Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)

by Jim Smale · June 3, 2024

Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door Review, Join Mario and friends on a journey to discover the legendary treasure behind the ancient Thousand-Year Door. A hilarious adventure full of colorful characters and foldable fun awaits in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door Review Pros:

Beautiful paper craft-looking graphics.
5GB download size.
Action adventure gameplay.
Opening and ongoing tutorial pop-ups.
Four save slots.
All characters and items are 2D in a 3D world.
When entering a building the view changes to the side and the wall drops down to show the interior.
Turn-based combat and when attacking or blocking if you time the button press you do and block more damage.
Get coins from the world and combat encounters to spend in the shops.
Shops have a system where every item you buy earns a point, and earns 300 to get rare items as rewards.
You can fast-forward interactions.
Shine sprites can be earned and exchanged to power up your party members.
Recruit and control a party of characters.
Attack and heal types all have unique little mini-games that help keep it engaging.
Hostels let you pay to sleep and regain all your health.
The game has you WITH Goombella at all times and she is a huge help.
Scan enemies to learn their stats, and weaknesses and show their health bar.
Simple controls.
Save blocks where you hit to save.
Excellent writing.
You can get hints from your Goombella but you can also pay Merluvlee the fortune teller for specific hints.
The Journal details enemy stats and any hints you have.
Enemies have things like spiky hats or can fly and this means you have to do particular actions to counter.
You can change the party attack order with a button press.
Enemies can be seen walking around and hitting them first gives you the upper hand in battle by doing damage straight away.
Fast loading times.
The combat is surprisingly fun and satisfying.
When in the world you can jump and smash things with your hammer.
As you play you get -*curses* that allow you to change into other things, a paper aeroplane is your first curse and this allows you to fly around.
Badges can be earned and found then you have X amount of BP to use to equip a badge and each badge has a BP cost.
The combat is surprisingly deep and can get as complex as you like.
Fantastic locations and each world feels unique and new.

Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door Review Cons:

No touchscreen support.
Unskippable opening cutscenes.
Slow starter with a lot of lengthy interactions.
You can get lost quite easily and the game doesn’t do a great job of keeping you on track.
The first hour just feels like a huge tutorial.