Awesome / Paper Mario: The Origami King

Beware of unmarked spoilers below!

• While Olivia using Vellumental powers eventually becomes commonplace, the first time it happens for each of them is amazing, especially the different elements they control.
  • Just the fact that Mario is able to call upon what are essentially The Four Gods when Olivia gains a Vellumental's power.
  • Not to be undone are the Vellumentals themselves. For being the Mid-Boss of each of the first four chapters, they manage to make an impact of their place in this world for one, key reason: they're the only things in the Paper Mario setting controlling the actual elements. No, not the "paper" versions of how each element has been portrayed in the series until now; real earth, real water, real fire, and real ice. The sheer difference in the presentation when you step into their chamber alone sells their role almost entirely.
• Olly gets villainous awesome points for dropping a huge boulder on Olivia out of nowhere that requires Bobby exploding to save her. And Bobby doesn't come back from it, meaning Olly is responsible for Bobby dying.
  • In Bobby's flashback, when the Paper Macho Gooper Blooper is attacking the Princess Peach cruise ship, his "Bob-ombrades" are bravely fighting back, their fuses lit and explosions already detonating on and around the paper monster. While they weren't able to take it down permanently, they evidently stalled it long enough for the crew to get their passengers evacuated with the life boats. Bobby explains that a Bob-Omb's greatest wish is to make an impact, to change something for the better, something that his Bob-ombrades managed to accomplish.
• The Scissors battle turns into a very tense battle once the cover is removed, as one missed jump will end Mario, but if he prevails it feels amazing.
  • It gets even more awesome and dangerous if you decide to remove the cover yourself. Here, NO Vellumental Magic Circles will spawn, and you'll have to deal with the one-hit attack for a much longer time.
    • Imagine this whole fight from the view of the audience. Their hero fighting against what is basically a man that can destroy and cut up their entire world in one fell swoop. Yet, he manages to dodge all of his attacks and even manages to beat him in the end. For the first time, paper beats scissors.
• Bowser spends much of the game as a folded square who can only walk on his face, but he shows he's still the Koopa King in the endgame.
  • First, Kamek and Bowser Jr. rally all of his minions to fight the Folded Soldiers and rescue him, allowing Mario to get by.
  • When Mario needs a way to get into Peach's Castle, Bowser has an airship ready to go complete with cannons. When it crashes and Bowser Junior is endangered by a swarm of Paper Macho Goombas, he lets loose a fireball that dislodges a rock and crushes them all, while still in a folded-up form.
  • Fridge Brilliance: When he fights alongside Mario in battle as a partner, his attack does 50 damage. The only other thing that does that much damage to normal enemies at once are the Vellumental special attacks. Bowser is as strong as literal deities. While folded.
• You have to admit, Mario and the Toads have got some real groovy moves!
• The second phase of the final battle is a sumo match between a folded Bowser and Olly. With help from Mario, Bowser defeats him and pushes Olly over the edge of the arena.
• The final sequence of the final phase of the final battle turns into a QTE where Mario leaps over Olly's gigantic hammers, stomps the huge cannon-fired airplanes, catches Olly's tremendous arms and throws them off himself, and caps it off by smashing the huge blades Olly turns his hands into with his hammer, crushing and disabling his 1000-Fold Arms completely by himself and without any power-ups or assistance. Then Olivia folds herself into a giant hammer to finish him for good.
• Despite the limitations on partner characters, what was lacked in quantity was made up for with quality. Bobby ended up from becoming a normal Mook to a true bonafide ally who would sacrifice himself to save Olivia and both Bowser Jr. and Kamek became much more fleshed out.
  • And speaking of partners, Professor Toad is basically one for the paper Toads as a whole. You have this normally docile species that doesn't fight a whole lot (heck, the professor's only attack is digging and that sometimes doesn't work), and one of them ends up being crucial to uncovering the secrets of Scorching Sandpaper Desert, making the whole thing feel like a proper Call-Back to the Adventurer Archaeologists of games past.
  • And on the subject of the Toads themselves, it may require you to pay them off, but they can actually assist Mario in battle, now! And the more Toads you rescue, the more of the entire Paper Mushroom Kingdom you can call to your aid, which in turn can make you feel really good about saving an entire group of Toads from that area's Villain of the Week.
• Let's be frank, Intelligent Systems deserve some serious kudos in regards to the Legion of Stationery. They took ordinary office supplies and not only gave them fun boss fights, they also instilled distinct and unique personalities into them. Even the Flat Character of the bunch, Stapler, is characterized as an Angry Guard Dog responsible for putting the entire Folded Soldier army together. And this was achieved without altering them in any way, apart from putting Olly's symbol on their bodies. They display so much personality despite all of them being The Blank. These sentient stationery pieces prove to be incredibly menacing and awesome to do battle with, Scissors in particular with their One-Hit Kill spam once their sheath is removed as described above.
• In the Green Streamer area, Mario and Co. get to storm Bowser's castle alongside his regular paper minions in order to take it back from the Folded Soldiers. Mario can take out the Folded Soldiers himself for rewards, but seeing the various Mooks holding their own after getting beat down for most of the game is pretty awesome, in addition to the sequence itself being fun.
• The 1000-Fold Arms technique allows Mario to utterly humiliate most of the bosses, turning their strengths against them. They're impressive enough against the Vellumentals, like flipping the Earth Vellumental on its back or plucking out the Fire Vellumental's feathers. But it's what Mario does with the 1000-Fold Arms to the Legion of Stationery that's especially cathartic, with each of them antagonizing Mario until he meets them face-to-face, because they are all intelligent and fully sentient (maybe except for Stapler), and the moment Mario uses the 1000-Fold Arms against them, these bullies are suddenly helpless and at Mario's mercy, and they know they're about to get beaten down by their own properties with nothing they can do about it: Colored Pencil's snap-shut case, Rubber Band's elasticity, Hole Punch's paper storage, Tape's supply of...tape, and Scissors's complete confidence.

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