Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Review

Final Fantasy. You’re either sick of this franchise or can’t get enough of it. There isn’t much room for middle grounds, here. Unless, of course, you are a Nintendo fan, because we all know Square Enix and Nintendo haven’t been the best at sharing. Sure, the GameCube saw Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, but that was more of an action/adventure game, and not a very good one at that. The RPG is a genre that has seen a serious drought on Nintendo systems since the Nintendo 64. But Nintendo always manages to fill the void with its own IPs, and Paper Mario does just that.

If you’re unfamiliar with the original Paper Mario, the series gets its name due to its artistic direction. Mario– is– paper. Everything is made of paper. All of the characters are flat, 2D shapes. Houses will fold out like a pop-up book when you enter them. Parts of the scenery will peel away to reveal a hidden staircase. It’s a fun premise, and much of the game’s charm stems from watching Mario fold into a paper airplane or turn sideways and slip through a crack. It’s sad, then, that the paper idea wasn’t taken “to the extreme.” Many of the 3D objects just don’t look like they were constructed out of paper, and the lack of textures would make this game more appropriately titled Shiny Plastic Mario. But hey, that shiny plastic also creates one of the cleanest-looking video games ever made. 2D always looks cleaner than 3D, and Paper Mario has a polish to it you just don’t see anywhere else. Because it’s so simple, too, the game can get away with more on-screen action. In some instances, there are over 200 characters in one area. That may not sound so impressive when you realize these characters are all flat, one-dimensional objects, but when was the last time you saw 200 characters on the same screen?

The music is as you would expect, too: cheery, kooky, and heavily nostalgic. Some of the remixes manage to surpass their original roots, and the entirely new music ranks as some of the best in the Mario universe. One thing sorely missing, however, is voice acting. Nintendo is so insistent on keeping everything to text, and its games are hurt because of it. Paper Mario requires a lot of reading, and I found myself frequently and unnecessarily bored and tired. Nintendo games like to talk you through just about everything, and the amount of speech you have to trudge through is preposterous. For every little thing you do, there is always a character that has to elaborate on it. Sometimes you end up sitting through long conversations that don’t even play any important part to the story. On one occasion, you watch a cutscene, are asked to save, watch another cutscene, are asked to save, watch another cutscene, are asked to save, and now can finally start playing again. Yes, stories play an important part in RPGs, but when you have to read the story, it gets pretty tedious. It helps that the writing is funny (with some surprising, underlying adult humor), but either let up on the dialogue or start paying Charles Martinet more!

And, honestly, that’s my biggest gripe with this game. Everything else is great. This may not be your typical “hardcore RPG,” but it’s just as fun and entertaining. The reason why Paper Mario is so successful is that it doesn’t limit itself to standard RPG conventions. Traveling across an overworld isn’t a means to an end. In the overworld, the game plays out much like a platformer. Mario can jump, smack things with his hammer, and butt stomp blocks, and new moves are gradually learned over time. At least half of the game consists of platform-based puzzles that rely on these abilities. You may need to climb across the rooftops and sneak into somebody’s house or, when in a dungeon, roll into a paper tube and dodge out of the way of spikes. There’s a lot of variety to what you have to do, and rarely does the game feel like it’s treading water. There are even sequences with you playing as Princess Peach and Bowser, including a retro Super Mario Bros. level with the big koopa. The developers obviously had a lot of ideas for this game.

Mario doesn’t go about his adventure by himself, though. Several quirky and unique characters will join you along the way, including a goomba and a koopa. All of them have a special ability which can help you in the overworld. For instance, Goombella can tell you about your current location while Koops can hit switches and grab out-of-reach items. But it’s in battle where their roles really become important. Mario can’t get far on his own. His various hammer/jump attacks aren’t always effective against certain monsters, and when Mario’s HP drops to zero, it’s game over. But whichever supporting character is on screen can faint without halting the fight. The whole idea is to avoid this, of course, because they’re not only useful fighters but can also act as a healer or stand in front of Mario to receive the brunt of the damage.