Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

Quietly the GameCube has built up a pretty interesting selection of RPGs, including Skies of Arcadia, Tales From Symphonia, and now, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.

If you've played Paper Mario on the N64 or Super Mario RPG on the SNES, right away you're on familiar ground. This time Mario is racing against the evil Grodus and his army of X-nauts to find seven magic stars hidden across the land. Beneath the city of Rogueport lies the Thousand Year Door, which can only be opened by the stars. Nobody's quite sure what lies beyond the door, but it's probably best that the good guys get there first. Mario and his team will explore various worlds and towns in an effort to recover the stars. That means exploring, a little problem solving, and lots of RPG combat.

The first thing you notice about this series is its unique and unusual approach to graphics. The characters are really 2D objects operating in 3D space, behaving like paper cut-outs (hence, Paper Mario). Sometimes the game looks like a cardboard puppet show put together by an extraordinarily talented kindergarten class. Different, but very visually appealing. Several of the big monsters--like a dragon, an early boss encounter--are cleverly put together, almost as if they hired an origami expert to build them instead of 3D modellers.

The graphics have the signature Nintendo cutesyness, which not everyone is a fan of. But the graphics are still effective, and, their unique style has a practical use too. Mario gets several paper powers as a result of his flat form. He can fold into a paper airplane and glide, turn sideways so he's completely flat and squeeze into narrow gaps, and so on. All of Mario's companions have special powers too, such as Flurrie's ability to push things with her windy breath.

Combat is turn-based and very simple, but has a nice combination of making tactical decisions and using your reflexes. You can use a standard attack; go into a defensive mode, use a special Flower or Star power attacks, etc. After initiating an attack, you can do extra damage by pressing a button or moving the joystick at the right time. For example, Mario's jumping ability will do extra damage if you hit the A button right before he makes contact with his foe. All random encounters are visible in the environments, so speedy players can avoid them if they like. This is a big deal, as a lot of console RPGs suffer from endless unavoidable random encounters. I do wish that you could have more than two party members active in a battle at once though.

Levelling up is nice and simple, but it doesn't feel like you're going through the motions. Defeating foes earns you stars, and at every 100 stars you gain a level. You can choose to upgrade your health, your Flower Points (which allow you to do special attacks), or Badge Points (which allow you to equip special items). It may not have the character development depth of Morrowind, but it still gives you some leeway.

The overall difficulty level is pretty reasonable. Many of the trickier monsters require some specific strategy, but you almost always have the tools to figure it out. The game is filled with strange situations and characters, and even though the story is hardly unique for a Nintendo game, it still has the capacity to surprise you. There are interludes where you play as Princes Peach, and even Bowser. You can also work on some things outside the game's story path if you like, so it's not entirely linear. It does however, have a few instances of backtracking, which get a little tedious. But for the most part the game zips along.

For persistent explorers the game has lots of hidden stuff, and you'll often want to retrace your steps because you'll think a new character will get you into an area you couldn't reach before. You'll probably be right.

One of the great strengths of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is that although everything is pretty simple, none of it is so simple as to be boring. There's always lots to do, and something new is always around the corner, keeping the game from getting stale. Fans of Mario and console RPGs will like what they see. As for me, I'm a hardcore PC RPGer who is thrilled that Bethesda has the Fallout license, and even I still found myself enthralled by Paper Mario.

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