5/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

Platform: Switch Time Played: 49.5 hours Status: Completed When I was around eight or nine years old, I watched a playthrough of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on YouTube and was just blown away by this game. It looked so awesome, it looked so fun, and it looked so different from anything Mario I had seen before, including Super Paper Mario, a game I had already owned and played up to this point (although I can’t remember how old I was when I actually finished it). Soon after I realized that my Wii was able to play GameCube games, and Thousand-Year Door was a GameCube game! A few weeks after asking my dad to get it for me on eBay, it arrived in the mail. I popped it in my Wii, loaded it up, and started up the game, although I could only rewatch the opening cutscene over and over again as I had no GameCube controller to play the game. The next day my mom and I went to EB Games (now GameStop) and picked up a shitty third-party GameCube controller with GameStop branding on it, and a third-party memory card. Even if I only got up to Chapter 3 growing up, I still had such fond memories of TTYD. Years later in 2018 after beating Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars for the first time (another Mario RPG unfinished from my childhood) I tried playing through the game once more, and stopped around Petal Meadows, maybe I just wasn’t feeling the game at the time. Two years later in 2020 leading up to the release of The Origami King, I decided to finally play Paper Mario 64 for the first time and to finish The Thousand-Year Door for the first time in the lead-up to its release. Ever since then, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has remained one of my favorite games of all time. The memories from my childhood mixed with the genuine and sheer quality of the game has shined through and has stuck with me for so many years. So to finally get a remake of the game on Nintendo Switch, and to be able to re-experience this masterpiece in an even better and upgraded fashion is just a pure and utter treat. This new iteration of The Thousand-Year Door is literally what would happen if they just lathered another layer of polish onto an already incredible game. The graphics and art style looks incredible, the remixed and reorchestrated soundtrack is awesome alongside the brand new tracks which are pretty great. All of the quality of life improvements are very appreciated especially when it comes to backtracking. The return to form with the turn-based combat felt great to finally go back to. There were so many slight little tweaks that would generally go unnoticed that went a long way to ensure an even smoother and more seamless experience than ever before. Being able to experience this all-new version of one of my most beloved games four years after first finishing it was, once again, an absolute treat. The step in the right direction that Nintendo is taking with this alongside the Super Mario RPG remake honestly makes me so happy when it comes to looking forward to more original and unique Mario projects in the future. With this Switch remake, I decided to 100% complete the game, collecting all Star Pieces and Shine Sprites, doing all of the Troubles, completing the Tattle Log, Recipe Book, and Badge List, and man, even that was fun, and the extra little rewards for each made it all the better. Getting a sound menu and getting to look at concept art (even if only a small amount is from the actual 2004 release) was such a nice incentive to explore and find everything there was to collect. Introducing two new superbosses to this version of the game was also a really fun little addition to appease longtime fans such as myself, even if the Bonetail superboss from the original was a more challenging fight in my eyes. I really like taking a long break between replays of games because when I finally do revisit it, some story aspects feel like they’re fresh. Certain little dialog or character moments are funny all over again. Devastating moments like those between Peach and TEC make me tear up once again. It allows me to care for these characters all over again so many years down the line. But it's also in major part due to how magical this game, its world, and its characters are. Going back to the combat, I loved being able to re-experience this combat, focusing on the crowd-pleasing mechanic with the Stylish moves, something I feel like I never really tried doing in my playthrough of the original. Timing things correctly feels so rewarding, and everything feels so smooth to control. The only thing I wish was a little smoother in this game is the UI. I feel like button inputs take a few too many frames to allow another input, like when pressing the triggers in the pause menu, or having to wait just a little too long to be able to tap the A button again in the battle UI. But even then I got used to it overtime, and everything still feels incredible. There are peaks of Origami King that show here and there, with the entire world being made of paper now compared to the original, but in a way that still remains incredibly faithful and is in no way near jarring (something that was narrowly avoided when looking at the concept art and how scarily close they were to messing up the art style if they went down the Color Splash / Origami King route). But still, everything looks fantastic here, especially the character models. It was such a nice touch for them to go back and make new expressions for so many of the characters, but doing so allowed so many of the game’s NPCs to feel alive in a whole new way that just breathes even more life into a game that’s already full of it. Either way, I’m not sure of what else to say besides rambling on and on about how incredible this game is. I am so glad that this remake exists for all of the fans to re-experience this masterpiece all over again, and for those that can experience it for the first time. This keeps me so excited for the future of Mario RPGs. I can only hope that the next, brand-new Paper Mario installment is anywhere near as good and original as The Thousand-Year Door, and maybe, just maybe, we see a revival of the Mario & Luigi series, so that I can live in absolute peace and harmony.