically a turn based combat game sort of once you get them lined up or don't, in my case, sometimes. And there's only so much you can do around that to keep that from getting tedious.
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah. And there's never going to be a game that has, quote unquote, random battle encounters or just combat in general, where I'm like, yo, this is the best version of this ever. Yeah. Because for any game, that's not my focus. It's just a part of the game. Because even like Final Fantasy seven as a throwback, since, you know, rebirth recently came out,
00:16:41
Speaker
I didn't mind the bada bada bada bada, where it would just kind of go into it. Yeah. With the screen warp and then the combat. And it was fine. Hmm.
00:16:53
Speaker
But it really only mattered for me when I'm like, oh, this is a boss combat. I really need to think about what my options are, how resource limited I might be, and obviously playing a little bit more defensively to avoid a character randomly just going down.
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, there's kind of and it's been a long time since I played the original seven. But I recall once you reach a certain power level, you probably really quickly know the moves you need to do to finish out a standard trash encounter, right? It could just be even auto attacking. Yes. Once you're at a certain power level. You just hold the attack, but it was like whack, whack, whack. Yeah. Paper Mario or Gami King has like, it's got a little bit of a barrier in front of that. You've got to do a little puzzle solving and then you do the attack that instant kills the enemies.
00:17:41
Speaker
Right. So it also has a few more animations and things like that that happen. There's both the load into the battle. There's the time taken to solve the puzzle. There's all that time in between this. And so what that can do is it can give you this.
00:17:56
Speaker
I don't say fear is wrong, but it can get a little frustrating when you spend more time in the random encounter or in this case to the encounter than you want to. Given your level of investment for that encounter, right? So if it's like a boss fight and it's awesome and there's cool things happening, I kind of don't care if it takes a half hour because I'm having a good time. But I don't want like a random encounter that's just
00:18:20
Speaker
I know I'm going to win it to take like a minute. But I also realized that these are general critiques against, you could say, the RPG genre. And this is an RPG. Super Mario is an RPG. So there's a little bit of, you know, am I just criticizing something because of the genre it belongs to? Maybe a little bit.
00:18:47
Speaker
But I will say towards the combat as a plus, this kind of extends to the overworld as well. There is such a good tactile feedback and design for things like if you perfectly time your jump attacks. Oh, yeah. You have like a little flourish and you do extra damage and it feels good and responsive. And when you do the hammer attack, you get the charge up and if you hit the sweet spot, it does like this explosion. And it feels really cool to get the timing and get that.
00:19:14
Speaker
And then when you're in the overworld with your hammer, you can just go around bonking things. And I mean, typically you need to bonk to find toads or maybe you're just shaking something out of a tree to get some confetti to help repair parts of the world.
00:19:31
Speaker
But I watched you play a little bit. I know I did this for my runs as well. I would use the hammer on literally everything. Yeah, it's very much a gamer instinct to like, oh, you give me like this little flock thing. I'm going to try it everywhere. And then when you hit a paper NPC, they kind of crumple a little bit and go before they re flatten. Yeah, that's just, again, a very cute attention to detail. Yeah, it feels very.
00:20:01
Speaker
I don't want to say alive, but everything very much fits for this is a paper world. Yes. And maybe they do this in the 64 version as well, because I just haven't experienced it yet.
00:20:16
Speaker
like any type of paper pun or like what about paper in this situation? Like all of it kind of tracks and makes sense. Like paper macho enemies. Yeah. Which are like these giant 3D paper maché things. Yeah, they just do so much with it that feels good. Like they really explore the paper dimension, if you will.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah. You know, they've had success with it because I think this is the third paper Mario game. Maybe, maybe the fourth, maybe there was like a mobile one or something or handheld one, I should say, but, um, mobile would be very different than handheld. Right. Um,
00:20:53
Speaker
And technically, this is for the Switch. So you could be a handle. You know what I'm saying. You just know what I'm saying. I would consider the Switch just a handheld device. Mobile is still typically for your phones. Yeah. Mobile's definitely different. But when I hear handheld, I a lot of times think of Game Boy or DS or something like that instead of Switch. Although technically, yes, the Switch can also just be a handheld.
00:21:18
Speaker
But yeah, they've been doing this for a while. And clearly they've they've they're familiar with. They've got this motif down for Paper Mario being, you know, their their RPG Mario.
00:21:31
Speaker
Um, and I do think that's pretty great. Like it, it's definitely not super experimental at this point. I really, I'm curious who made the pitch originally to make like the original Paper Mario. Um, you're just like, yeah, he's going to be 2d. You're like, gotcha. We do that all the time. And he's like, and it's going to be RPG. It's not just a jump on things and clear the level. It's not a platformer at all. And you're like, okay, yeah, you're a little crazy. Um,
00:21:58
Speaker
The original one was a lot more 2D still than this one. This one has you running around in like 3D worlds more. Although you still are generally progressing down routes sort of instead of like an open world tile style.
Story and World Exploration
00:22:16
Speaker
But yeah, you're going to say something.
00:22:21
Speaker
I was, and then I forgot it. That's right. Yeah, I was thinking I was going to say it's kind of like a 2D character in a 3D space. Yes, exactly. So like the depth does matter for maybe exploring around a little bit. They might hide some things in the background. But yeah, I'm glad they did the pitch. It was very good. Yeah, very, very solid.
00:22:47
Speaker
Let's talk before we get to the bosses, I guess. So we mentioned the combat naturally that's going to lead into the bosses. Talk about the world a little bit, or maybe the core story for the game, the conceit. Because you always have to have the hero's journey, right? This is Mario. He's the hero. Origami King is actually the bad guy. So believe it or not.
00:23:16
Speaker
And he has the ability to fold paper up and turn them into this origami form that he can kind of control. And that's where the bad guys come from. It's the same way that Dr. Robotnik puts little animals inside of robots. And you're like, OK, well, that's kind of weird. I guess I'll break the robot and the animal will pop out.
00:23:39
Speaker
you're generally defeating the origami versions of enemies and returning them to their original form. Or they just die, but normally returning them to their original form, which again uses Mario's hammer, which is very funny.
00:23:58
Speaker
And then they're like, okay, they're not controlled anymore because they're not origami, which is very funny. They either did. Yeah. So you're on a quest to stop the Origami King with your friend and the Origami King's sister, actually, Olivia.
00:24:16
Speaker
who is also origami, but she's very cute and very wholesome and just an excellent character. And in order to do so, you have to collect all the pieces of the Triforce. I mean, you know, collect all the gemstones. I mean, break all the streamers and all of these areas to unwrap Peaches Castle so you can visit there, confront him and end the game. That's the high level.
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah. And along the way, they have such a varied. Different areas throughout the game. Initially, you kind of start out in a forest and you go to a little town where Peach's Castle used to be.
00:25:05
Speaker
There's a mountainous region. There's mines. There's a very kind of feudal Japan area. Yeah. That was really well designed. The Shogun Studios. Yeah. Yeah. Which is basically a theme park.
00:25:25
Speaker
Yeah, all of it just has such a good attention to detail and it feels cool to progress through things and you don't really know what's coming next. And then again, a lot of the character development will be on Olivia's side versus Mario, who you kind of like is there, maybe not. Mario's Mario has been around the track. He's he's he's fully developed now. Yeah, he has nothing else to learn. He knows how he's going to be interacting with Bowser and Peach and friends and Luigi and all of that.
00:25:55
Speaker
He's he's leaning up against the wall. Takes a drag of his cigarette. You need me. It just puts it out. Steps out. It's like, all right, let's go. Let's go get Peach pretty much. But yeah, it's a it's a good world tour. I think there's five areas and then the final zone is what I'm seeing here. I played through all of it, but I didn't know how exactly they split all of them up. And that makes sense.
00:26:22
Speaker
And yeah, they have some diverse gameplay across them. But for the most part, it's go to area, solve some puzzles, beat some enemies, have a final boss encounter. Maybe there are some activities, like you mentioned, with the Shogun Studios. And break the streamer, move on to the next one.
00:26:45
Speaker
And I think that works pretty well. That is well-tread ground in a Mario game. This is very much not going... I've been playing a little bit of the Metroid Primey Master recently, and that one has a lot of backtracking.
00:27:03
Speaker
This game doesn't really do backtracking for the most part. You could if you miss something and you want to collect it. But yeah, it's really solely for collectibles. They're not going to hide things throughout. Again, Mario is very much like a family target audience game. So they're expecting maybe young kids or older adults who didn't necessarily play that many games. There is a level of ease to it. They're not trying to make things overly complicated. They're supposed to be kind of lighthearted and fun.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah. So the collectibles are all optional. But as Jake was saying, you can collect toads throughout the game. And basically all the toads that you collect throughout the game, which is a lot, will show up in these bleachers while you're having these combats. And then you can utilize them for additional help, whether it's extending the timer to figure out the puzzle or to just pay them a lot of money to have them deal some damage and heal you. Or just you don't use them at all. They're just kind of cheering you on in the background.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah, it is very funny. I like they have because you're literally surrounded by bleachers. Basically, all the toads are in. And sometimes when the enemy is going to attack you, there's like there is a specific toad back there in the bleacher that's just yelling like block, you fool. And I love that specifically. It's just very good. The toad humor is absolutely on point.
00:28:32
Speaker
Cause they all for the most part look the same. Maybe they're a slightly different color. They were slightly different clothes. And so it's, it's really like they could have made them super boring, but instead they just go crazy with their attitude sometimes. Like examples of this is the toads are normally folded up and that's the reason that they're, they're trapped or whatever. And so when you're rescuing them, you're.
00:28:56
Speaker
knocking them out of a tree or maybe they're floating around as a butterfly and you knock them out of the air with your hammer, usually the hammer's involved. And then you crush them back into their original toad shape with your hammer and they're like, oh, thank you, Mario.
00:29:12
Speaker
Um, but it's really funny if you like, uh, the ones a butterfly or something like that and you crush it back to his toad shape and it's just sitting there flapping its arms and it just complains about not being able to fly anymore. Or there's one that was like a dog and you can like crush him back into a toad, toad shape and he keeps barking at you. It's just very funny. Yeah, they do a lot of really good, um,
00:29:36
Speaker
I would say almost like one-off jokes were like, hey, let's do this. Oh, what's the token to say? He might get like a line or two, but it, it'll just be like, it'll be flat. It'll be funny. And occasionally it'll just be kind of dark. You're like.
00:29:51
Speaker
Huh. Yeah. And they do that. They do that a little bit. They'll more than I expect or more than I expected sometimes lean into the dark a bit for this game. And I was like, I could see this being deeply unsettling for me as a kid. Like, do you remember, I think it was the desert area where you had the eventual hole punch boss? Yes. Yeah. That's the toad temple.
00:30:16
Speaker
So all of these toys you're finding along the way, don't have faces because they were whole punched out. Um, and if you just think about that for a little bit kind of fucked up, it's kind of messed up. Yeah. They also have like their animation for walking around as they kind of like stick their hands out like a zombie. Yeah. And so they're very much kind of playing into the zombie motif, but.
00:30:40
Speaker
I mean, yeah, you treat, I honestly think that's scarier than zombies, right? It's just like, oh, it's moving around without a face. It can't talk to you. It can hear you. It's very uncomfortable. I didn't like it. And then the game also plays the, I mean, I liked it, but.
00:30:55
Speaker
You know what I mean? I didn't like, I was unsettled. You were unsettled by the, I have no mouth, therefore I cannot scream. Exactly. And like, it's not like the game is undercutting it with humor all of the time. Like it does a lot of humor, but in these tense sections, um, the characters are scared. They're not generally trying to diffuse that too rapidly. They'll let that tension kind of sit there. Um, which is, it's cool. I mean, it's the right call, I think.
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah, they will typically balance it out with something pretty lighthearted. Yes. Like they don't stick around on uncomfortable things for way too long. Mm hmm. Because like I said, with the whole punch boss, the whole thing you're trying to do to then encounter the boss is you're trying to like fill up the dance floor and play some funky beats to have the boss come out of the room so you can approach them. Um.
00:31:48
Speaker
But again, this is the boss that has been removing the faces of all of these toads. Yeah. And then, oh, it's a dance thing like.
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah, there was like the start to it is you have to get all of the discs for the DJ, which you find around the area. That's the sort of puzzle solving thing. And then he gives you a boombox you carry around and the toads will follow you while you have the boombox and all just dance. And so you're just listening to this kind of like background disco music, gathering all the toads. And once you have I think it's literally 40 of them.
00:32:25
Speaker
You bring them all back to the dance floor, they all file out, and there's this whole disco sequence with Mario. The music comes into the foreground and so does the background, so it's a little bit louder.
00:32:34
Speaker
And you lure the boss out and it's just it's really cool and it undoes it's the relief of all of that tension, right? It's we're back to Saturday morning kids content basically Don't have nightmares about this. Just remember the toads are dancing even if they don't have faces And they get their faces returned when you beat the boss. So yeah That was that was cool we should talk about the bosses since
00:33:02
Speaker
We're now talking about the hole punch in particular. The first thing I want to mention on bosses is that I did not realize that you still could rotate the arena like lines.
00:33:17
Speaker
straight through. So it's basically a dartboard is the way to think about it with the boss and the bullseye. Yeah. Um, and generally you can rotate the rings around and also for the puzzle parts, you can also slide the rings like through intersecting. Uh, if that makes any sense, slide a section back and forth. Um,
00:33:37
Speaker
But I didn't know you could do that for bosses. I thought you could only rotate the rings. And it literally worked for like the first three or four bosses in the game. No problem. I'll be honest, I was probably in a similar situation where my brain just turned that information off for it being an option, even though, you know, of course, it'd be there for all of the combats. Why wouldn't it be?
00:34:03
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, like you're trying to follow the arrows because Mario is just going to go in a straight line and then whatever arrow he hits, he will then move in that direction, which is a lot of times going to be around a ring. Maybe it'll then kind of push him into the next ring. But you're very much thinking around the boss versus again, sliding those pieces.
00:34:24
Speaker
Not not vertically, not horizontally. We're doing the thing where we're trying to spatially describe something that's like geometry and you're like, I don't know. But again, if you think about that dartboard analogy that Jake was using, if you imagine that column directly in the center, imagine just sliding that down. But as the piece would go out of the dartboard ring, it then would appear on the top. Exactly. That's a good vice versa if you're having it slide up.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's the mechanic. You're following the arrows. There might be chests that add more things to the board that you can pick up. And anything that Mario runs over he interacts with, which a lot of times will feed into the boss mechanics. And once you've beaten the first boss, you're basically collecting powers. It's your stand and summons, basically, for Olivia.
00:35:20
Speaker
Um, there's special, uh, things you can activate plates. You can activate to like, get the elemental forms. Use Olivia as a Pokemon essentially to have some effect to the boss, which is cool. Yeah. It's also not, um, set up in a way where you have to make the choice of, Oh, which thing would be appropriate to use here? Um, not initially that true. Not initially. Yeah. Again, they very much ease you into it. Um,
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, there's one, I think for each element, quote unquote, there's the water valley mental. You got water, fire, earth. Earth is the first one I think you get, yeah. And ice. OK. My brain was immediately going to go to like, wind? I'm like, no, it's not avatar. No, it's not avatar. Everything changed when the fire valley mental attack.
00:36:16
Speaker
But yeah, they're very much like elemental temples. Like, this is borrowing DNA absolutely from Legend of Zelda, like Ocarina of Time and things like that, where you just...
00:36:27
Speaker
doing the world tour to collect the different, uh, the different time stones or whatever. That's the reference I was trying to make earlier. The MacGuffins. Yeah. Um, but they each, uh, have a cool effect. Like the earth one is the first one and it will do like massive ground AOE damage, which could do nothing against the flying boss or one that could avoid it. Uh, but it will also raise Mario up on a pillar. So if the boss is going to do a primarily like strong ground base attack.
00:36:58
Speaker
It'll miss you. It's like just a hard counter to some of that. Fire is pretty straightforward, just a bunch of damage and melts ice and stuff like that. Ice traps the boss in an ice cube, which is pretty nice because it makes it so it skips their turn like twice. You get two rounds and I'm going to turn. And then water is pretty much used to put out fire. Those are just the two canceling ones.
00:37:26
Speaker
No, it was a really fun system to play around with. And then each of the developmental forms that Olivia takes on is just the Olivia version of the boss. Yes. All very intricately made origami. I don't know if any of these are actual, like you can actually make this out of origami. You almost definitely, like they would have been fools to not market this in some way. Just have stuff you could print out. Origami sets.
00:37:52
Speaker
Yeah, the boss music is super hype. Oh, yeah. Really enjoyed that as well. And they're all they're all related, right? Like the bosses are things like scissors and a hole punch and tape and all this stuff that you could be using to make origami. And that's actually a little bit of foreshadowing for like that relates to the plot. And it's like the first things that the origami king took control over after it came into existence.
00:38:21
Speaker
Because he just got folded together by some toad. He was just really dedicated to making origami. And he's like, oh, this one creates things that are alive. Immediately goes wrong.
00:38:38
Speaker
But yeah, the fights are cool. They do. They do take a little bit longer if you are not the best at them. And I'll be honest, I'll admit it. I'll be the first to admit it. I'm not the best at these types of Mario games a lot of the time and.
00:38:54
Speaker
I don't know if the YouTube channel is Game Maker's Toolkit or somebody else. It might be Boss Keys. They talk about how Mario has a high difficulty mode, a medium difficulty mode, and an easy difficulty mode. And depending on how you're interacting with the game, it'll switch you between these layers pretty much. So if you're struggling at any point in the game, it'll pretty much make the game easier, automatically, a lot of the times.
00:39:23
Speaker
Or other times it'll be like, Hey, you can just spend some money and make this puzzle easier and stuff like that. I love that. I'm a huge fan of that. I think a lot of games should have that. Maybe not dark souls, really. Um, it basically makes it. So if you are marketing this to everyone as a Mario game, most people will be able to beat it because they'll give you tools to make it. So you can get through even challenging encounters, um, without having to be a pro gamer.
00:39:54
Speaker
How do you feel about the limitation of weapon options? Like just the hammer and the boots, you mean? Yeah, essentially in different variations. So I'm not huge on that, but I do like kind of more in-depth RPGs. And I don't recall if it was any more dramatic in the original game. I think it was even the N64 was pretty similar. I think they're playing in their corner with it.
00:40:22
Speaker
I as much as I would kind of love to see Mario bust out a sword and just start like whacking enemies to pieces. But that's not this paper Mario and I could always play smash if I want to see that. Right. So. So I think it's fine. Because I don't know what I would like to see in its place with this existing sort of dartboard combat system. Yeah, it's hard to say.
00:40:51
Speaker
Because I think you have normal boots, you have shiny boots, which I think are the best. And then you have steel, which I think both steel, maybe it's just steel, will protect you against spike enemies if you need to jump on them. Yeah, they have normal and then shiny steel or shiny flashy and steel.
00:41:11
Speaker
are all modifiers on the boots. So you can be like shiny, steel, flashy, steel. I think flashy is just better than shiny or the opposite. And then there's the steel variants. And then there's like the legendary boots, which are even higher tier than flashy or shiny or whatever. They're the rainbow boots. And those come in steel variety as well.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, in general, it's just they will be stronger versions, but they do have limited uses. Yes. But it's not so crazy because you can buy weapons at a shop or they can honestly just be dropped from a combat encounter. Yeah. So it's very rare to find yourself. You're like, oh, I'm facing a spiked enemy.
00:41:58
Speaker
I have no steel boots or anything to deal with it whatsoever. It is possible that you would just not keep that as an option. But again, the game will give you many chances to succeed throughout. Yeah, it's entirely. If you found yourself in that situation, like you could use a hammer against the enemy you don't have the shoes for. I think if you go shopping probably like three times throughout the game and then just stock up a bunch of copies of
00:42:28
Speaker
Uh, different types of weapons. You're pretty much good. Um, and you always have your basic hammer. You always have your basic shoes. It's not going to lock you out because your, your weapons are broken. Um, but it'll just take a lot longer to finish fights. Yeah. I don't think the damage initially starts off being that much of a drastic difference between normal boots or steel boots, but again, still boots give you those options to jump on spiked shell boys, et cetera.
00:42:58
Speaker
And Mario's attack power does scale throughout the game with his base health. And there's a couple obvious health ups you can get. They're basically like the Zelda hearts, but a little different. And there are some that are hidden. So if you wanted to hit max power, if you're looking for ultimate weapon Mario, it's going to be a little bit more running around doing side things.
00:43:25
Speaker
But the big ones you'll always get and then your attack power is attached to your maximum health. So, um, they didn't try to like divorce those two mechanics at all. They're just like, rather than having Mario's attack power be tied to anything else, you're going to, your health is going to be going up. Let's just tie it to that. We're good. Right. Yeah.
Character Arcs and Emotional Depth
00:43:44
Speaker
Straightforward non-intrusive.
00:43:47
Speaker
It's fine. It's not the most in-depth RPG, right? You're not looking at... You don't need a spreadsheet for this game. No, it's not like you can ever try and min-max things. It's just...
00:43:59
Speaker
For the way the game's laid out, you're very much encouraged to explore around a little bit. And again, the game is pretty linear as far as you just go in this direction. But you always will find, again, very relatively small side paths you can take. Or maybe find NPC who's like, man, I sure wish I had a tuna fish. You're like, I think I remember seeing a tuna fish. Something like that, where you need to just provide an item, and then they give you a reward.
00:44:27
Speaker
There's also this whole trinket system where you can have passive options. I might either help you with exploration and finding Toads. I might help you with combat. It might make the block timing a little bit easier, aka increase your dodge roll window.
00:44:46
Speaker
And other things like that. So it makes you again, it's not like a major spike, but it is convenient and it kind of gives you that taste of RPG where it's not. Everybody's going down the exact same path. You have some decisions. Yeah, you have some choices you can make along the way.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah, I do like that. They are relatively minor choices, but they're things that, for example, some of the ones you described as far as stronger block strength, that's actually not part of a choice because it's in its own vertical column you can equip. You can only equip one of them, but you're just going to equip the strongest block strength accessory you have.
00:45:26
Speaker
but there are others off on the side where okay yeah if you want your steps counter to be equipped maybe you don't have your shop discount badge or whatever and things like that so there is a little bit to it i think the biggest decision for combat is basically like did you do you have consumables
00:45:47
Speaker
weapons, stuff like that. Otherwise, you're likely to be in a pretty similar spot. But that makes it easier for them to scale the game. Because they pretty much know unless you're speed running and skipping everything, like how powerful Mario will be at a given moment.
00:46:02
Speaker
And they can tune the difficulty around that. So sometimes RPGs have massive difficulty spikes and things like that. I didn't get really any of that in paper. No, I didn't. I felt like if you're kind of just progressing normally, maybe exploring around a little bit, that everything would be scaled for you pretty well. They're not expecting you to have to grind before a boss encounter.
00:46:24
Speaker
Yeah. And again, the grinding would just be for money. Yeah. You don't you're not really getting anything other than money, which I'm actually I'm fine with. Right. Because I actually I like grinding in games. Don't get me wrong, because I see number number get higher. Right. It's the the MMO mantra. It's like if there's a bar, make the bar bigger. If there's a number, make the number higher.
00:46:51
Speaker
But they don't expose that many numbers to Mario, so it's fine. Mario doesn't like math very much. But yeah, that's definitely the combat. I do like the characters. I mentioned that a little bit early on. And there's a couple character interactions that I think are particularly notable because they really stood out to me.
00:47:14
Speaker
Like, I know what one is going to be. It's gotta be Bobby. So Bobby. Yeah. Yeah. As the, the Bob bomb you find, um, who has amnesia. Yes. Machine for pigs. Um, and yeah, like you meet him on a, uh, it's not a tram. What's the ski lift like thing? Uh, it's not a ski lift either, but.
00:47:40
Speaker
I think it is kind of like a ski lift, but I think the term you're looking for is a vernicular. Yes. Yeah, it's one of those things. And he's pretty dismissive. He's kind of just cooler than thou sort of attitude. But Olivia's just like, oh, do you want to come with us on our adventure? And the Bob-omb's like,
00:48:02
Speaker
I don't know. It's, you know, it's kind of waffling a little bit. And Olivia is like, okay, make a strong argument. And she just goes back to like looking out the window. And then Dobby's like, he like inches closer to her. And it's just like, okay, maybe like it could be fun to go with you guys or whatever. Right. He realized that his acting cool attitude is literally not going to help him in this situation.
00:48:27
Speaker
I was like, that is a good life lesson to learn. If kids learn some life lesson from that, that's fair. It probably took me a little into my teens to realize that acting cool was not ever the cool thing to do.
00:48:43
Speaker
I mean, I guess it can work in other facets as well. Like if somebody's, let's say, very down to the dumps and just beating themselves up, like all in the worst person, you're like, yeah, you're a piece of shit. Maybe that's not the best advice. But just kind of giving them a dose of like, hey, this is how you sound to everybody else. Right. Something like that. If you accept what people are saying,
00:49:06
Speaker
instead of just being like, oh no, this is going to get like therapeutic very quickly. But it can be, if people are trying to either over-represent or under-represent themselves, and then you're just like, okay,
00:49:25
Speaker
and then go on to talk about something else or whatever, that's normally not the approach that the person wanted you to take. They wanted you to either inflate their ego. They want you to engage. They want you to engage. Exactly. That's the way to say it.
00:49:39
Speaker
In either case, Bobby does join you, and he's useless. Oh, absolutely. He's usually sleeping in combat. He's kind of just a non-controllable side character. Occasionally, he'll try to shoulder check somebody. And if it succeeds, it did 20 damage for me. So it would actually be a hit. But the problem was he just misses most of the time. He just falls down.
00:50:07
Speaker
I will say as a full disclaimer, which I should have said earlier, is I played this game when I got it. And Jake just played this game. So he's going to have a much better memory and clarity on this than I will. Where a lot of my stuff is like, I think it was. And Jake would be like, let me correct you on this. You've been pretty accurate so far for the time that's elapsed. I would never remember any of this. So.
00:50:32
Speaker
But yeah, he doesn't really follow you into temples. He tends to just kind of like lays around outside. And he's not terribly helpful. And there's a couple times you have to go like rescue him. He does the whole damsel in distress thing. And it's all like, they can be humorous side segments and things like that. But the game's clearly trying to set you up to be like, this character's kind of annoying, right? Even Olivia is like,
00:51:01
Speaker
Please just stick with us, Bobby. We don't want to have to go looking for you again. He's very much filled with so much curiosity and naivety because of the amnesia. So I'm just wandering to enemies or wander off into stuff. You're like, God damn it. And you need to go rescue him from a stupid situation he's kind of wandered into. Exactly.
00:51:23
Speaker
What were your impressions of Bobby before I I fucking hated Bobby very long time He did eventually grill me over time
00:51:35
Speaker
I will say personally, I was not that moved when a certain event happened. I mean, this is full spoilers, probably. Bobby dies. He kind of remembers that he's a bob-omb and Mario and Olivia are kind of at this actual impasse where there's like all these boulders that are like blocking the path and he's like.
00:52:01
Speaker
No, you know what? This is my calling. Let me pay you guys back for taking care of me on these adventures. Olivia's crushed. Sorry, I had like a little bit of context. Olivia's actually crushed under one of the boulders, so you can't get her out. Oh, okay. Thank you for letting me know. Yeah, but Bobby's literally, he does a little side quest where you have to get his friend's fuse because Bobby's missing his fuse after an encounter with like a sea monster.
00:52:29
Speaker
And he doesn't tell you what any of this is for. He's just like, we got to go to the Great Sea. And you're like, freaking Bobby, right? He's like, no, it'll help. And you're like, tell me anything. He's like, I'm not going to tell you anything. And so, yeah, till the end, he's very obnoxious until he literally reveals that he's getting his friend's fuse so he can destroy the rock and free Olivia. Yeah. By the way, bomb bombs die when they explode. They do, yes. People die when they are killed. Important context.
00:52:59
Speaker
Within Mario though, they're pretty good with it, or they're good about it, because this is just their natural life cycle. This is the easiest way to think about it. They're just like, oh yeah, if there's a good cause worth blowing myself up for, obviously I would do that. That's why I exist, right? They're good Christian soldiers.
00:53:22
Speaker
But yeah, there's a there's a segment after that where Olivia realizes that Bobby blew himself up to free her and she gets very sad. She's like crying on a log. You can try to like console her. Doesn't really work. You walk back out and you can talk to the ghost of Bobby, who's like.
00:53:39
Speaker
Like you need to cheer her up or else like my death won't mean anything. You guys gotta, you guys gotta finish this out. And to their credit, oh my gosh, to their credit, Nintendo is so good about this in this game. Like they cut the music during this segment. Like after it's this, uh, when it's this really somber tone, um,
00:54:01
Speaker
And the way you cheer up Olivia is you got to put a big Goomba macho mask thing on and do a little shimmy sort of thing. And she's like, that's not fair at all. You know I think that's hilarious. And kind of cheer her up a little bit.
00:54:19
Speaker
but like Nintendo treats it super somber when it comes to like Bobby's actually sacrifice and they don't cut it. They don't cut it short. They don't do the Saturday morning thing where it's like, and he comes back. Right? Like, um, and so I put my notes here. Uh, I would go up and read it exactly. It was like, uh, there are strong themes of mortality in this game. And this is where it started.
00:54:45
Speaker
Yeah, as I've said throughout the years of podcasting and just talking in general, I don't like.
00:54:53
Speaker
unnecessary stuff to storylines will be like unnecessary romance for the sake of it. And I don't like fake deaths. There's a lot of times when a character dies or something happens to them, there was a reason for that and why they took that action. It should mean something. And if you just bring them back and do that again, as you're saying, the Saturday morning treatment of like, oh, next episode is files. Continue on. You really lose that impact because there were no stakes.
00:55:24
Speaker
So you're in this world where everything's fine all the time. It doesn't really matter. And yeah, I do like that they committed to it. And they also do keep the dark tones throughout. People being folded from paper into origami and how you're changing their base nature.
00:55:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Identity and mortality are kind of like some pretty key pretty key themes, especially as you're approaching like the end of the game. I know unless we're going to make this episode really long, there's certain things I'm just going to breeze through real quick. I liked the the spa temple in the clouds. Fucking love that area with the toads. They all just the scenes of the characters just relaxing in the hot springs and
00:56:14
Speaker
It's just keep saying like oh, I'm getting all my wrinkles out. Uh-huh And they've got Bowser jr. Up there who's just got a great kind of obnoxious little kid attitude little brother attitude little brother energy And comic or Kamek, I don't I say his name camera. I've always pronounced it comic, but yeah kmek. Yeah, also excellent There's even like there's some he has great lines
00:56:41
Speaker
Where he's always correct in the path that he picks and you could choose to follow him or Olivia And he's always correct about the right path and you get to the end of it and Olivia's just kind of like How is it that I never picked the correct path and comics like well? I just picked the path you didn't pick and Olivia is just like huh so in a way
00:57:03
Speaker
I was helping you pick the correct path. Jesus is the most optimistic character imaginable. But yeah, there's a part where he's just like a jerk for a second, or he like runs away from you when you see the, he runs when he sees a threat and doesn't tell you. And then like afterwards you can talk to him about it. And he's just like, Oh, I'm sorry. I'm usually, I'm usually with people that are just really mean to me. So I'll try to be better at it.
00:57:30
Speaker
And it's just like, yeah, this is absolutely, you know, Bowser second. Excellent sequence. I actually like that they put it at the end of the game because it was kind of refreshing area, but very cool. There's also, I think, a certain charm to like everyone's pretty familiar with the Mario universe and like Mario Bowser, Peach, the enemies, Luigi Toads.
00:57:59
Speaker
But this is very much like a foreign entity has come into their world. Yeah. And like they're all kind of in the same boat together. So even Bowser, who's canonically like an asshole is usually the enemy. A lot of games, it's similar to like.
00:58:15
Speaker
versus a Smithy for Super Mario RPG, right? But they also, they really are banded together against this threat. Yeah. So you actually have to rescue Bowser because he's still 2D. Yeah. He's been all folded up. And I think like a paper cutter or something like that messed him up. And so you have to beat that boss to restore him.
00:58:38
Speaker
Um, so he's still got, he's got his big Bowser energy, which I'm just going to associate with Jack Black for like forever now. But, um, he has some excellent lines where he's talking about you. So comic and, uh, Bowser Jr. Stay behind sort of in the, the end game to, to block these enemies so you can make your escape.
00:59:00
Speaker
and you make it up to the top there and Bowser's up there and you're like about to leave the area and Olivia's like but what about like Bowser jr and Bowser's like
00:59:11
Speaker
He talks about his parenting
Themes of Identity and Mortality
00:59:13
Speaker
style. He's like, I'm very much let people be independent parenting style. He can handle himself, all of this. You have to have trust in your kid or whatever. And I'm just like, this is freaking Bowser, right? And I just love it. It's such good characterization for him.
00:59:33
Speaker
But you're right. Right. Like they could have had this game be entirely flat characters versus origami. That's it. Full stop. And it kind of would have been like, we're just against people that are different than us. But because they make Olivia a core part of the game, it's not just origami itself. It's bad. It's like it's her brother who's choosing to brother specifically. Yeah. Which is is very smart.
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah, just great characterization, especially leading to the end game. Yeah, I got to say, I really liked how all the character development and how the story unfolds. That was on purpose. I saw it as on purpose. That was. It was.
01:00:19
Speaker
Yeah, the last note I wanted to take, because this was my theming. If I were to write an essay on it, it would be Mortality, Identity, and the Origami King. That's the title at the top. But as you approach the end of the game, the Origami King is both reprehensible and irreprehensible, because they mean the same thing. Look it up. It's really weird. But he's just a douchebag.
01:00:48
Speaker
Um, and he actually threatens. So he's, he's doing this. I have to have to assume it's a Japanese reference thing, where he's like, I'm going to fold a thousand cranes as his master plan. And he's going to use Mario for like the last one. Cause again, overconfident bad guy syndrome.
01:01:06
Speaker
And once he has 1,000 cranes, that last crane will grant him a wish. And he's going to wish that all of the toads become plain paper. And this feeds into my essay about mortality in this game. And Bowser calls it out. He's like, you know they can't come back from that.
01:01:25
Speaker
Cause everything you've been doing through the game is like returning the toads or the people who are affected by these, the scissors and the hole punch and all of that to like their original state, right? You get that Saturday morning roundabout and Bowser just comes out and says it. He's like, I wouldn't even do that. You know, they can't come back from it. Um,
01:01:47
Speaker
which again is character development for Bowser. You know, he's not a super bad guy. He's just an asshole. He wants to be the bad guy, but he doesn't want to be like evil. Yeah, exactly. And so you're like, OK, big threat. We're actually going to fight this guy. It's like a three or four phase boss fight. It's it's a lot. And it takes a while, but it's it's worth it and excellent music, as you said.
01:02:16
Speaker
And you find out that the reason the Origami King is so pissed off, it toads specifically, is because his creator wrote something on him after he was folded. And he doesn't know what it says, but he's basically just desecrated me, right? On this pure paper, and he wrote something on me.
01:02:40
Speaker
And he's pretty much like dying on the ground. And Olivia like reads the text that you couldn't see in the game until this point. And it basically says like, Ollie, I wish you to be a great king and a good king or something like that. And it's basically just like a dedication. And he's just like, ah, beans. Right?
01:03:08
Speaker
And it's very much like, it is a little bit of that Saturday morning bad guy. Oh, I've seen the error of my ways. Yes. But it takes like everything to get there. And then he dies. Like true death, actually dead.
01:03:28
Speaker
And Olivia with his last wish basically is like, I want you to make the, use me to make the last crane and you can make your wish. And so she does it. And it actually took me a moment here. I freaking, again, Nintendo nailed this. I know I'm just, I'm gushing a little bit here, but those are probably my favorite part in the game.
01:03:52
Speaker
But earlier at the origami toad's house and around that area, you realize you find out that Olivia was created by her brother. She was like his first creation was to basically finish holding his sister and turn her into a live origami. And so she makes the last crane with his paper.
01:04:17
Speaker
and makes her wish, which is to undo all of her brother's origami, which is to return the kingdom to its natural state. Everybody who is mutilated or ever gets returned. Peach's castle returns, basically undo spell for most of the game, right?
01:04:35
Speaker
And I was sitting there watching the end cut scene and watching the characters leave the castle. You got Mario, Luigi, Peach, and all that. And I was like, ah, beans. I was putting together these pieces. I was like, ah, he folded her, right? And it's just like, oh, OK. This is where I'm going to talk about it in the podcast. Because she doesn't come back. That's it.
01:05:05
Speaker
Yeah. And this is the character you spent like the entire adventure with. It's a lot.
01:05:18
Speaker
Yeah. Shouts out to them for being able to. Again, I didn't expect or I didn't know what to expect of this game, but there are so many moments where I was elated and surprised and felt emotion at things. Not Bobby's death. Fuck him. But yeah, it actually it got me very invested all throughout.
01:05:45
Speaker
And yeah, not, not too many games do that for me. But a lot of things I'm just like, Oh, I just got to play this to get the vampire survivors achievement or we'll just hop on and do it as like a social game. It's gameplay, not feels.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
01:06:00
Speaker
Yes.
01:06:01
Speaker
But anytime that a game will stick with me emotionally, it will persist through time. It will typically end up in a tattoo on my body at some point. I don't think I'm going to be doing that necessarily for Paper Mario Origami King, but it was very good. It's got no to it. Yes, I think that's that's the high point for the game for me is the characters, the emotional impact, the story.
01:06:27
Speaker
I think the game plays okay. Take it or leave it. That's why I kind of feel the 80 is fair. But I was like, man, I was telling Dave kind of jokingly, you know, they should just make a movie with Mario at this point. It's just the characters and the story. Right. Um, haven't seen it. I'm sure it's good. Um, but yeah, that's why we talk about games. Like, that's why the ones that come back for me are things like Undertale Amore, right? Like.
01:06:55
Speaker
Uh, I don't think this game has enough of that kind of core emotional impact to stick around like a long time, but man, you can have a two to three paragraph essay. So all in all, definitely worth the time. Uh, recommend it as a game. I would set aside some time for it since it is like an actual RPG. And if you're taking your time, it could easily pass 30 hours. Um, but it was good.
01:07:26
Speaker
I think this indie Mario game might be a thing. Yeah. And now I'm tempted to go back and check out some of the other Paper Mario titles that I think some of them are probably on the Switch store or almost remade.
01:07:41
Speaker
You got to get them in this format, though, so you can loan me a cartridge and I can sit on it for three years before we actually do an episode on it. But if you guys have cartridges as you want to send in, I'm just kidding. We don't do that. We don't have a PO box. I'm not giving you my home address. That would be insane. But cartridges that you'd like to recommend,
01:08:05
Speaker
Let us know. Soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you could join the discussion on Facebook. It's entirely analog over there. Facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.