What review score would you give Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door?

Well, the original is my favorite game of all time, which is an easy 10/10 for me.

For the remake, I would give it either a 9 or a 10, but it’s hard to say. In many aspects, the game is an improvement over the original, but there are other elements that I don’t think I like as much. I don’t necessarily think the updated localization is objectively better. They fixed a few dialogue mistakes from the original game, but also cut a few jokes they thought would be controversial in 2024 and made some weird, arbitrary changes like giving the Shadow Sirens the much more generic name of “The Three” Shadows.” Which is with that?

The game looks beautiful, especially in chapter 4, which I would say has the greatest shine. Music is something I’m torn about. I really appreciate all the extra music they added–this game probably has three times as much music as the original, if not more, which is insane. Some of these remixed tracks are better than the originals, but there are also a few that I feel destroy the simplicity of the originals by adding too many instruments that just muddy things up. Sometimes less is more. Still, I’m glad we have an option for the original.

The sound effects unfortunately cannot be reverted back to the original, and as others have said, the sound effects in this game are much more subtle and less iconic compared to the original. You also can’t get through the dialogue as quickly, which is odd since Nintendo has had this anti-story stance for a long time. If you’re playing the game for the first time, you shouldn’t be skipping dialogue anyway, but for repeat playthroughs, especially speedrunners, it’s going to be a pain.

The Mario & Luigi remakes on the 3DS made it much easier to fast forward text, so I’m shocked it’s not here. The original version of TTYD also allows you to rewind the text in case you accidentally skipped a line of dialogue, but that’s not the case here at all. When a crowd member is about to throw something at you, it also causes the battle to stop, which is annoying.

However, the characters have a TON of new animations, which really add to the experience and are fantastic to see! Probably my favorite new addition is seeing the characters even more expressive than ever. I could care less about the frame rate debacle – 30 FPS is just fine for me.

Then there are quality-of-life improvements like streamlined fast travel, a much higher maximum coin amount, and increased inventory space, all of which go a long way. Not to mention, they’ve brought back some of the lost content from the original, which will make longtime fans like me happy! The concept art is great to have, but unfortunately, it’s unsatisfying. Most of it is actually just screenshots from the remake. Each chapter only has one image which is actually an early character design from the original.

Nintendo has really polished this remake in every possible way, and from a gameplay perspective, the game is now almost perfect. But in terms of presentation, I kind of feel like they’ve polished the game so much that some of the paint is starting to peel off a bit. There are things I wish were toned down or just left alone.

Still an awesome game, but after playing it so many times and already knowing all the story beats and jokes (except for a few that changed), it will never be as good as my first blind playthrough. The reason we’ve all wanted a TTYD remake so badly is because we want it to be the catalyst for Nintendo making NEW games in this style that will hopefully blow me away again. Hopefully it will finally happen in 2027. See you then!