Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Review - A Reprinted Classic, Mostly Improved

Fans have been clamoring for a re-release of 2004’s Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for many years now, and Nintendo was happy to put those rumors to rest when they announced a full remaster as the big exclusive for the first half of 2024. Many who grew up in the GameCube era were over the moon when the trailer dropped, and I had a smile on my face imagining how happy the best Paper Mario game would make a new generation of fans. And then I played this ‘remaster’. I wish I could report that this attempt faithfully captures the spirit of the title, but alas, the changes to the writing tore me up. But first off, let’s give credit where it’s due.

For the uninitiated, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door continues the tradition begun in Super Mario RPG of setting a turn-based RPG with real-time elements in the zany Mario universe. The story this time involves Mario receiving a mysterious ancient map of Star Crystal locations from Princess Peach. At her behest, he ventures to the Rogueport for treasure hunting and chill, only to find her gone. Paper Mario, Peach, and even Bowser get more than they bargained for as they get roped into a lengthy quest spanning some 30-plus hours (50+ for completionists). There’s seven party members, and one of this remaster’s absolute best additions is a wheel to quick-swap party members, and the ability to swap party members anytime during battle, which is a game-changer..

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is lengthy. Too lengthy, in my opinion, as it is packed with filler content and backtracking, and random battles can be long and boring. This remaster helps somewhat with the backtracking by adding more save points and shortcuts between locations, but really drops the ball by not having an option to speed up the battles. In fact, the game lacks any options to customize your experience. You can’t even adjust the sound mix in the menu, let alone modify controls, visuals, or text size. Another missing feature is the removal of the text log, so if you accidentally skip a line of dialogue, well, you’re out of luck. You’ll have to reload a save to see it again.

Combat made incredibly easy for series veterans

The combat is pretty straightforward. Mario and one of many partners utilize unique abilities and special moves and take on various mobs and bosses. You get the most of the game by timing your attacks and blocks while judiciously activating FP-draining skills, popping your Special moves, and using items. In addition to hitting A at the right time to guard an attack, you can hit B (with more strict timing) to pull off a Superguard, which completely negates damage and often hurts the attacker. The Superguard was considered by fans to be a broken mechanic, but Nintendo have opted not to change it in any way. So if you are good at timing it, you can theoretically negate every attack in the game. Some may see this as a challenge. I have to actively ignore the mechanic to find any challenge at all.

Instead of addressing the Superguard, they’ve actually made things easier by upping the amount of coins you receive and increasing your inventory space so that you can hold more items. Now, you also don’t lose coins from fleeing a fight - this is a fair change, but it trivializes coins. In boss battles, you can restart immediately from deaths. Also, Special moves build up faster via a new meter that refills when you please the crowd - this is easily the best new addition to the game, but it’s easily exploitable by selecting “appeal” and riling up the crowd. These changes trivialize an already easy game. Literally the only challenging fights occur in the postgame. The original Thousand-Year Door’s balance and difficulty was fine, but sadly there’s no option to play the game as it was first released. I would have really appreciated a harder difficulty setting, as I went out of my way to skip over random battles to try and make things tough for myself and still ended up falling asleep while playing from sheer boredom. 

“No Fun Allowed” - A completely reworked script… for the worse

It’s sad how often remasters aim to improve on the originals, only to horribly bungle their most crucial elements. Permit me to cut to the heart of the matter. The single best aspect of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the very reason fans like myself fell head over heels for it back in 2004, was its unpredictable, laugh-out-loud, fourth-wall breaking, and sometimes edgy writing. It is some of the best writing in gaming bar none, and it elevated the rest of an often tedious experience.

But hey, it’s ‘current year’. Any jokes even slightly politically incorrect, no matter how tame, need to be ‘updated’, and the jokes they drop in to replace them are capital-L Lame. What’s more, often the rest of the conversation will not make full sense in the light of the changed context. For instance, within the first few minutes, Mario and Goombella enter the sewers at Rogueport. In the original game, a trio of goomba ruffians catcalls Goombella. She stands up for herself, and you fight them. Now they make fun of Mario instead and she calls their jokes stinky. When the goomba says “that’s cold”, it doesn’t read as a joke, because they never once showed interest in her. 

It’s absurd to sanitize villainous characters, such as the mob boss in the original translation trying to intimidate Goombella by telling her to “be a good girl” and give him information. He now calls her a student, which has a completely different, unthreatening context. It diminishes her character when she, being a small Goomba after all, is not afraid to stand up to these bullies.

Later on, a Koopa Troopa goes up to Bowser to brag about his weightlifting gains, and Bowser shuts him down by saying, “I order you to do more sit-ups, Tubby!” It’s the kind of thing Bowser would say. But now Bowser just tells him to keep lifting until his hammer gets abs, too. It’s not funny, and it portrays a much blander character. Even Princess Peach’s arc of wondering whether she’s not “princess-like” enough has been nerfed. I could go on.

It is death by a thousand cuts. “Lunatic” is changed to “loser”. “Airhead” has been changed to “nerd”. All edges have been roughly sanded off, with no option to play the original translation. The changes may seem small if you’re not familiar with the original or haven’t replayed it recently, but nearly every major exchange has multiple rewrites. Some are necessary clarifications and error fixes, such as making Vivian trans in line with the original game’s Japanese translation, but far more often, fun and flowery passages have been shed for bland ones. By and large, this script stinks of a rough draft. The flow and cadence of the dialogue no longer pops. If I were one of the original writers, I would call this inept at best.
If we’re giving the localizers the benefit of the doubt, this update of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a case of someone caring a little too much about the company’s DEI initiatives and ESG score and making last-minute changes. But make no mistake, at its best, The Thousand-Year Door is still hilarious and irreverent, with memorable character moments. At its worst, it’s a two-decades-old, slow-paced RPG-lite rife with a lot of backtracking.

Ample extras to soften the double-dip

I still own my GameCube copy, but if you don’t have the option of playing the original Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, this isn’t a terrible alternative. The remastered soundtrack isn’t what I’d call up to par with the recent Super Mario RPG’s in terms of consistent quality, but it’s certainly a selling point. The addition of art and music galleries with unlockables is a good way to spend your coins and worthwhile for superfans. The new shortcuts and save points are very welcome, but also a no-brainer. Perhaps the most puzzling thing, though, is that the framerate is locked at 30fps. This is only really egregious during scene transitions or camera movements as the environment pans, where you can often see aliasing or other visual defects, but it’s still frustrating that the Nintendo Switch struggles to maintain 60fps in a 20-year-old game with limited animation and elements. The original ran smooth as butter at 60fps so this is a literal downgrade.

Much like the well-intentioned but flawed Super Mario 64 DS and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3DS before it, it’s my contention that the original Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door will ultimately remain the definitive edition. Even so, I kind of commend Nintendo for finally bringing this classic to a new generation. This was a long time coming, and while I appreciate the extras such as the art gallery, remastered music, and even the crowd filling up your Special meter, I miss the original Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door’s challenge and punishing bouts, its laugh-out-loud rapid-fire dialogue exchanges, and its beating heart. Most will not mind the writing changes too much, but as someone for whom the original was an inspiration to me as a fiction writer, I am disappointed. I simply cannot judge this game on its own merits when a superior version exists. While Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year door has much to recommend it, especially for newcomers, in many ways it is a literal downgrade of a twenty-year-old classic.

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Verdict: 3.5/ 5 (Great)

PROS

• A timeless classic with largely the same charming, wonderful atmosphere and experience

• Improved fast travel and additional save points make for a more convenient portable experience

• Two new post-game bosses and plenty of extras for hardcore fans

CONS

• Many unnecessary tweaks and major changes to the dialogue, mostly for the worse

• No more text log so if you accidentally skip a line, you’re out of luck

• Lack of customization options. You cannot even adjust the sound mix.

• Game is now too easy with no way of restoring the original Thousand-Year Door’s difficulty or combat

• Locked 30fps with ugly aliasing in some areas

What I’ve Played 

• 11 hours. Did Not Complete the Main Campaign.

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