So, after analyzing Paper Mario: Color Splash, I figured I owed it to myself to analyze a good entry in the once beloved series of Paper Mario. And, while the original is indeed a fantastic game, it can’t hold a candle to its direct sequel, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (PMTTYD). On a side note, as I sat down to write this analysis, I realized this will be my third RPG analysis in a row… So, hopefully I can broaden my horizons a bit by analyzing some different genres in the future. But for now, let’s just focus on the game at hand.
PMTTYD, as I said, is my personal favorite entry in the Paper Mario series. The game gets the action going right away, as Mario receives a treasure map in the mail, from Princess Peach. Peach wants Mario to come join her on her vacation to search out the treasure detailed in the map. This has Mario setting out to meet Princess Peach in new lands, particularly, the town of Rogueport. Rogueport is pretty much the antithesis of the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s dirty, full of crime, and full of exotic and colorful characters. Even though trash littered the streets and graffiti covered the walls, there was no end of charm to be found in the city. Mostly due to the colorful cast of characters that resided within the town. Whether it was the syndicate leader mob boss Don Pianta, or the Goom University Goomba Professor Frankly, there was always some strange or wonderful character to meet throughout the game. While this might be an odd point to emphasize, I feel I need to, especially after going back to PMTTYD, after playing such boring, awful titles as Sticker Star and Color Splash. In those later titles, the charm is gone. The cast of characters is limited to nothing but Toads. plain, boring, identical looking Toads. And while it might seem unimportant, a game world, especially an RPG world, is only as interesting as the denizens found within it.
Anyway, moving on. So, Mario arrives at Rogueport, to meet Princess Peach, only to find that the Princess has been kidnapped (due to her once having the map). However, this time, it was not Bowser who kidnapped her, but a new army of villains known as the X-nauts. A short while later, after meeting new friends, Mario discovers that the treasure map sent to him by Peach will lead to the seven Crystal Stars, which will open the titular Thousand-Year Door, behind which lies great treasure… maybe. No one actually knows for sure. Deciding that finding the Crystal Stars will in turn, help find Peach, Mario sets off on yet another adventure.
The world of PMTTYD, while colorful and rich in character, is by no means an “open world.” Sure, there are plenty of places to visit, such as Glitzville the fighting arena in the sky, and Keelhaul Key a tropical island haunted by a pirate ghost. But all of these areas are contained in very carefully constructed levels/scenes. When traveling, there is little question as to where one needs to go. There are paths laid out, and while some environmental puzzle solving may be required, you’re never left wondering where you should go next. And I’ll say this right now. There is nothing wrong with that. Not every RPG needs to be some sprawling open world epic, where you travel for hours, getting literally lost in a vast digital world.
I will note, however, that the game seems to try to offset this fact of not being completely open world, by implementing a lot of forced backtracking. There were many times where I had to retread old ground, simply to accomplish a single task. It got very annoying at times. Travel in general could be a bit of a pain, as there was very little convenience in traveling. A series of pipes could be unlocked later on to get back to some areas. But even that was hardly convenient.
Going back to the topic of environmental puzzles, I might as well touch on the game’s new “paper” abilities. The original Paper Mario was mostly just called that because of the aesthetic. PMTTYD takes that a bit further, and plays with the fact that Mario literally is paper. Throughout the adventure, Mario will come across a series of black chests who will “curse” Mario after he opens them. These curses, are in fact useful abilities that the player can use to solve certain environmental puzzles and get further in the game.
The abilities are as follows: Mario can turn sideways, making himself flat as paper, to move through narrow bars. He can roll himself up into a paper tube, allowing him to sneak through low entryways. He can fold himself up into a paper airplane to glide great distances, and reach otherwise inaccessible areas. And finally, he can turn himself into a paper boat, to float across water.
While simple, these abilities are used in clever ways, making for fun (albeit, not terribly challenging) environmental puzzles.
Another element in solving puzzles comes in the form of the many strange and wonderful allies Mario meets along his journey. Just like any good Paper Mario, Mario meets plenty of colorful characters that aid him directly on his quest. There’s Goombella, the Goom U student, who can give advice, and tell Mario anything about anything or anyone. Koops, the cowardly Koopa, whose shell kick ability can hit far off switches and collect far away keys and other items. Madame Flurrie, the wind spirit and former actress with a large… stage presence, who can blow a powerful wind, to reveal hidden areas and items. The Yoshi Kid (this guy doesn’t have an official name, since you hatch him, you name him), my personal favorite, Mario can ride him to move faster and to flutter jump across large gaps. Vivian, a former enemy and Shadow Siren, who can pull Mario into the shadows, avoiding traps and enemies. Admiral Bobbery, a salty old sea dog of a bob-omb, who can blow holes in cracked walls and activate far off switches. And finally, Ms. Mowz, a cat-burglar, or rather, rat-burglar, who can sniff out hidden items and secrets.
Not only do these companions help in puzzle solving, but they’re full of personality, adding a lot of juice to the narrative. Unlike most RPGs, though, the companion characters do not level up like normal. You can upgrade them by visiting the “super-wizard” Merlon. Through the use of Shine Sprites, which are found in boxes hidden throughout the world, Merlon can upgrade an ally a maximum of two times, increasing their damage, HP, and combat move sets. I found this an interesting way of doing things, but in late game, I felt like my companions were under-powered. Whereas Mario was nearing 100 HP, most of my companions were still in the 30’s and would never get any higher.
Thankfully, the way combat is set up, Mario was usually the one taking most of the damage any way, so it wasn’t a huge issue, but a noticeable one, nonetheless.
Speaking of combat, as this is a turn-based RPG, there is naturally, a lot of combat in the game. Thankfully, unlike Color Splash (yeah, I’ll probably be saying that a lot in this analysis, get used to it), the combat feels fantastic! Starting out a battle in game is fairly straightforward. All enemies appear in the level itself, in other words, no random encounters! Touching an enemy will start a combat scene. However, if Mario jumps on an enemy, or hits it with his hammer, he will get a free “first strike” before the beginning of combat. Of course, if an enemy strikes Mario with an attack in the open world area, then they will get a free attack before the start of combat. Right off the bat, there is a small element of strategy to how the player approaches a fight.
Once in a combat scene, the area changes from whatever level you were at, to a stage. Yes, Mario and company fight on stage in PMTTYD, complete with an audience (full of Toads, Goombas, the occasional Luigi, and all sorts of other weird, wonderful characters) to watch the “show” (more on that in a bit). The combat setup is a bit interesting in PMTTYD, and is rather unique to the series. Instead of the player characters grouped up on one side, and the enemies grouped up on the other, combat takes place on a single plane. In other words, Mario and his partner are lined up on one side of the stage, and the enemies are lined up on the other side, all on the same X axis. What this means, is that attacking enemies takes on a new strategy. If a character cannot jump (or fly), then they must attack whatever enemy is at the front of the enemy line. Similarly (as I mentioned earlier), since Mario is in “front,” he will be the one to take most of the attacks, leaving his partner safe behind him (you can swap the position of Mario and his partner at any time during your turn, this also swaps the turn order, leaving Mario to attack after his partner). There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, this is how it works.
As for the combat itself, it’s all relatively straightforward. Mario can select from a few different attack options, all from an easy to use radial menu: Jump, Hammer, Items, Special, and Tactics.
- Jump is just what it sounds like. You can jump on an enemy. I will also note, that you can do this whenever you want! You don’t need a freaking sticker or card to perform a basic attack. Take note Color Splash and Sticker Star…
- Hammer, is similar to jump, a straightforward, simple, attack, with your hammer. But as stated earlier, because of the way combat is laid out, you can only hammer the first ground-based enemy in the row. As with the jump, this can be performed whenever you wish to do so.
- Items, again, pretty self explanatory. Uses items like mushrooms to heal, syrup to restore FP (flower points, this game’s “magic”), or special attack items, like a fire flower, etc.
- Special attacks are a bit of a different beast. Upon collecting a Crystal Star you unlock a new “special” attack. Special attacks vary in power and abilities, such as causing massive damage, or healing the party, or freezing enemies in time, and so on. To use these attacks, Mario must have energy in the special gauge, this is separate from FP.
- And finally, tactics include a variety of “other” combat options such as defend, swap partners, run away, etc.
Although initially, jump and hammer are simply those two basic attacks, through the use of badges (more on those later), Mario can expand his fighting repertoire with FP using jump and hammer attacks that do more damage, attack multiple enemies, cause status affects, or some combination of the three.
What makes the combat in PMTTYD really feel special, though, is the way these simple combat commands are activated. PMTTYD continues the trend set by its predecessors, by including “timed hits.” Timed hits can be used to increase the amount of damage dealt from a single attack. For example, by selecting jump, Mario will head to the target, and jump on top of it. If a player times the jump properly, however, and hits the button just before landing, Mario will jump on the enemy a second time, effectively doubling the damage dealt. The same can be said for defense, pressing A just before taking damage, will block some or all of the damage dealt.
PMTTYD takes timed hits to a new level, however, as its not always just “press A before hitting.” Each attack has a unique control scheme to it. Hammers require you to pull back on the joystick until a series of lights light up. While some companion abilities might have you press a series of random buttons in a certain time limit. I fell like this varies combat and makes it a little less repetitive.
But that’s not all that is included in a combat scenario. As I mentioned earlier, Mario and company fight on a stage, in front of a live crowd. While this might just seem like a bit of extra juice, the stage and the crowd play a part in the fights. The stage itself is riddled with surprises. For instance, if Mario uses an ability that hits all ground based enemies, he might shake the stage badly enough to cause the plywood sets in the background to fall and hit anyone on stage. Or, a light from above my fall, crushing an enemy, or playable character.
Not only are the stages potential helps and hindrances, but the more you level up, the bigger the stages get, which means that even more hazards are added in, such as freezing fog, and burning pyrotechnics. While the randomness of these events can be a bit annoying, essentially taking away control of your planned out battle strategies, they can be fun, adding an element of chaos to combat.
The crowds can affect your combat, as well. If you a performing particularly well, making lots of timed hits, and blocking attacks, then the crowds will cheer. Cheering is the only way, in combat, to restore your special gauge, to perform special attacks. So, doing well is not just a reward in and of itself. The crowd will also, on occasion, toss you helpful items, if you’re performing well. Of course, if you’re doing poorly, missing your timed hits, the crowd will not cheer, leaving your special gauge empty, they might also leave, leaving fewer in the crowd to cheer when you do well. And, sometimes, they will toss damaging items at you (this happens even if you’re doing well, if there are X-nauts in the crowd). Thankfully you can stop them from hitting you by a simple press of the X button, if you’re quick enough.
After a fight is resolved, the player is rewarded with experience points (called star points in this game), and then they are returned to the open world area. There, the enemy will spin out and die, dropping coins (and possibly other items). This annoyed me a bit, as I had to physically collect my rewards. I would have preferred to just get them automatically.
Stepping away from combat a bit, I’d like to touch on badges. As I mentioned earlier, badges can be used to give Mario access to new combat abilities. However, they can do so much more than just that. Finding badges is similar to finding items. Some are in boxes some (rarely) drop from enemies, some can be bought outright. The powers they bestow, however, are vast and varied. In addition to new combat techniques, some badges can directly affect Mario’s health and FP. They can allow a partner to be swapped out in combat on the fly (as opposed to taking an entire turn). They can cause Mario to become electrified, shocking any enemy who touches him. They can increase attack power. They can also be totally useless, just fun, like changing Mario’s color scheme to Luigi’s or Wario’s (Or Waluigi’s if you use both the Luigi and Wario badge at once).
You could say badges play a big part in PMTTYD. However, there’s a huge downside to badges. They require badge points (BP). Each badge has a cost. The more powerful the badge, the more points it requires to equip. Getting badge points occurs through leveling up, but only if the player chooses the BP option. When you level, you get a choice of increasing on of three categories: Health Points, Flower Points, or Badge Points. While badges are amazing, I always felt jilted by the fact that my HP and FP remained stagnant after getting a level, if I chose the BP option. In my opinion, The player should not have been forced to choose, just increase all three at level up. It would have required a little more balancing, sure, but at least I wouldn’t feel punished by leveling.
Okay, rant over. Moving on.
So, the goal of the game is to get the seven Crystal Stars (much like the seven Star Spirits in Paper Mario, and the seven stars in Mario RPG). And just as in it’s predecessor, after getting a Crystal Star, the game’s focus shifts, from Mario to Peach. I always loved playing as Peach in the original Paper Mario. It was awesome to roam around the castle, interacting with Bowser’s goons, and taking part in fun little minigames. PMTTYD tries to recreate this, by allowing the player to control Peach once more, wandering around in the X-naut’s base. Sadly, it failed to recapture the magic. It felt like it was trying too hard to replicate the experience, with a duller setting and more boring characters.
However, after Peach’s segments are done, the player does not go directly back to Mario. No, no. This time around, the player also gets to play as the Koopa King himself, Bowser. Bowser’s segments are a lot more fun, as the eternal villain serves as the game’s comic relief. The interactions between him and the old had magikoopa, Kammy Koopa, are hilarious. And as an added bonus, most Bowser segments include short, fun sidescrolling platforming segments, similar to the original Super Mario Bros. Not only was this great fun, but it was implemented in a time where sidescrollers were hard to come by (keep in mind, this was a time before the “retro renaissance” and the proliferation and subsequent over-saturation of indie “Metroidvanias”).
There’s just so much to enjoy about PMTTYD. It’s simple, but there’s nuanced complexity within its simplicity. It’s not open world, but there’s plenty to do within the world that you’re given. It’s fun, it’s charming, it’s brimming with personality. I’ve said it before, huge, complicated, hundred plus hour long RPG’s bore me to tears. But a game like PMTTYD is just right. It perfected the Paper Mario RPG formula. Why Intelligent Systems has strayed do far from what proved to work baffles me to this day. But at the very least, I’ll always have this gem to go back to, if ever the mood should strike.
