Welcome to The Starlight Megaphone‘s playthrough of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, originally released in July (Japan), October (N. America), and November (EU and Australia) of 2024 for the Nintendo GameCube, and then released worldwide in a remade and substantially overhauled Switch edition on 23 May 2024. It is the second game in the Paper Mario series, which began with Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64 in 2000. The remake was originally announced in the September 2023 Nintendo Direct presentation, where its updated graphics and presentation were an instant hit with fans of the series, suggesting that the game was on target to succeed in being a properly satisfying remake.
A hybrid JRPG with occasional timing, puzzle, and platform mechanics, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door continues and further develops the gameplay ideas first presented in the original Nintendo 64 game. Each game is more or less self-contained, although characters from the Mario universe obviously recur from game to game, playing out their traditional roles. In the Paper Mario world, Mario and his friends are flat, two-dimensional representations of themselves, as if printed on paper. The game is fully aware of this imagined reality, and references are made to it both narratively and in the mechanics of the gameplay itself. The tone is highly jocular, with frequent humour and a light-hearted tone, overall. But the Paper Mario games also include serious and even tragic story elements, and they are often praised for striking an effective balance between the two, as JRPGs of the past used to do so successfully.
Please use the comment thread below to discuss your approach to the game, challenges you have faced, strategies and content you have uncovered, and any aids you are using in your playthrough. Is this title a fitting remake of the original Gamecube game? Is this your first experience with a Paper Mario game; or have you played other titles in the series (whether console or handheld)? What sorts of changes would you make to the game? Tell us all about it and join in our discussion below! We will select some of the best comments for our podcast discussions.
The aim in this playthrough is to complete the game by 5 July 2024. Instead of milestones, we encourage you to play at your own pace—but please keep us updated about your thoughts and progress as you play the game. This will help to sustain our discussion and encourage other players, whilst helping us to monitor and adjust the length of the playthrough. Please also make use of our official Discord channel, where we have an #events channel dedicated to playthrough chat.
Please join in with us and comment about your experience! Our playthrough is intended to encourage anyone and everyone to participate, regardless of speed of play or familiarity with the genre. Comment and tell your friends!
Without further adieu, we invite you to join The Starlight Megaphone‘s staff members and readers in Mario Refolded: a Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door playthrough!
The Starlight Megaphone! 
Having never played the original version, nor indeed any Paper Mario (or Mario & Luigi) game, my body is ready for this new experience.
M&L isn’t really anything to write home about, but the Paper Mario games are good even when they’re not. Sticker Star, for example, was just a bunch of terrible ideas, but it still managed to be compelling and interesting enough that I finished it.
They are, in a way, the opposite of modern Final Fantasy games in that they command attention and interest even as FF games do everything they can to undermine interest even in their comparably good games (like FF7: Rebirth). Put another way, even a bad Paper Mario game will still reward you for playing it—you might never play it again, but you will get something out of playing it that first time.
Just started playing and I already enjoy the humorous tone, e.g. Goombella calling people bozos, freaks, and weirdos.
I also enjoy how all the characters are presented in the cartoonish artstyle like was in the manual and player’s guide for Super Mario World. That’s a nice consistency which I’ve seen anywhere but in a game. I suppose it’s the norm for Paper Mario.
It is the norm for Paper Mario, but that doesn’t mean we should take it for granted!
The writing is self-aware but not in the overtly obnoxious, sardonic way that so many modern games are. It’s much more subtle, and the effect is delightful rather than intrusive. The writing, too, is lighthearted, jovial, and silly, all without ever really losing the immersion of the story, which can happen if the humour goes overboard, or is too “present”.
In short, the paper Mario games are just really excellent fun. They can be serious and they can be silly, but they are always enjoyable.
Something I mentioned back when I was playing through Origami King is how good the music in the Paper Mario series is. It’s really snappy—jazzy, bluesy, hoppin, poppin, boppin music, and it has been consistently excellent in every Paper Mario game, even Sticker Star and Colour Splash, which didn’t grab me as much as the other games do.
Just completed Chapter 1!
I do like the music, and appreciate the badge which switches to the GameCube soundtrack for some subtle but noticeable difference, but there’s no comparison to even Super Mario RPG. I retain it for minutes after walking away (Rogueport Sewers was a standout example), but couldn’t hum you a single tune the next day. It’s unobtrusively fine.
I appreciate the pressure that the low stats are giving you, but it seems like the Badge Points are way too important compared to HP & FP. BP is truly the currency of this game. Lacking a solid healing spell (Sweet Treat isn’t my fortè) makes me play differently, and FP would be more important if it did have that. Maybe later? Still, it hangs together remarkably well.
The dungeons are set up more around puzzles and recent abilities to solve them than perhaps any RPG I’ve played, and this is a solid plus for TTYD and I assume the Paper Mario series.
I realized too late that Goombella’s Tattle logs a permanent entry for every enemy, so I missed a bunch :/ I guess this is why Nintendo doesn’t do trophies/achievements.
“Take a hike, Bozo the Chump!”
Nintendo should make Goombella a regular for the Mario series proper. I’d use her in Mario Kart for sure. Mario Wonder 2 where instead of whistful flowers it’s sassy goombellas calling you a jerkwad. Please do.
Goombella is great. She has the perfect sassy tone that doesn’t devolve into very-online of-the-moment internet lingo—a pitfall that a certain other recent game has fallen into!
I find the music very memorable, especially the battle theme, which I find myself humming all the time. But this was also true of Origami King—I still hum the battle theme from that, too!
The music is pleasant and appropriate to each location. I think the melodies are a bit too random, but this is comparing to the strength of melodies from the Super Mario series and RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Vanishingly few OSTs can be compared to those. But this game’s themes stick better with repetition. For instance, I thought the music during the vignette with Bowser was really cool, nice distorted guitars, but I couldn’t tell you how the music went since it only lasted a couple minutes. Whereas I just took a walk and heard the Rogueport music in my head the entire time.
I don’t mean to keep pushing on about the music; it’s good! Always enjoy the cup of tea if it’s delicious to you.
This is peak hub town design. Unprompted and unguided exploration after the Chapter 1 boss lead to new areas to explore in Rogueport with more things to do (Trouble Center and Pinata Casino), as well as a shortcut hub back to Petallymeadow (or whatever), and the newest ability also allows shortcuts to repeat spaces. I can see where future abilities will be useful. It’s a fun way to reduce the usual stress of repetition! I mean, high marks for game design on this title.
Madame Flurrie’s theme, that sleazy saxophone song, is really good.
The presentation in TYD remake is remarkable, and every single thing about it has been polished really well. I know that Origami King isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but they did the same thing with that game: absolutely polished to a shine. You might not like the mechanics, but you can’t deny the exceptional quality of the presentation.
TTYD looks like an artful diarama. Today I looked at some footage of Origami King, and it looks 10x better than that. Ordered it immediately. Even if I may like the battles, story, and characters from TTYD better, Origami King looks utterly gorgeous to play.
I was very wary of OK because there isn’t a whole lot of point to battles, and they aren’t super fast because of the rotating puzzle mechanic. But they can be avoided, and many can be cleared in a single round before the enemy even attacks, so they are fast enough.
The boss puzzles, music, writing, and art were incredible, though. I ended up loving it. A great game!
Reached Chapter 3 tonight! I’m guessing this is about one-quarter to one-third way through the game. Still having great fun!
…and completed Chapter 3 the next night! A chapter built mostly around a fighting tournament in one small area, it saves the feeling of that being a cop-out by adding the mystery investigation and battle conditions. Pretty cool.
Mario is level 11, with 20 HP, 15 FP, and 21 BP. The Quick Change badge is necessary if expensive, and the Happy Heart & Flower recover just randomly enough to not make it too easy. The special moves I use most often are Power Smash (or P. Bounce) for heavy-hitting and Quake Hammer for multi-hits. I’ve got enough BP now to add on Power Plus, and switch that with Heart/Flower Finder to keep topped up in fields & dungeons. There’s some progress updates for ya.
All-in-all, I’m having a great time.
Completed Chapter 4!
I appreciate the fake-out ending midway through, where you’re forced into using one party member (who luckily can hit anywhere and always gives extra fire damage; I will be using her often). It was a cool setting: spooky woods, medievel-ish peasant village, without getting kitschy. Going back and forth a few times between maybe 10 screens is not a point in its favor, but there was somewhere new to enter each time and it didn’t get tiring. I also like how this game isn’t going Grasslands > Desert > Water > Ice World, &c like the New SMB formula. It’s full of unique and interesting locations.
On a tangent, I received a Switch Pro Controller today, and besides it being really nice, it’s actually easier to perform some of the command actions, like the Yoshi (whom I’ve named Kurp)’s stomp with this ZR button, which is actually a button, compared to the 8bitdo SN30 Pro which has resistive triggers for ZL/ZR.
I’m on track towards completing this on time! It helps that it’s a particularly fun and well-designed game.
I love the Switch Pro controllers (I have five of them!) for everything except D-pad only classic games. The D-pad isn’t terrible, but it’s a bit too firm, and a bit too fiddly, for games that use it as the primary input.
Man alive, now I’m finished with Chapter 5! I’ve found one instance where the original soundtrack (accessible via the Nostalgia Badge) is better than the remade one, which is the jungle in Keelhaul Key, by dint of the percussion being mixed more loudly and deeply. The game is still surprising and unique while being light and playful.
Completed Chapter 6 today! Honestly, this one was a let-down, like it was a rush-job. The Excess Express is so much running back and forth, the dungeon is barely there, and the Star Get is very anticlimactic. After some cleanup, I’ll see from Chapter 7 if the game is running out of steam, or if that was a low-stakes segue into more serious business; it seems like it’s promising the latter.
Chapter 7 completed, and doing some cleanup before entering I guess the final dungeon. Here’s where Paper Mario has its Final Fantasy moment: being shot out of a canon to go through a dungeon on the moon. Great BGM there too. I also defeated the optional boss Prince Mush of the Glitz Pit, who was leagues harder than any other boss and required some planning and learning patterns.
I’m still in the Glitz Pit—I find the repeated (and LONG) series of battles a bit wearying, so I’ve been doing one or two here and there. I just beat Bowser yesterday (what a wimp!), and was really delighted when he showed up.
During the upcoming two-day-long enforced FFXIV holiday, I’m going to try and make great strides on Paper Mario. I also have the last two days of our playthrough off of work entirely (although XIV’s expansion will be out), so I’m hoping to get near the end even if I don’t quite make it over the line. Then, it’s back to 7 Rebirth!
Chapter 8 completed and credits rolled – Star Get for me this playthrough! Ended with ~50 hours with all the optional content (e.g. Trouble Center) completed and some time spent letting the music play, at level 28.
Last night I died once to the final boss, then beat it but the game crashed(!) at the end of the credits, and just now beat it again to save for some post-game content? It brings you back to Rogueport when you load the save. Also, it seems like the boss gets easier if you die once, like it didn’t do the HP drain move as much, but may be due to my approaching it differently.
I wonder if this game is the origin of the RPG trope where it shows everyone you’ve met in your journey who send you their hopes and energy so you can do damage to the final boss. TTYD was from 2004, and the next earliest game I can think of now is Persona 3 from 2008. Let me know any earlier examples.
I would easily say this trounces both Super Mario RPG and Mystic Quest as the best game to offer someone new to JRPGs. It can be very easy if you’re paying attention, but tough if you don’t pick up on patterns. It offers actually quite a lot of variety in the battle action commands than just press A at the right time. All the characters and locations are varied and engaging, the music is always good and often great, and the chapters usually pace themselves nicely (chapters 3 and 6 are a bit of a slog, but they serve to change it up).
My one-sentence review of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: It isn’t Hamlet, but it is Much Ado About Nothing.
I finished chapter 3 yesterday evening. Today is the last day of XIV before the servers go down ahead of the Dawntrail launch, So there won’t be much Mario this evening – but for the next two days, there will be a little else.
Next week, I have several days off for the holiday, including the last few days of our playthrough. I’m not sure how much time I’ll put into this, given that Dawntrail will be out, but I’m going to try and finish it soon, even if I can’t do so in time for our PT!
Finished Chapters 4 & 5 last night, both of which were excellent. I especially liked the punchy brevity of 4. Onward!
Finished Chapter 6—the Excess Express—late last night. One of the weaker chapters, I think. Too much running around in a narrow space. The ‘dungeon’ sequence in the Railroad Office was a welcome respite and the strongest part of the whole thing.
Nearing the end now, but DawnTrail is out, so my time will be divided once more!