Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

"Paper Mario is so awesome, he even beats Scissors Mario."

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is the superb sequel to the Nintendo 64 RPG, Paper Mario, which was a half-sequel to Super Mario RPG for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Paper Mario: TTYD doesn't take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, but instead places around the hub area, Rogueport. Rogueport is a dirty port town filled with ruffians and there is currently a gang war between the Robbos and the residents of the Super Mario Sunshine hub residents, the Piantas, which are now portrayed as a mafia. Years ago there was a huge disaster that caused a city to go underground, now known as the Rogueport Sewers where you can reach every main area in the game from.

Story: The game starts off at Mario's house where a partner from Paper Mario, Parakarry the Mail-Man Parakoopa, cameos and drops a letter off at Mario's place. Luigi gets the letter and reads it to Mario, mirroring the intro of the first Paper Mario. The letter is from Princess Peach who tells Mario that she has found a treasure map in Rogueport. Naturally, Mario goes to Rogueport and immediately meets up with Lord Crump (underling of the primary antagonist of the game, Grodus) and X-Nauts (little guys in white and red costumes that are the underlings of the underlings, the equivalent to Bowser's Goombas and Koopas one could say) and a Goomba. Her name is Goombella and she's an explorer of sorts, with the talents of Goombario from the first Paper Mario. After a quick fight, Goombella joins Mario's party after a cameo from Toadsworth from Super Mario Sunshine. You meet up with another Goomba, Professor Frankly, and learn of The Thousand Year Door that will open after all seven Crystal Stars are obtained. Thus, the adventure begins. The main story is lengthy and there will be moments where the writers dump text all over the place when you might want to go on an adventure. However, many characters are developed over the story. The partners have their own personalities and develop as the story progresses, or only develop for a short time. The same can be said for some of the generic NPCs. Some of them gradually change as you go from chapter to chapter. (Chapters are what divide each part.) The writing in the game is stunning and many moments in the game will either make you laugh or crack a smile. Unlike the Mario & Luigi series, there aren't any recurring jokes to the game and not as much slapstick, the humor mostly centering on humorous situations and funny one-liners. Much of the hilarity comes from the Koopa King himself.

Gameplay: TTYD is obviously an RPG, yet it's slightly different from most RPGs. On the field, all enemies you can fight (other than mini-bosses and bosses of course) will be seen. Upon seeing you, they will charge you. Some, like the Goomba, will walk up to you to initiate combat. Others, like the Koopa, will try to attack you on the field. If you're hit on the field, the battle begins with Mario taking damage. However, Mario can do the same thing to the enemy. By attacking the enemy on the field, the battle starts with him dealing damage. There are no random encounters in this game. The fight style is also very different from the norm.

Rather than just tapping a button and watching what happens, the fights in TTYD are interactive. It's all up to the player to determine how much damage is dealt. All attacks have an action command to them, that if done successfully, heighten the power of the attack. For example, when Mario jumps on an enemy, pressing A right before he lands on the enemy causes him to jump off the enemy and hit them a second time. Some action commands are more complicated than that one and harder to pull off, and some are even easier. Pulling off action commands earns you star power. What's star power? They allow you to use Special attacks that are done by use of the Crystal Stars. At the end of each chapter, you get one more bar added to the star power meter and one new star power. But...where does this star power come from?

It comes from the audience, a new feature to the Paper Mario series. All fights take place on a stage and an audience watches, filled with generic attacks and even cameos from characters such as Luigi. At the start of the game, your audience can only hold up to 50 characters. However, every 10 levels you get more choices and you can fit more characters, 50 more to be exact. This stops once you reach 200. Now you might think, "What if I don't want to use Star Powers? What's the good of the audience then?" They influence the match greatly. For example, performing well means an audience member might throw a helpful item to you or a coin. Performing badly means they might throw a rock or can at you. "How do you prevent Mario/Partner from being hit by one of these?" You have a few seconds to press the X button which has the selected character kick the bum out of the theater. Don't worry. There's a notice near your party when this happens.

Unlike most RPGs, TTYD deals in low numbers. The average power of an enemy is 3-4 and the average HP of a generic enemy is probably around 15. The boss with the highest HP only has 200. This keeps things simple. Every level up is the same distance away from each level as well. 100 Star Points (Like exp, you get 2-3 from each enemy usually) leads to a level up which can upgrade your HP (Health Points) by five, FP (Flower Points that let you use special moves, not the ones spoken of earlier) by five, or your BP (Badge Points that let you equip badges that change your performance more often than not) by three. Your partner is upgraded by bringing three Shrine Sprites to the wizard Merlon. Not only does your partner's power increase and they get a new move (each partner can only be upgraded once), their HP also increases, unlike in Paper Mario where partners had no HP and getting attacked put them out of battle for a while. Unfortunately, this battle system means you must be attentive for the whole fight.

Graphics: The graphics are great. The details are well done and everything looks well-designed. The environments are all 3D while the characters are 2D. They are all well-colored and don't look bland and stick out well. The bosses in particular look incredible and look like they came out of a pop up book of sorts. The speech bubbles have text that is easy to read now, unlike the text from Paper Mario that was very blurry and overlapped with other words at time. The animations are crisp and are never choppy and little details were thrown in that are appealing in a cute sort of way. For example, when Mario is in "DANGER" which means he only has 5 HP left, he'll stoop over and take in deep breaths, his eyes showing his fatigue.

Sound: The most of the music in this game aren't the most memorable of pieces. Generally, they fit the stage they are in, some to the point where you couldn't imagine something better for the stage, albeit some of them aren't something you'd want on your iPod, such as the Rogueport Sewers theme. The boss themes are done very well, which is good because every single boss in the game is done extremely well and very different from one another and are quite imaginative. The battle theme, the theme that you will be hearing a lot of the time, is also a good theme.

Difficulty: TTYD isn't one of the most challenging games you can play. With different badge combinations, you can make the game very difficulty or incredibly easy. With the ability to nullify all damage, unlike in the first Paper Mario, with amazing timing it is very possible to beat this game with only the starting stats (10 HP, 5 FP, 3 BP) You probably won't get a game over during your adventure if you know what you're doing and most battles with enemies can be completed in 2-3 turns with proper badge use and strategic planning.

Rent or Buy? It is highly recommended that you buy this game. The game is about the length of the first Paper Mario and in one week, with dedication, one can beat the main story. However, there are many things to do in the game, such as the Pit of 100 Trials and Trouble Center (If you played the first Paper Mario, think Koopa Koot with better rewards, if not, think of a list of tasks to complete for in-game characters that result in prizes such as coins.) The badges also present many different ways to play the game (See "Danger Mario") so the game goes offer some replayability.

Overall: 9.7/10 With its unique RPG style, very witty dialog, memorable bosses, and multiple quality side quests (not including a certain Bob-Omb who makes you go all over the place to find him), Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door stands among some of the best titles on the Nintendo Gamecube.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/18/06, Updated 06/18/08

Game Release: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (US, 10/11/04)