Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

After the release of the Super NES smash hit Super Mario RPG, fans eagerly awaited some form of sequel. Rumors of Nintendo hiring people to work on SMRPG 2 fueled speculation and anxiety for years before Nintendo released Paper Mario for the N64.

It was far, far from what anyone expected. Paper Mario was a fun adventure, and had great innovation, but lacked a certain flair and charm. A lot of people had no trouble putting the game down halfway through and never returning. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door corrected this.

Super Mario RPG showed that a good Mario story didn't have to revolve around Bowser, and Paper Mario made it evident that this was in fact a good idea for anything but a twitch game. Paper Mario 2 has Bowser in it, and you do fight him, but the main villain is of another force entirely: the X-Nauts. The game begins with Princess Peach enjoying her vacation in the dingy town of Rogueport, purchasing a mystical item from a shady street vendor. Thus she comes into the possession of a map, said to lead to the greatest treasure in all the world. She sends for Mario to come to her aid in finding the treasure, but by the time he gets there, Peach is gone.

In Mario's quest to find Peach, he'll unravel the mysteries of the treasure, and collect mystical items known as the Crystal Stars which grant their owners great power. Mario will have to traverse a number of different areas (via sewer pipe), defeat great monsters, and contend with the X-Nauts to save her. The game is separated into eight chapters, inbetween which you'll play short segments as Peach (trapped in the X-Naut fortress) and Bowser (trying to catch up with Mario). The story development is solid, and you'll meet a number of interesting characters along the way. The humor in the story is great, especially when Luigi gets involved.

Thousand-Year Door plays just like Paper Mario, but with a few extra features. Outside of battle it's somewhat like a platformer, where you can run (with depth) and jump, enter buildings, climb staircases, and talk to non-player characters. Mario can use special paper powers, like turning sideways to go in narrow vertical passages, or folding into a plane to fly across a room. The battle system is turn-based, and highly timing-oriented, that is by doing actions at the right time attacks will do more damage or enemy hits can be deflected. This timing concept isn't as evident as it was in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, but it still manages to make battles interesting. Badges are also back, which Mario equips to make various enhancements in battle or gain new moves. When Mario levels up, he has the option to get more HP, more FP, or more BP (badges consume Badge Points by being equipped).

As in Paper Mario, your party in battle consists of two characters: Mario and a sidekick. The sidekick can be switched out midbattle, and there are over half a dozen of them which Mario will meet throughout the game. There are three attack dynamics: regular attacks, power attacks (which consume flower points), and special attacks (which consume star points). Star points are regenerated in battle through the biggest new addition to Thousand-Year Door, the audience. Impressive moves will wow the audience, whose applause increases your stars. Poor performance, like being hit without defending or doing a poorly-timed attack, will prompt people to leave the audience. It's an interesting method which can make for some really dramatic battles.

Despite the fact that all of Thousand-Year Door's characters are definitively two-dimensional, the game is very visually sophisticated. Buildings collapse when Mario enters them. Visual effects, like water, are breathtakingly beautiful. Sound effects are straight from the Mario sound archives. The soundtrack is great, all the music is very well-composed.

There are a handful of replay facets as well. Thousand-Year Door has a massive vault of badges to collect and use. There's one optional sidekick, and a bunch of optional stuff (from items to dialogue) to investigate, which you can do once you beat the final game (play can continue after this). And there's a casino with crazy minigames to play whenever you please.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a brilliant game. Fairly long (easily greater than 30 hours), with a highly amusing story, and a fun battle system with its own share of difficulty, the game is a blast to play and one of the most fun quasi-RPGs to date.

Progress: Complete