Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004)

TTYD is a great game. It's a great follow-up to Paper Mario. It's better in almost every way. Filled to the brim with charm and a great art direction. Emphasizing style over cutting edge graphics (when it was released) which has helped this game age very well. The Switch remaster does do some interesting things, but I personally feel the hyper shiny and reflective filters they have added to the game clash with the great art direction of the original release. These feel like cheap ways to justify selling the game at full price. Not every change to the remaster is bad though. They have some great flourishes to the graphics, such as the added paper cut-out animations to when an object moves through water. These feel very faithful to the original art direction and do legit look great. Aside from that, I think the game looked overall better in its original release. They do add some small quality of life improvements which aren't bad by any means, but they do nothing to improve the bad "Trouble Board" side quests. You still need to take on one trouble at a time and all of these side quests are mostly tedious backtracking that rarely give you a good reward (there are a few exceptions such as one giving you a new companion for your journey, but for the most part the rewards for these rarely feel worth it. Though some are actually pretty fun distractions, such as dressing up as Luigi to talk to a fan).

Still overall, while this doesn't really bring anything new to the table it's still great nonetheless. The combat is still very firmly the same thing as Paper Mario. The only new mechanics are around the battle screen being a theatrical stage. Here there is an audience that can grow as you level up and perform well. The added benefit to this is gaining star power faster to let you use your powerful spells. The stage also has some negative effects. Such as audience members being able to chuck things at you or the stage props attacking you. This rarely transforms gameplay but it does add some variety to the gameplay. And more importantly fun flavor!

The charming writing and art direction are what elevate this game. Like with Paper Mario, the characters are all silly and charming, with the exception of the main villain, resulting in plenty of amusing and sometimes funny moments. Some of the best parts are related to Bowser bumbling about between the end of chapters always a few steps behind Mario. This is cleverly subversive and unconventional for a Mario game, excluding the original Super Mario RPG that put Bowser in your party. Still as the second best subversion in the franchise with the relationship between Bowser and Mario I'll still take it. Bowser ends up acting as comic relief very effectively. Always blundering about. And some of his interludes are direct call backs to the original Super Mario Bros from the NES! This doesn't feel like shameless nostalgia bate, instead it's a tasteful and fun homage. Another fun bit are how you can interact with Luigi in Rogueport between chapters and he has his own fictional adventure that he will tell you about. Always accompanied by a new companion who almost always begrudgingly contradicts most of what he says. I'll say no more about these interludes because they are best experienced going in blind. But they always stayed amusing and fun. Giving the game lots of personality.

Princess Peach is given some agency even as she is again captured (kind of a pity that only Super Mario RPG did something different with her character arc by letting her join the party). Her interludes are borderline kind of creepy. She is being spied on by an AI who has fallen in love with her after watching her take a shower... so yeah kind of a dicey relationship, and it does effectively act as the same relationship Peach had with the Star from Paper Mario, just more creepy! Still these interludes actually help you learn the layout for a future Dungeon which is kind of a neat way to incorporate that into the design, creep factor aside.

Something else that doesn't feel conventionally Nintendo is also Rogueport itself. It's a run down and bleak harbor full of criminals and has a hangman's scaffolding as the centerpiece to the town square. Aside from this, the game isn't too dark. You do visit a place called Twilight Town where everyone talks about how depressed they are (to be fair everyone they knew and cared about were turned into pigs by a joker-esque evil ghost so yeah that wouldn't exactly raise the spirits!). It's a well designed hub. Like with Paper Mario, it also gives the game a pseudo-metroidvania design to it, where you unlock new parts of the hub town as you unlock new power ups and companions. Which makes returning to the hub feel fresh and engaging as you try to figure out what new areas have opened up to you. It can also be very satisfying after unlocking a new power-up and realizing you can now snag a previously inaccessible item! Making the player feel clever.

Like with Paper Mario, the power scaling of this game is low which I find appealing. The highest damage I did by the end of the game was 15. I like how this keeps damage and combat comprehensible. While I get the appeal of seeing 9999 damage pop up, it loses context at some point. Leveling up and power creep are low and it works because the game is designed around it. You still feel progress and more powerful as you progress. The badge system returns and it is good. They don't really shake it up too much and there are a lot of the same badges from the first game in this one. Not really sure how many new vs old, but it definitely feels like a case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." Which fair enough. I do still like the badge system.

Companions serve as the other form of combat variety and customization. Each companion does fill a similar archetype as they did from the original Paper Mario, but they give them fresh designs and personalities. Goombette, like with Goombario, does feel like objectively the weakest companion again. Tattle is useful as a skill, but I found myself actually preferring not to use it. Not a bad thing to have it as an option, but other companions that are more clearly combat and traversal focused outclass her sadly. There are definite winners in the companion front. Yoshi and Bobbery are easily the best in terms of combat. Though Flourrette (I think that's her name) has a great ability that can instantly kill almost every enemy of the game, making her the best for the Trial of 100. So it is kind of a shame that earlier companions feel more and more useless as you progress. They just get outclassed by better companions. You still will end up using Koopa for some puzzles, which forcing you to use companions for world puzzles is a design that returns and is well implemented. Traversal isn't nearly as complicated as it is in any main Mario title, but it's still enjoyable.

Another fun new addition are the black chest curses. This is a really fun and clever way to introduce a new power-up for Mario where he is "cursed." They shake this up a bit but this is a fun and flavorful way to introduce new mechanics into the game. Feels creative.

There's a lot more I could say, but I think it's best to not include too many spoilers. The levels are thematically varied with a great art direction. The world design and hub loop in and open up shortcuts to make traversal easier and keeping the central hub, Rogueport, feeling fresh as new areas open up due to new power-ups and companions. There is a lot of backtracking in the game, in some dungeons, in almost all the side quests, in a few of the main quests, and while this padding feels unnecessary since the game is already pretty long, it doesn't sour the experience. It's still a great game and a lot of fun.

WARNING: STORY AND GAMEPLAY SPOILERS

After playing the original Paper Mario on the N64, I instantly knew I wanted to move onto the next game, which of course was TTYD. This game was a HUGE step forwards in a bunch of areas, but I could possibly say a step backwards in at least one..

GAMEPLAY:

It has very similar battle mechanics to the first game, which is by no means a complaint, I absolutely love this battle system and think it's the best kind out of all of the Paper Mario games I have played (which I'm sure is no controversial opinion) - which at this stage is all but the origami king. I also liked the ways in which you would carry out attacks being much more varied, like the multiple different types of hammer attack having slight variations on the time taken to execute them. The puzzles in this game again use the abilities of your partners in clever ways that give you a fun challenge, and especially towards the end of the game, in particular during the final area, I thought the puzzles were by far the most fun and engaging, expanding even further on what I thought was already really good in PM64.

STORY:

The story is by a large margin the biggest strength of TTYD in my opinion. The partners and side characters had so much more life and depth to them than the previous game, which I thought would be hard to do but Nintendo really outdid themselves.

The side characters were also so funny and interesting (Pennington was my personal favourite but I'm biased towards penguins), and this series is the first time in a while I've genuinely found myself laughing at a game. Even if it was at super dumb jokes, I thought they were all executed really well and didn't come off as trying too hard. On that note, this game's dialogue is also super self aware, but to a point that isn't too far like a lot of media is when trying to implement this kind of thing, and I appreciate the whole Paper Mario series for having this kind of humour, but I also appreciate that this is pretty much where it all started.

But returning to the main point, the overall story is really interesting, and while at its bare bones the plot is super basic (apart from the whole computer falling in love with Peach thing), that doesn't even matter because it's fleshed out in such a way that you don't even really notice.

OTHER THINGS:

There are a couple of smaller things I want to mention that aren't big enough for their own category:

Music - The music in this game is beautifully composed, like most Mario games, and I couldn't help but instantly get up the OST online to listen to.

Luigi - One of the most interesting things to come out of this was Luigi's journey that occurs parallel to Mario's, and listening to Luigi talk about his travels was something I always looked forward to (Nintendo pls make a spin off about his story).

DOWNSIDES:

I don't like to go for easy bait, but there's no denying that the backtracking in this game is pretty absurd, even worse than its predecessor I would say. One or two times I considered turning off the game because I had to go miles out of my way just to hear a couple of lines of dialogue from a side character. Luckily everything else in between more than made up for it (but Twilight Town almost had me sobbing there was so much going back and forth).

Another thing, which I know is just a fault of older games, is the lack of ability to skip cutscenes, especially on the final fight...I had to do the fight about 4 times to beat it (idk if I'm bad or if it was genuinely hard) and every time I failed I had to watch a relatively long cutscene before the battle and between the battle's multiple phases, and if it takes some people more tries than that I can only imagine the frustration. However these are both relatively minor complaints compared to the enjoyment I got out of this game.

CONCLUSION:

There isn't much I need to conclude here other than that I love this game and think everyone should play it (or its remake once it releases), and I hope this review was able to help someone! :)

Finished chapter 3. It was wonderful.

The world was amazing. It was really colorful and unique, although rather small. Which maybe isn't a bad thing, cause it means it doesn't have that much filler in it. The characters really shined here. Flurrie, Punio and the Shadow Sirens were all highlights. Even tho Flurrie as fighter isn't very useful thus far, I really like her design and personality. She reminded me of a drag, which was interesting.

The mechanics and puzzles were fun. The puzzles revolved around the 101 Puni, which was hilarious and annoying. It was frustrating to find out you left behind a couple of Punis, but it was also kinda entertaining to see how much I fucked up and abandoned them. Also, the "fights" with the Jabbi were fun to watch, and also frustrating, cause I went directly to the one with 100 Jabbis, and kept losing for obvious reasons lmao. Eventually. I figured it out, thank god.

Overall, really solid chapter with great characters and hilarious moments.

Just finished chapter two (spoilers ahead, obviously). I wasn't crazy about Hooktail's castle. It felt kinda bland, but I feel this is a recurring theme with Paper Mario, where the first world is always kinda blah.

I did like the whole thing with Koops and his father disappearance. It felt really mature, which is refreshing in a Mario game. I just wished he was actually dead and gave Koops an emotional moment. Instead, they gave him an "emotional" scene with a corpse, which then turns into a comedic moment. So it feels kinda cheap lol. Still, really liked the story of Koops.

Something that I found hilarious was Ms. Mows appearance. She was really charming, and I love how she's not afraid to wear her little kitten heels lmao. She's fierce and she is the moment.

Lastly, I'm so pumped about Peach's side of the story. Really excited to see how TEC is going to develop and help her. Really love the storyline they're setting up.

PD: who tf had the idea to give Hooktail a feet kink? I laughed so hard when I saw the dialogue

Second time trying to play TTYD. Let's see if I can finally get into it. I love Paper Mario. I love RPGs. But I've never had the urge to play TTYD or PM64 for some reason lol.

I'm already at chapter 2. I'll try to make an update every chapter. So far, I'm having fun. Not crazy about the visuals, since it's obviously a really old game, but it holds up really well (I wish I could install the HD texture pack). I'm a fan of the art-style tho. Can't wait for the story to unfold and see if this is truly such an awesome game, which it probably is.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is easily better than Paper Mario 64 in every way.

The story is even more engaging and has fun nods to Mario characters that don't appear in this game and nods to the last Paper Mario game. It has an even more colorful cast than the first and the game is more visually appealing (Which was to be expected because it's on the GameCube)

The music is even better than the first game. Koji Kondo has always been one of my favorite video game composers as he has worked on The Legend Of Zelda series in the past

There are also even more side-quests with more rewards in this game. The gameplay has been improved upon and it works better and flows better. The game is also way funnier. Luigi tells you about his adventure and it's funny.

But Bowser... Because he isn't the main villain, Bowser is just a bumbling moron and it is hilarious. He's also playable

The story is very similar to the first game. But I think it's done better and the game ended with me feeling satisfied. There are not many flaws in this game. This was also to be expected since this is widely considered to be the best Paper Mario game.

If there was one problem I can think of... They could've made fast travel better. They also should've had cutscenes skippable (This only gets annoying during the final boss)

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is easily the best in the Paper Mario series. So much personality. I love it

Would Recommend

5/5

I finally managed to beat one of my favorite games. I loved playing Paper Mario as a child, although I was a bit too young back then and I didn't really understand the game. Perhaps this caused some fascinating mystical aura around the game.

Many years later, I have to say that the game aged incredibly well. The gameplay is really fun, the atmosphere, the characters, the story (for a Mario game) is really fantastic. No wonder that this game gets a lot of hype. Also, there is a lot of variety during the game and it rarely feels repetitive to gather all the stars.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is truly a great game. However, I was still close to giving four stars instead of five. This is due to some really poor design choices.

Firstly, you can only have one side quest active at a time, and 90% of those are extremely repetitive or require you to backtrack a lot. I have a few in mind that really grinded my gears, which is why I gave up on the idea of completing every side quest pretty quickly.

Secondly, the game sadly feels really stretched at the end. I understand the urge to offer a dramatic and epic finale after a couple of hours of RPG-ing, but unfortunately, it feels like unnecessary stretching in a lot of games, and Paper Mario was one of them for me.

Thirdly, and this is the worst part, unskippable cutscenes / dialogues. I am sorry, but never make cutscenes unskippable, especially before boss fights. There is nothing more infuriating for me than having to go over the same lenghty bloody cutscene over and over again because I'm stuck at a certain point. Fortunately for me, this wasn't an issue for me before the final boss, but oh boy, this is where it got really funny. Because of some poor RNG, I died with the final boss having 2 Health left. I was already thinking about just giving up, because I knew the cutscenes leading to this fight were HUGE. And guess what, it took me almost 20 minutes to get back into the fight. Make your final boss as tough and challenging as you want, I don't mind, but let me skip the fucking cutscene and just try again. Seriously, nothing tilts me more than that (except for teammates in League maybe).

So even though I was quite frustrated at the end, objectively I have to say that Paper Mario was still a brillant game, no matter the negative points. I guess some stuff is again due to it being a rather old game already, which needs to be considered too. I had a lot of fun with it and the Paper Mario Franchise will always keep a special place in my heart. I highly recommend playing the N64 title and this one if you haven't done so already, trust me, it's worth the ride.

Trying Origami King inspired me to play TTYD again, since it's been about 10 years since I last played through it.

Just now I spent the past 5 hours in the Pit of 100 Trials, trying to beat it before chapter 3, and I died on the 99th floor. -_-

The battle system is so addictive. Honestly for me I think this game aged better than when I was a kid, cuz looking back at my old save file and the badges I have equipped there, I had no good sense of strategy back then.

However as a kid, there was a thrill in a JRPG's seeming impossibility due to my poor sense of strategy -- I'd be stuck on a part for months (if not years), and doing the pit of 100 trials early-ish is helping to recreate that feeling

lol, I meant for this to be a playthrough of TTYD, but I guess the pit turned out to be more exciting for its difficulty since so far the main campaign has been a cake walk, and I've been trying this pit for the past 3 days.
Maybe I should start over and consider a more specific challenge run (and not just "upgrade BP only").

The Thousand-Year Door is one of the best combinations of childlike charmful aesthetic and super witty writing currently out there. It's an excellent rpg that seamlessly smacks on a solid combat system on top of its beautiful narrative structure.

Every single chapter is a delight, from characters mouthing off quotable and hilarious lines every few minutes to setpieces as bizarre and unique as they are fun to explore. Even at the lowest point in chapter 2 there was always a cohesion to The Thousand-Year Door's mystical and roguish aesthetic. From the great onslaught of the Glitz Pit to the spatial craziness of the X-Naut Fortress, there isn't a single point where I feel like the game dragged (well, I guess other than parts of the Boggly Tree).

There's also a good amount of soul, and while that is a big non-descriptive term, I can't think of another word to express the amount of heart and detail put into the writing here. There's crows mouthing off about politics alongside Mario getting his own taste of the Rocky stardom.

The combat is also worth praising, simply for awarding skilled timing while having distinct decision making to every turn, even if nothing on offer here is terribly complex or difficult. It certainly has its ups of enemy design but unfortunately it never makes complete utilization of its mechanics outside an optional pit of trials, but even that's a bit of a stretch. But even still, stylish presses and parries gives the combat some added replayability and opportunity to master well before the curtain call.

Even with that light shortcoming, I can't think of a better rpg to start out with in terms of the genre. The Thousand-Year Door is an excellent love letter to rpgs that has aged better than the rest of its peers. (9/10)

I had heard about this game for a long time, many say it's the best Mario RPG, and definitely the best Paper Mario. I finally played it through and have conflicted thoughts.

At its best, this is prime Nintendo at its most magical and charming, the battle system is fantastic, the game is funny and the first few chapters are just a joy to play through.

Unfortunately the game starts getting long in the tooth, and any backtracking, or platforming/skill section highlights that the gameplay really only shines during battles. Having to revisit or return to a location in this game feels like a punishment, so hunting for hidden items, is never as fun as it is in say a Metroidvania, or a Zelda game, because Mario is slow and fast traveling is far from optimal in this game.

The battle system is great, continuing the interactive turn based combat that was started in Super Mario RPG. I always loved the skill based turn base RPG that allows you to do more damage, or decrease damage depending on your skill and timing, and Paper Mario has tons of way to reward that.

I think if this game was remade and a few quality of life changes were made, for instance making Mario a little speedier and his jump a little more Mario-like, it would really be an absolute classic. As it is, it's a great game, but a few elements make it far more frustrating than it should be.

8.5/10

Extremely minor spoilers

Let me start by saying that I went into this playthrough considering The Thousand Year Door a top 15 game of all time. Unfortunately, like it’s predecessor, it has fallen from this list.

I don’t want it to seem like I hate this game now, so let me start with the positives. This is one of the funniest games I’ve ever played, and it’s charm lasts throughout the entire game. The battle mechanics keep you fairly captivated throughout most of the battles, and the characters are charming and memorable. The graphics are beautiful and timeless, and each world has a different look and feel. Pretty much everything good people have to say about this game is true; it really is a wonderful game, but upon playing it as an adult, I’ve realized that it does indeed have its faults.

Bear in mind that these faults don’t make it a bad game by any means. There’s just some issues that keep it from being a top tier game. I still love it and hold it dear to my heart, but I need to address these issues.

There are two major problems with the game. First, it’s extremely linear. Most of the game consists of going along a specified path already laid out for you. Sure, you can explore a little bit, but if you ever want to move forward, there’s usually only one thing you can do. At the worst of times, this even goes so far as locking the way forward behind a single character encounter you have to initiate. To a certain extent, the game even controls how quickly you level up. Sure, you can grind out more battles to get more experience, but once you reach higher levels, you start getting less experience from the same enemies. You can really only level up so much when each battle starts giving you one experience point.

Second, the level design is actually pretty weak at times. Several of the chapters consisted mainly of going back and forth between small areas. “Go over here. Now go over there. Now go back over there so you can get that, then bring it back over here.” It starts to feel like padding to make up for the fact that the levels aren’t actually well designed.

Areas like Twilight Town and Keelhaul Key are particular culprits. Even a level like the mystery on the train ends up boiling down to walking endlessly around the train talking to everybody until one of them tells you something useful. A level where they could have actually given you some choice in how you approached the situation still forced every player to do the exact same steps in the exact same order. I will say, however, that the final two “levels” were extremely satisfying and well designed.

All this being said, the story behind each world is amazing, and that’s where Paper Mario’s strength lies. You fall in love with every character, both playable and non-playable, and that’s what makes it so dear to people’s hearts. However, I just really think this game was simply made for a younger audience, giving them a semblance of strategy and puzzle solving, but not wanting it to be too difficult, forcing them to go at a pre-determined pace. I think that’s why I loved it so much as a kid, but as an adult I see the flaws.

All in all, I’ve enjoyed replaying both of the original Paper Mario games, but unfortunately I don’t consider them among my favourite games anymore. I look forward to replaying Super Paper Mario next, as that was my favourite of the original trilogy, contrary to popular opinion.

1001 Games - #603

Pros: hilarious dialogue, memorable characters and story, action commands make battles interactive, party members better utilized over predecessor, no grinding required

Cons: side quests often involve tedious back-and-forth travel, may be too easy for RPG veterans, all dialogue is text based

Recommendation: as far as I'm concerned, this is the best Mario RPG to date, and one of the better RPGs period. Playing this makes me sad at how Super Paper Mario and Sticker Star turned out. Can't recommend highly enough.