Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door | Chapter 5 | Switch playthrough guide
1Review: I never played the original version and have never been into the Paper Mario Series despite owning all of them. This is supposed to be the best one and I had to play this remake on release. Especially since Mario RPG was so good.
It might be a great introduction to RPG’s but I’ve done my time with the greats over the years and playing something so simplistic can only be seen as a worse experience.
Some of the level designs are good, with some decent puzzles, but they are sparse. A lot of the time you do have to backtrack through the level to do fetch quests which are quite annoying. Especially when I was trying to dodge fights from respawned enemies I had already defeated and have to try to escape the fight if I failed.
There are some really awkward jumps too. The controls are not great for platforming. Probably due to the thickness of Mario, I couldn’t tell where the best place to jump was either. So, I would find myself falling from really easy jumps and having to climb all the way back to where I was, only to fail the jump again. I wasted a lot of time throughout the game with these annoying moments. It took me a long time to realise that you need to gain momentum to get a bigger jump, so standing on the edge of a ledge to prepare the jump doesn’t work. This was not obvious to me because normally Mario has a run button to build momentum.
There was an especially annoying time during the train station sequence where there are lots of awkward jumps but even worse, I had stick drift, so I failed way too many times. Although I can’t blame the game for that, I can still blame Nintendo.
The battle system improves throughout the game as more characters and moves are unlocked. You have to actively press buttons in different ways to make sure moves connect, which adds skill into gameplay and stands out from other turn-based battle systems. One move in particular is terrible bad. Near the start of the game, the Koopa partner has a move which would be useful but you need to stop a power bar at the right time, but it doesn’t stop when you want it to so you have to stop early and hope. If it doesn’t work out right, you have wasted a turn. This is at a time where you really need the extra moves as they are so limited at the start of the game.
It’s just a shame that some moves are much better than others. I found myself usually partnering up with the ghost character so I could simply blow the enemies away with one move and save myself time. The last boss was the only time I had any trouble. To be fair, it was really hard, and I didn’t have any power ups left. I really thought I wasn’t going to make it but I managed to scrape through.
The power ups are a bit too plentiful. I never had to really buy any from the shop because I was always finding items throughout the game and my inventory was constantly full. I had way too much money at the end too because I didn’t need to buy anything.
There lots of side quests to do too but they are completely pointless as the rewards are things like items and money, which I always had too many anyway.
There are some improvements from the original such as better graphics. The music has also been remixed, although I don’t see the point in that since the music technology back then was not dated at all. But they have done an incredible job by using an orchestra to play actual instruments. A little overkill, but very high production values.
Apparently, when you die, you can just restart the fight rather than have to start again from the last save point which could have been 30 minutes ago. This is a good quality of life update but I wouldn’t know because I never died in combat due to it being so easy.
One great addition (I think it is an addition), is the ability to press the ZL button to get a clue of what to do next. This may be a little cheaty but it never directly tells you what to do. Just pushes you towards a direction so you don’t waste your time clicking on every character in the level when you don’t know who to talk to next.
I know that this feature saved me a lot of clueless wandering and also helped me never get stuck so I didn’t need any guides or to use the in-game Fortune teller.
To be fair, this game is exactly what I expected it to be. Good, honest fun, but a little too basic for my liking. This is the opposite of why I like Mario games in general. They usually have a tiny opening cut-scene because, who cares about the story, and it is full of fun and sometimes challenging gameplay. Paper Mario is light on the gameplay and heavy on the story. I know this doesn’t apply to everyone. I can’t objectively say this game is bad in any way, it’s just not quite my taste.
Rating – 7/10
Difficulty – 3/10
Played on Switch console
No Cheats used
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