Game:

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004)

Duration: 0:44

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16

Context for those who haven't played TTYD
Power Rush is a badge that increases Mario's attack power by 2, but only when you have 5 health or less.
Sounds weak right? I mean what can you do with an extra 2 attack power if you die in a hit or 2, this has to be worthless.
I'm also using another badge, called Power Bounce.
Power Bounce is a badge that allows you to jump a near infinite amount of times on a singular enemy until you miss an input or get Jump-Capped, which is when the game forces you off the enemy after doing too many jumps, however it slowly goes down by one point of damage after every jump, meaning that if you have 5 attack power, you can only do 4 jumps before going down to 1 attack power per jump, lowering your power substantially.
You might say "Oh, well, this badge could have some power if you buff Mario's attack a bit, but why shouldn't I use a different badge, like Spring Jump, which does extreme amounts of damage which are consistent if you land inputs?"
That's where you're wrong boyo, If you have enough attack power, you can string together several high power jumps, and slowly do less and less powerful jumps that are still extremely powerful, for example, 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,1,1.
This is more powerful than just doing
14, 14.
Because the more power you have, the longer you can keep the power of Power Bounce high, and Power Bounce does not have a maximum damage cap, meaning you can do as much as 100 damage on your first jump if you have enough power.
But getting 100 damage is unrealistic in a game where 6+6 damage is a high amount.
unless...
Power Rush, the first badge I mentioned, can be stacked on top of each other, and they all provide the same benefits, and add onto each other in damage, increasing your damage quickly. Considering that the method to gain Power Rush badges is so easy, you can quickly reach a high power level, just by having low HP, so instead of a high being 6+6, your normal damage is, say, 27+27.
BUT THAT'S NOT ALL, Power Bounce is able to be used with Power Rush, which is almost the most powerful combo in the entire game.
Power Bounce slowly goes down from the start right? But if the starting number is super large, it does extreme amounts of damage, even after the 6th jump.
So, Hypothetically, if you were to say, get 15 Power Rush badges, Equip Power Bounce, and lower your HP to 5 or less, you can deal super high amounts of damage, without much risk of dying because there's another badge that you can use aside from power bounce, called Multibounce, which hits every enemy with the max damage your first jump with Power Bounce does, so you can wipe out every enemy on the board with 27 damage to all of them, or you can deal about a hundred damage to a single enemy, all while having enough HP to survive an attack if you block it.
But if you know Mario, you may say: "What about Spikey enemies?? That would make you use your hammer and you can't hit all enemies with your hammer???"
Mario can in fact, hit spikey enemies if he uses a certain badge, called spike shield, which ignores spikes, allowing you to jump on them.
BUT HOLD ON A SECOND, because if you know FIRE ENEMIES you should know you obviously can't jump on them, right?
Wrong again, There's a badge called Ice Power which allows you to not only jump on fire enemies, you also deal an extra point of damage to them, not helpful when you already instantly kill every enemy, but it's a neat benefit to put salt in the wound.

So that explains my strategy for how I made it to one of the endgame bosses and killed him in one turn with only 5 HP and 15 FP.

But remember how I mentioned there was a more powerful strategy?

I was lazy when I chose Power Rush, because if you want to put in the effort, you can turn Mario into the next Atomic Bomb.

Equip Power Bounce.
Equip Multibounce.
Equip Spike Shield.
Equip Ice Power.
Now you have all your grounds covered for jumping, you can hit any enemy you want with jumps!
But now it's time for the main badge.
Equip every single Mega Rush badge you can find and obtain.
Mega Rush is Power Rush on steroids, It gives you PLUS 5 ATTACK instead of plus 2 PER BADGE, meaning that with even 5 Mega Rush badges, you could match the power of 15 Power Rushes, maybe surpass it.
However, the risk involved with Mega Rush is risky, because instead of being in danger, which is 5 Health or less, you have to be in Peril.
Peril is achieved when Mario is at exactly 1 HP, on the dot, no more, no less.
It's difficult to even reach Peril, since taking even one point more of damage leaves you dead and taking one point less leaves you with no benefits, and grabbing a heart on the overworld while you have Peril removes Peril and gives no benefits other than having 2 HP.

maybe Paper Mario 64 was more balanced.

I don't know.

But in Thousand Year Door I am a god that destroys all who oppose me.







TL;DR: power rush give plus 2 attack when have 5 hp or less, stacking it gives you a lot of power with power bounce

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