Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Review

thesixthaxis.com:

It’s always sad to see great games receding back into the mists of time, whether they’re all-time greats trapped on defunct consoles and operating systems, or smaller indie titles under the sheer weight of modern game releases. At least some of these games are given the opportunity to leap back to the forefront and relevance, and thankfully it means that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is back to be enjoyed by a brand new generation.

Through the Nintendo Switch’s life, Nintendo has been far from consistent in how it’s treated the GameCube. After largely ignoring it for the first few years, there’s then been emulator-based ports, enhanced HD ports, and full remakes. Thankfully, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is getting the full works, a ground-up rebuild of the game in a new engine, making one of, if not the best entry in this beloved series available to play on the latest Nintendo hardware.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door typifies the kind of individuality that the earlier games in the series were able to cultivate. Sure, there’ Goombas, Koopas and Toads all over the shop, but they’re joined by new and original characters and creatures throughout. From the small secretive critters known as Punies, to the X-nauts, the Three Shadows and beyond, they stand out when compared to later games – The Origami King, for example, felt like it was almost entirely Toads wearing different hats. Having this breadth of characters also helps to feed into a script that’s wonderfully humorous and quirky throughout.

There’s also a darker twist to the world you’re exploring. The Thousand-Year Door opens with Paper Mario summoned to Rogueport, a town which is as rough as you could imagine for a Mario game, from the graffiti and background gang encounters, to the fact that there’s a literal hanging frame right in the middle of the town square! There’s massive shifts in the visual design of the places you visit, when comparing Rogueport to the charming village of Petalburg, and