Review: Paper Mario and the Thousand-Year Door

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

A great RPG, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has you playing as Mario, as well as guest-starring Peach and Bowser. Mario faces, by and large, the X-Nauts, a group of pretty generic evil people, and their leader Grodus, who has kidnapped Peach for reasons initially unknown. Your quest is to find the seven "crystal stars," as well as rescue Princess Peach - and solve other people's problems in the meantime, too.

The story is pretty generic, but the characters really make it spring to life. Mario himself is a silent protaganist, but the other characters are fantastic - from the sexy mouse ninja Ms. Mowz to the depressed Koopa Koops, they are quite entertaining. The subplots are also quite entertaining, and often fairly original, such as when Mario looses his identity (quite literally, his name and appearance are stolen) - it's certainly enjoyable.

I feel the need to mention pacing here - most of the time, it's quite good. Dungeons and cities are laid out well (in terms of how long you spend in each), and the subplots usually last just long enough. Also, the train level towards the end was one of my favorites, and it was just a mystery with only minimal fighting for the most part. Very well done. Occasionally, however, it does falter - for example, there's one part where you have to go back and forth between the a few different areas several times - quite annoying.

Badges are how you customize Mario - you have a set number of points (that goes up as you level) to spend on badges that can give you different attacks, more health/magic, upgrade Mario's abilities... whatever you feel like. The badge system is quite well done, and an entertaining exercise in customization.

As for the combat itself, it's very entertaining. You have Mario, and his partners, one of which can be assisting you at any given time. You can switch between them on the fly (assuming you use the right badge, which I think pretty much everyone does), giving you quite a few choices for attacks. Additionally, Mario has a decent variety of attacks to choose from, depending on which badges you give him. You also have a timing element with every attack - press A when Mario lands on someone, hold left to charge the hammer - whatever. They keep combat interesting. And combat is interesting - the wide variety of things you can do with your partners and Mario, as well as the timed effects for each ability keep combat fresh and fun.

Of course, I should mention the art style - everything looks like it's made of paper. And so it is - many of the puzzles of the game involve abusing the fact that Mario is, in fact made of paper - such as folding him into a paper airplane or turning sideways to fit through a crack. Honestly, once you get used to it, the paper art style is just another part of the world. Sure, it gets used in puzzles, but really, it's just a fanciful art style that compliments the mood of the game. It never feels like it gets in the way of the game. So really, I suppose that it's done very well - it compliments the gameplay and the tone of the game, and never feels like it should have been done some other way. And this doesn't just apply to the paper-ness of everything - twilight town (or whatever it's called) and the black and white forest are both fantastic, as well as all the other locations in the game.

All in all, this is just a solid game. There are a few things I'd change, but they are only very minor points. This game deserves the high praise it gets, as it's one of the best RPG's I've played in quite some time.


Things to learn:

Adding some sort of timing to otherwise turn-based combat is a good way to keep combat interesting.

Interesting and fun characters are key. A good story is great as well, but always looking forward to what the characters will do next makes a game interesting.

Sometimes, just doing something very well without being especially innovative is excellent.

Feel free to use a seemingly bizarre art style! If you do it well, and it compliments the game, it'll work, no matter how initially crazy it may sound.



Also, some housekeeping - I've basically run out of pre-made reviews and design from my archives, so I'm shifting to a once-per-week update schedule (at least - I may update more than that), and ditching having any select day to update on - though Tuesday and/or Thursday will still be likely. Also, this is really last weeks post, so expect another later in the week.