Nintendo Switch

Growing up, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was one of my favorite games to play. To this day many of its imaginative areas stick out in my mind as hallmarks of excellence. I was excited for the remaster to be released so I could revisit a staple of my childhood. Playing through the game now resolidified my confidence that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is one of the greatest RPGs of all time. The game oozes charm, character, and creativity from every crevice.

In classic Mario fashion, the game opens with Peach getting kidnapped, but not by Bowser this time. The mysterious X-Nauts have captured her as Peach found a map to the legendary treasure underneath the city of Rogueport. The treasure is behind the locked Thousand-Year Door which can only be opened by collecting the 7 Crystal Stars. The game follows Mario as he hunts down the Crystal Stars in a variety of locales. And what a fantastic set of locales they are.

From the very start of the game, it is apparent how creative Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is. Rogueport is a run-down, grimy, and crime ridden city that serves as your hub. The city center has a few establishments but the gallows in the middle makes it abundantly clear what kind of city this is. The art, atmosphere, and slimy characters make Rogueport a standout location. And that’s just the beginning. As the game progresses you will encounter a handful of unique and charming areas. Glitz Pit is one of my favorite areas in any video game. This flying wrestling arena begins innocuously as you climb the ranks to claim the champion’s belt, but it slowly injects mystery and intrigue into its cramped halls. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is full of creative ideas and memorable places, each with their own episodic story to tell.

Part of what makes Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door so charming is its cast of characters and writing. Through your adventures you will encounter a ton of characters brimming with personality. Each of Mario’s partners has their own distinct character traits and motivations. Even side characters that don’t have a ton of relevance to the story feel genuine. The writing is just filled with charm and wit. While the game relies plenty on humor, it does have its serious moments of bravery, introspection, and self-sacrifice. And the character’s expressive animations go the extra mile to bring life to these paper cutouts.

A common complaint that many people have with turn-based RPGs is that the combat is boring. Oftentimes it can boil down to selecting your most powerful attack and watching animations ad nauseam. While Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door might not have incredible levels of depth it does have one key thing going for it: interactivity. Mario and his partners have a variety of attacks, each with their own button prompts to execute for better results. It may be as simple as pressing the “A” button at the right time, or holding back on the analog stick and letting it snap back at the apex of a hammer swing, but there is a fantastic tactile feeling to the otherwise simplistic combat. The timings are fairly generous but I think that is a good thing because of the necessity of landing these bonuses. You are going to have a very hard time if you don’t learn these prompts and fail to execute. I like that because even though choosing an attack may be fairly straightforward, you aren’t relegated to just watching an animation play. You have to be actively engaged to maximize your output.

Aside from the active aspect of combat, I also love how customizable your strategy can be. A prominent component of this is the badge system. As you explore, you collect a variety of badges that can be equipped at the cost of BP (which can be earned on level-up). These BP can range from extra defense when you are low HP, to special attacks that cause status effects such as sleep, to a raw damage buff. The more generalist and powerful badges cost a ton of BP so it can be fun to experiment with different builds. Moreover, there are a handful of different partners to fight alongside to choose from. While you can swap them around as you please, I think many people are going to have one or two favorites that they default to. Between badges and partner selection, there’s a solid amount of customization to how you approach combat.

Apart from combat, another aspect that many RPGs get wrong that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door gets right is pacing. Many RPGs are notoriously long games that could take months of regular play to complete. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a relatively brisk adventure comparatively. But it doesn’t feel rushed either. A complaint that I had about Super Mario RPG was that while I appreciated how quick it moved from place to place, it often felt rushed and I had no time to truly soak in the world. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door sits in the Goldilocks zone of pacing; every chapter is just right in length. There’s enough time to become familiar with every area and to tell an interesting story in every chapter, but it never overstays its welcome either. Overall pacing is something that is crucial yet incredibly hard to perfect, but Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door does a great job at it.

Unfortunately, a pacing problem is also my sole issue with Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. While every chapter and the game itself is paced wonderfully on the whole, I do think there are some moment-to-moment drags. Structurally, many chapters play out similarly: opening with Mario venturing into a new area, learning about the area, discovering the antagonist, fighting through a bunch of bad guys to reach the boss, resolving that chapter’s conflict, and then closing out by seeing what Peach and Bowser have been up to in the meantime. The problem is that all the combat is packed right into the middle of the chapter.

I typically want there to be a healthy mix of combat, story, and exploration throughout but all the talking bits are concentrated at the beginning and end of every chapter. Completing one chapter, the in between sections, and then starting a new chapter can often feel like ages have passed without any combat. And even if I think the combat is solid for an RPG, it can get repetitive if it’s all I’m doing in the middle of a chapter. I wanted story to break up the combat. And I wanted combat to break up the story. I think this issue is minor in the grand scheme of things, but I definitely would’ve liked to have story and combat less isolated from one another.

When I played the game this time around, I tried the remaster that was released for the Nintendo Switch. I can confidently say that this is the definitive way to play the game. The game’s presentation has been improved with improved visual fidelity and new expressive character animations. The soundtrack has been wonderfully redone but there is also the option to use the old version if that’s what you prefer. There’s some great new quality of life changes such as quick swapping partners while exploring and an increased inventory size. Some areas have a new shortcut to cut down on tedious backtracking. And there are new optional bosses for players who don’t want the adventure to end. It’s an all-around excellent remaster with some nice touches.

There’s a reason that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a legendary RPG. It’s a game that looms over the rest of the genre as the benchmark for excellence. Paper Mario as a series in particular has had a hard time living up to this peak. It’s charming cast of characters, creative locales, and intriguing episodic chapters make for an unforgettable adventure. The combat allows for some customization and its active nature keeps it from being a turn-based snooze fest. If you are a fan of RPGs, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a game that you cannot miss.

Turn-based RPGs are often some of the longest video games that exist. They can easily exceed dozens of hours, if not hundreds. I’m often put off from many of these games as I feel they are bloated with repetitive content and grinding. But Super Mario RPG is the rare case of an RPG that went in the opposite direction. It’s an intentionally short and sweet experience. You move so quickly through the zones and dungeons that there’s no chance to be overcome by tedium. It’s a game that relies on novelty rather than a grandiose story and scope.

Super Mario RPG is a wacky game. There’s plenty of goofy characters, ridiculous situations, and slapstick comedy. While many RPGs focus on slowly building up an ever-escalating story, Super Mario RPG moves at a breakneck pace through silly scenarios and never gets tiresome. A giant sword has fallen from the sky and destroyed Bowser’s castle and the army of sentient weapons is threatening to steal all the Star Pieces to prevent any wishes from coming true. It’s not a super engaging story, but it is helped by the characters.

There’s a ton of unique characters introduced in Super Mario RPG, the main ones being Geno and Mallow. Geno is a stalwart spirt from space that inhabits a wooden doll, while Geno is a young emotional cloud who was adopted by the Frog Sage. Bowser also gains his signature braggadocious personality as he assists Mario and company on their journey. While the story itself won’t keep you on the edge of your seat, the characters and their goofy interactions makes the adventure far more charming. After playing this game, I hope that Nintendo allows future RPGs set in the Mario world to create new characters, as that bizarre decision something that has been holding back the Paper Mario series for years.

The biggest strength of Super Mario RPG is just how snappy everything is. From the story, to the progression, to the battles. The battles in particular are a blessing. First and foremost, there are no random encounters. You can just walk past enemies that you don’t want to deal with. Despite being turn-based, the battles themselves are remarkably fast-paced. Animations and text boxes are snappy, health pools aren’t overinflated, and there isn’t too much fanfare that slows things down. I often get in and out of the easier encounters in 30 seconds to a minute.

Thankfully, this is not a game that you have to grind for experience to complete. I found that I naturally gained plenty of levels and equipment from just playing normally to beat the game. The game is definitely on the easier side, the only major hurdles are the bosses. I enjoyed the simplicity of basic bosses but I also appreciated when I had to use a little more strategy during the elongated boss fights. The combat is fairly basic, but I appreciated the simplicity of straightforward attacks and abilities.

One aspect that I enjoyed about combat in Super Mario RPG is that it is interactive despite being turn-based. By timing button-presses during tight windows of opportunity during animations you can increase your own damage or block damage from enemy attacks. I liked learning all the timings for the different weapons, abilities, and enemies. The game has a system that hints towards the correct timings if you miss it too many times, but the hint goes away once you start succeeding again.

Progressing through the game is absurdly fast. The game is maybe 12-15 hours long, but it’s crazy how many areas they crammed into the game. I never got exhausted in any zone as they just went by so fast. Every area has its own little story and characters like a typical RPG, but it doesn’t drag anything out. I think this is mostly to the games benefit, but some of the areas and towns I would have liked to spend a bit more time in. It’s hard to really get invested in any of the side characters, stories, or areas when you only spend 30 minutes to an hour there. Still, I’d rather be left wanting more than feel exhausted at the end of a game.

My only major complaint about Super Mario RPG is the janky mini-games and platforming. Many of the game’s side activities are mini-games such as Yoshi racing, minecart riding, or drifting down a river in a barrel. I think all these are all wonderfully fun ideas, but I never quite got a hang of them. They often feel like they go on for far too long and have underwhelming rewards. Anything platforming related in particular just felt awkward do the camera angles.

I never played the original Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars that this game was based on. However, from what I can tell Super Mario RPG is a fairly faithful remake. It added a lot of quality-of-life features like more frequent saves and being able to quick-swap party members. Additionally, the player has access to powerful special attacks after filling up a gauge as a reward for successfully timing attacks and blocks. I will say that while all these features are nice, they do make an already pretty easy game even easier. Personally, I didn’t mind the easier experience but perhaps more hardcore RPG fans might be let down by the lack of challenge.

Aside from the quality-of-life updates, the most important change that the remake made was to the visuals. Super Mario RPG does a phenomenal job of modernizing the original art style while keeping its toy-like feel. The games vibrant visuals and bright color palette make it feel like a wonderland. There’s also a handful of cutscenes in the same style that look great.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by Super Mario RPG. It was a rollercoaster of goofy characters and classic environments. It’s not an RPG that you should reach for if you want a crazy story with twists and turns, but its smaller scope lets it speed through content at a breakneck pace. It goes to show that not every RPG needs to be a hundred hours long and that people can appreciate a more concise adventure. It is for these reasons that I give Super Mario RPG an 8/10. It’s not a grand adventure, but it is a fun one.

stephensopinions

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004)

Super Mario RPG (2023)