Paper Mario: The Origami King
The game follows the gameplay style of its two predecessors, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, and Paper Mario: Color Splash. As in these previous entries, role-playing elements are deemphasized in favor of action-adventure mechanics, which focus on exploration and puzzle-solving in individual areas rather than emphasizing character growth over the entire game. Also like the previous games, Paper Mario: The Origami King is focused around an aspect of arts and crafts. Whilst Paper Mario: Sticker Star had a focus on stickers and Paper Mario: Color Splash had a focus on paint, Paper Mario: The Origami King is focused around origami. Similarly, the game's environments graphically resemble crafts, and many of the game's bosses are based around some kind of crafting tool. Unlike the entries directly before, however, Paper Mario: The Origami King has levels that are directly connected rather than being segregated through a level select screen, similar to the first two games in the series. Similar to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario, Bowser is not the primary antagonist in exchange for an original villain. Paper Mario: The Origami King does not feature a battle system which uses finite items for combat, as it instead uses an original ring-based system which uses puzzle-solving instead of strategy.