The Mario RPG brand represents some of my favorite adventures of the genre. The comedic tone, engaging art and active action systems were always the highlights for me, but the millennial gate was a personal blind spot. I played previous and after Mario RPGs, but skipped them when the original was released in 2004, and I still wasn’t working on Game Informer at that time. Ever since Nintendo remastered the acclaimed RPG for Switch, I’ve welcomed the excuse to finally play it. I’m impressed by how much the graphics and music improved two decades after, and I found that the comedy mostly holds up. I fully appreciate and understand Thousand-Year Door’s reputation as a classic now, but it’s not without its headache of 20 years ago. It probably shows the first signs that the series would be less interested in being a role-playing game in the coming years and would ultimately suffer for it.
Millennial Door has always been an attractive game. Nintendo is adept at prioritizing timeless art styles over fidelity, and Paper Mario is a figurehead of this approach. The lighting effects are the main improvement for the Switch version and they make a big difference: the game looks fantastic and Moderna everywhere. In addition to the appearance of the game, a number of small changes (such as faster partner changes and keyboard shortcuts) help smooth out the experience and generally remove annoying obstacles.
The action is still pleasant even without much need for modernization. I’m a fan of pressing timed buttons in any RPG, and I appreciate it here, but I was surprised to see that the execution prompts exist throughout the game. I assumed they would disappear after the tutorials, and it bothered me to know that they never left. And although they are necessary and tactically useful, special abilities are time-consuming and I would be afraid of having to use them. This feeling also extended to partners, and I used those whose strikes could be carried out the fastest, even if they did not cause the most damage.
Over time, the Mario RPG series fluctuated between an adventure game and a role-playing game, and here the paper branch of the tree began to grow more towards adventure. after games, such as 2020’s origami King, completely remove the level mechanics, which is a mistake. I love having a sense of progress and I enjoyed it here, even if it felt like I was traveling to the past to see the last hurrah.
Where the adventure game mechanics work is in the game worlds and characters. It’s a breath of fresh air to see completely new characters in a Mario game, especially if you feel out of place with the Mario aesthetic. I looked forward to every new place and spinner that lived there and it never disappointed me.
But continuing with this desire to be both an adventure game and a role-playing game, which Paper Mario has always had problems with, Thousand Year Door has regressed too much. Almost every location in the game tries to go to the end of an area to acquire an item, return it to someone, and then return to where you were, repeating every action along the way. With limited opportunities to travel fast, the process was often tedious.
Similarly, the sequences where you don’t play as Mario aren’t very exciting. Peach has a funny dialogue with an AI that struggles to understand emotions and solve entertaining puzzles, but if Bowser had been completely removed from the game, I don’t think I would have noticed or cared. His small payment at the end was not worth stopping between each chapter.
With all the annoyances of repetitive areas and slow (but gripping) actions, Thousand-Year Door is now the highlight of the series. It’s the first time I didn’t want a Mario RPG (I usually prefer the Mario and Luigi direction), but the constant breaking of the fourth wall, countless colorful and unique characters and their willingness to be simply funny lead to a joyful journey. I’m thankful that this brilliant take on the GameCube classic I’ve been not found is finally available on a contemporary platform.
