Paper Mario: The Origami King is not the return to the traditional roots of the series I was hoping for. Like other recent entries in the series, it de-emphasizes character-progression elements to provide a simplified role-playing-game experience. And yes, that means Mario doesn't earn experience points for battles and doesn't level up as a result of those fights.

Even just through the first section of the adventure, I've already begun trying to avoid battles

And the line-up phase here is paramount. If you are able to get the enemies into the pattern — which is always possible with the correct moves as far as I can tell — you will almost always win the battle on your first turn. This completely minimizes selecting attacks or using items.