You explore a paper-thin Mushroom Kingdom as Mario, and in battles you rotate rings on a circular grid to line enemies up before attacking. Between fights you explore linear but detail-packed areas full of jokes, secrets, and folded-paper enemies. The turn-based fights are more about solving a quick spatial puzzle each round than building a character over time.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The verdict
It's funnier and more visually inventive than most platformers manage to be, even if longtime fans still mourn the RPG systems this series left behind years ago.
The mechanics
The ring-based battle puzzles are clever the first dozen times, less so by hour twenty, but exploring the overworld and its many gags never really gets old.
Presentation
Papercraft worlds fold and unfold with real charm, and the writing is some of Nintendo's sharpest, packed with running jokes that land more often than not.
Staying power
Great for players who want humor and light puzzling over deep RPG mechanics. Series purists pining for the Thousand-Year Door days will likely still feel shortchanged.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You guide Mario, drawn as though he is made of folded paper, alongside his new companion Olivia, walking around a colorful papercraft world using the stick and jump button just like a typical Mario platformer. Battles work completely differently though: enemies appear standing on concentric rings around Mario, and before attacking you have to rotate and slide those rings like a puzzle to line the enemies up in a row or block for your attack to hit them all at once. Getting this right takes a little practice, since you only have a short window to figure out the correct rotation before time runs out. The writing throughout is sharp and funny, with paper-based jokes and surprisingly emotional moments woven into an otherwise silly premise about a king made of origami taking over the kingdom.
Most of your time is actually spent exploring the world outside of battle, since areas are packed with toads folded flat into the scenery waiting to be found, hidden trophies, and clever secrets tucked into the paper-based landscape at every turn. Story battles against giant boss enemies, often made from everyday office supplies, serve as elaborate ring puzzles with much higher stakes than regular fights. A typical area takes an hour or two to fully explore, and the full adventure runs somewhere around twenty to thirty hours depending on how much optional content you chase down. Because regular battles give no lasting reward like experience points, many players learn to avoid unnecessary fights and instead focus on exploring.
Session to session, the joy here comes from the world itself, its humor, and its clever set pieces, like a tram ride level or a theme park built by ninjas, more than from the actual combat. What might frustrate you is that with no experience points on offer, regular battles can feel like a chore to get through rather than something worth seeking out, and the ring puzzles add a bit of time pressure some players find stressful. Come mainly for the exploration, jokes, and heart, and you will find one of the more charming and creative adventures on the system.