To those who are familiar with the Paper Mario games in the series, (I cannot speak on Sticker Star or Color Splash--have not played) I rank this as the third greatest Paper Mario game
That I have played:
Paper Mario >>> Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door >>>>>>> Paper Mario: The Origami King >> Super Paper Mario
Can speak at length praising the game for its incredible writing, but this installment could have been much, much better
Pros:
-Areas in game can be very beautiful to behold
-Fun, vibrant and lively
-Hilarious little jokes all over the place, this is the greatest aspect of the game
-Dialogue and interactions with characters is nice
-Olivia is full of life, a very entertaining partner and ally
-Great OST
-Unlikely heroes teaming up alongside Mario
-Boss fights can be a lot of fun and challenging
Cons:
-Battle system grows tiresome and tedious
-Hand-holding to the max, you cannot explore often times, but instead will be restricted and told to move forward towards the current objective
-Olivia can also be very annoying at times
-No RPG elements
-Extremely linear game outside of Toad Town and the Desert level
-Story is mediocre
-Zero replay value
-Item system and finding items in this game is very, very underwhelming / not rewarding at all
-Overall depth of this game is paper thin
Going to reward it a 6.35 out of 10 possible points and I will stand strongly with that rating. Intelligent Systems can do much better than this as we know. Paper Mario is worlds greater than this game! Origami King actually has the potential to be a substantially better game than what it is, but the game really has no backbone. It's upheld almost entirely by the game's writer. I've never seen such a case, but with his outstanding ability to bring that classic Paper Mario charm to the characters and therefore the world at large in Paper Mario: The Origami King, the man virtually carried the game all on his shoulders. That's incredible. I still like the writing and dialogue in the first two better, but this is excellent work, make no mistake. Everything else is entertaining enough to get you through the game and finish it. Bottom Line: I liked it, but I also didn't like it. It's a game I appreciated very much being such a huge fan of the initial installments, but I can criticize it heavily because this game simply does not measure up to its predecessors, at all. It's a fun and funny little game, something I'm sure younger kids would probably enjoy but this did little for me being such a hardcore fan since the beginning. Paper Mario (N64) is the ultimate Paper Mario adventure still to this date, without question. From start to finish, it still heavily outshines the rest. I'm waiting for the series to return to that level of video game glory, and I cannot wait until it does, for all the fans' sake!