Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is Nintendo’s best game ever

A great injustice has been righted this week, with the release of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Switch. As I write this, I haven’t had time to play it yet (it didn’t come out till Thursday) but I have just read GC’s review and it’s everything I hoped for. I can see from the trailers that a lot more effort has been put into this than I think a lot of people expected and I love that it hasn’t turned out to be just a cheap remaster to fill out Nintendo’s schedules until the Switch 2 arrives.

The remake has improved the graphics, remixed the soundtrack, added quality of life improvements, and even turned Vivian back to being trans, like she was always supposed to be. Even the pre-order bonus was great (and yes, I pre-ordered one!). It seems to be the perfect version of what I consider to be the best game Nintendo has ever made.

I don’t say that lightly. I’m a big fan of most of Nintendo’s work but The Thousand-Year Door has always been my favourite. Maybe nostalgia is a part of that, I guess I’ll find out when I play the remake, but I played the GameCube version again recently, so I could more easily compare the two, and it’s still as great as ever.

The combat system is great, the perfect mix of fun and depth, and much better than any of the other games. There’s tons of variety in all the different worlds, not just in terms of graphics but different gimmicks for each one and different enemies. The role-playing elements are really clever and unusual, especially the badges that require some very difficult decisions. And there’s tons of secrets hidden everywhere, but none of them are cheap and all can be solved with the help of your partners.

My favourite part about it all is how damn charming it all is. That’s not a word that is usually used to describe video games but I can’t think of anything better for The Thousand-Year Door, where you spend the entire time grinning and laughing at all the ridiculous situations.

Characters are actually genuinely funny, with a good script that knows exactly what it’s doing. People complained about Princess Peach: Showtime! being kind of bland and not well written and The Thousand-Year Door shows exactly the sort of thing it was missing.

All of your partners (who follow you around and help out in combat) are fun and cute and so many of the side characters have some weird thing about them that’s funny. The game is having fun with the whole concept of a Mario universe and yet in a weird way it feels more realistic than any of the other games, with many of the characters having money troubles or talking about death or getting beat up by the mafia.

The word perfect never means what people think it means but I genuinely don’t know what could be improved about The Thousand-Year Door. Well, maybe some kind of fast travel, but apparently the remake adds that anyway…

By reader Onibee