Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

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Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
What lies behind the Thousand-Year Door...
Protagonist(s): Mario Genre(s): Role-playing Rating(s): PEGI: 3 CERO: A ACB: PG Platform(s): Nintendo GameCube Nintendo Switch Release Date: GameCube: JP: July 22, 2004 NA: October 11, 2004 EU: November 12, 2004 AU: November 18, 2004 Nintendo Switch: WW: May 23, 2024 Developer(s): Intelligent Systems Publisher(s): Nintendo Country: Japan Series: Paper Mario Predecessor: Paper Mario Successor: Super Paper Mario

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is the 2004 role-playing video game and the second installment in the Paper Mario series, with the first being Paper Mario. It was released for the Nintendo GameCube. A remake was released on the Nintendo Switch on May 23, 2024.

Plot

1000 years before the events of the game, a city was destroyed by a demon before being defeated by four heroes with the use of the Crystal Stars, 7 powerful magical stones. The city was buried underground and left to rot. Eventually, the events faded into myth and a new town named Rogueport was built over the ruins. Rogueport became an infamous town filled with criminal gangs.

Soon, word about a treasure located behind a door within the underground ruins spread. According to the rumor, the 7 Crystals Stars are required to open the door, and a magical map would lead the way to the stars. Every crook in the town attempted to open the door, but without the map and the Crystal stars, they all failed. Over time the treasure was dismissed as legend and the door was named "The Thousand Year Door".

Why It Rocks a Thousand Times

1. In terms of gameplay, The Thousand-Year Door brings over the core mechanics of the N64 original, enhances them, and solves flaws the first game had.
2. Besides Mario, the game features six recruitable characters, most are permanent, and one is optional, this being Ms, Mowz.
3. Like the previous game, the partners have three levels of upgrade and by each one, they learn a new move; however, in this game, the partners have a proper health bar, which can be upgraded by using certain badges or upgrading the member by using 3 Shine Sprites (which work in a similar vein to the Upgrade Blocks).
4. Additionally, the partners are more original, since only three of them are spiritual successors to the ones in the prequel (Goombella, Bobbery and Koops), and the newcomers are wind spirit Flurrie, a baby Yoshi who can be named as the player want (additionally, said baby's color depends on the time spent till the player has obtained the egg), a Shadow Siren Vivian who is punished by her sisters and decides to help Mario (she eventually punished her oldest sister Beldam in payback) and the aforementioned optional mouse partner Ms. Mowz, who joins Mario after completing her trouble.
   • On the topic of Vivian, she's considered as one of the best representations of transgender people in gaming history, despite being changed to cis in the English and German localization of the GameCube version.
5. The game has pretty and vibrant graphics. It looks almost like a story or pop-up book in terms of world design and the characters' paper look enhances the world's look.
6. Very strong and in-depth plot which, like Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, is surprisingly dark and mature for a Mario game, while at the same time not causing the game to feel like it tries too hard to be edgy and still being light-hearted.
7. Humorous dialogue and situations (like when Bowser was talking to a Peach poster at one point) along with with a gorgeous colorful paper-like world that looks similar to the first game.
   • There is also another hilarious moment where Pennington mistakes Mario for Luigi (and this also goes on more than once in the game).
8. Creative and challenging puzzle solving that requires you to take advantage of your party member's and Mario's paper abilities.
9. Mario now has a voice used for jumping and attacking and starts his adventure with a hammer. He still has no dialogue in text bubbles though.
10. Battles are set up on a stage, like a play; this greatly affects battles, and characters can interact with the audience and stage. The size of the audience depends on the level, holding a maximum of 50 on the first ten levels and 200 on 30+.
11. The part where Flurrie kisses Mario after he retrieves her necklace is quite romantic.
    • Speaking of which, female partners flirt with Mario, which ranges from cute (like Vivian kissing Mario) to funny (especially with Ms. Mowz, who does that constantly and annoys some female partners and/or make them jealous).
12. Throughout the game, Mario will find special abilities to use in the overworld and allow Mario to transform into a paper boat, a plane, etc. These abilities take advantage of Mario being completely flat. For comedic effect, these abilities are "curses" inflicted on Mario by demons.
13. In some parts of the game, Bowser becomes a playable character, and just like the last game, you can also play as Princess Peach.
14. Every time Mario wins a battle, he will earn Star Points. When Mario's Star Point Level gets up to 100, the player can choose whether to upgrade Mario's Heart Points, Flower Points or Badge Points much like the first game.
15. Badges can be equipped to gain new abilities and opens options for countless different strategies.
16. Many optional mini-games and side-quests that add lots of gameplay, most notably "Trouble Center" and "The Pit of 100 Trials".
17. A lot of great villains (both for Mario standards and in general), with Doopliss, Sir Grodus and, of course, the Shadow Queen, being fan favorites.
18. Many callbacks to the previous Mario games, such as the Shine Sprites and Piantas from Super Mario Sunshine and music and stages from the first Mario game for the NES.
19. Unlike the first game, after beating the game, you can go through the post-credits scene.

Remake

1. While the graphics were colorful and amazing in the original, this remake enhances them to perfection. It may be one of the best-looking Nintendo Switch games.
2. Discussed below, this remake adds many changes that improve upon the original.
3. Backtracking, which was a major problem in the original, has been reduced significantly thanks to the inclusion of a fast travel system.
4. The inclusion of a partner ring which allows players to swap out party members much faster instead of going to a menu in the original.
5. Battle Masters and a mouse NPC Ian Floomus were added to allow players to practice battles and get hints in solving side-quests.
6. The ability to retry a battle if you die during one. This makes the final battle with The Shadow Queen much less frustrating.
7. An increased inventory and coin count.
8. The Nintendo Gamecube badge is added, allowing players to listen to the original soundtrack if they please.
9. In a throwback to Super Mario Bros 3, the slot machines were replaced with sliding tiles.
10. Two new bosses were added, Whacka and Prince Mush.
11. And the best change of all, Vivian is officially a transgender woman in the remake, compared to the original where the only instinct in which Vivian is trans is in its Japanese version. This led many players (especially those who are LGBTQ) to rejoice and that everything they fought for in Beldam misgendering the poor witch was worth it.
12. It's great to see several of the characters from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door after twenty years, despite this game being a remake.

Bad Qualities

1. Unlike the first game, Heart Boxes and sleeping in beds require 10 or more coins to be paid.
2. Even if the Partner still has his or her HP after Mario dies, you lose the battle, resulting in a Game Over.
3. Somewhat tedious backtracking. The worst offender is Chapter 4, which has you go back and forth between Twilight Town and Creepy Stepple at least 3 times.
4. The General White mission is considered one of the most boring missions in the game: You must backtrack between several areas and are told that White is at another place until Mario goes back to Fahr Outpost and White is revealed to have been there the whole time, making the quest entirely pointless.
5. The gimmicks on the battle stage can get a bit annoying and even unfair at times.
6. While the Bingo games are fun, there are these poisonous shrooms, and if all three of them match, your HP, FP, and SP get drastically cut down and your audience will leave the arena.
7. Similar to EarthBound, Mario can only buy a specific item one at a time, which gets tiring.
8. The heavily expanded badge system resulted in cheap and exceedingly overpowered strategies being created, such as Danger Mario in which Mario is equipped with badges that only work while Mario is in the Danger state and then Mario's HP is reduced to five to prevent Mario from exiting the state. This strategy can cheese a lot of bosses such as Bonetail, as shown here.
9. Beldam is an extremely hateful and unlikable villain for abusing Vivian. It's even worse when she throws transphobic insults at the latter by misgendering her in the Japanese version. Fortunately, she gets her comeuppance (which is very satisfying) and redeems herself at the end of the game.
10. The infamous moment where Peach has to turn invisible to sneak around in the X-Nauts lab, but her clothes aren't invisible, meaning she has to remove them to become completely naked, which is inappropriate in an E-rated game. Same goes for when Peach showers in the tub while taking her dress off, though the curtains cover her naked body.
    • Speaking of inappropriate, Flurrie's character design is a bit sexualized complete with moderate-sized breasts.
    • The worst part that a lot of other inappropriate moments were left in the Japanese version, the most infamous being Vivian's gender (in the original versions, she was described as a transgender woman, but in English and German localizations, Beldam used gender-neutral insults due to Nintendo's concerns of transphobic content), the Larson's house in Rogueport had a bloody Toad outline, which resembled a literal murder scene, and Boo sisters in Rogueport's shop wore bunny ears which were replaced in later releases because they resembled a Playboy Bunny costume.

Remake

1. This remake runs at 30fps compared to 60fps in the original. Granted, due to the enhanced graphics and quality of life improvements, it sort of makes sense.
2. Instead of the "End Of Chapter!" message in the original, players now get "Cleared!" after completing each chapter.
3. Despite the inclusion of two new bosses, updated visuals, and some quality-of-life improvements, this remake is mostly the same as the original.
4. The text speed is a huge downgrade since it is excruciatingly slow and renders the players unable to skip through it and move on, and can only speed up dialogue after talking to characters the first time. It is especially bad in Chapter 3, when the player has to go through the long dialogue of Jolene and Sir Swoop as well as the dialogue between Grubba and the Armored Harriers, while wasting valuable time for them to get a specific color Yoshi they want.
   • The player cannot scroll back on the dialogue anymore either which can be a pain if they accidentally skip through some parts they missed.

Tips

1. If you know the instructions on what items you need to buy in the correct order to get to Don Pianta's base is, you don't have to pay Ishnail 64 coins to know the order.
   • Buy a Dried Shroom, then a Dizzy Dial item in a shop. Then answer "Black" and "Yellow".
2. Keep your partner in the front position so enemies are less likely to attack Mario. If your partner is defeated you can bring out another one, but if Mario is defeated, you get a Game Over (unless you are carrying a Life Shroom to avert it).
3. When battling Cortez's final phase, it's wise to use Flurrie's Gale Force attack to blow away his weapons, so he can't use them to inflict so much damage to you; this way you will only have Cortez's bite attack to deal with.
4. When battling the Shadow Queen (during the second phase), three characters are useful against her hands:
   • Vivian can use her Fiery Jinx to take out the Shadow Queen's pair of big hands.
   • Flurrie can use her Gale Force to blow away the Shadow Queen's army of smaller hands.
   • Yoshi's stampede can defeat either form of the hands at once.
5. There are some NPC's you should not talk to before getting to Petalburg, as the game will crash in the cutscene that happens when you enter Petalburg.
6. Concentrate most of your level-up bonuses on badges; additionally, Quick Change and everything that rises Mario/Mario's partner HP/FP/attack/defense by 1.

Trivia

1. Some fans speculated that Kammy Koopa died after this game, due to her last line being "Forgive me, Lord Bowser! I have nothing left..." and her absence in Super Paper Mario and onwards supports this.

Reception

The game was well-received by critics, who generally praised the game's engaging plot and gameplay.

One of The Thousand-Year Door's main features, the use of a paper-based universe, was welcomed by reviewers. When referring to the paper theme, critics commented that "It's a cohesive, clever approach that turns the game's visual style into more than just a look." Critics also commented extensively on the game's battle system, which deviated from traditional RPGs.

The remake was also well received, with praise going to the improved visuals and improvements made to reduce backtracking, which was a common criticism of the original.

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