Paper Mario: TTYD is easily one of the most charismatic Nintendo games ever, don´t get me wrong, the Paper Mario franchise is usually fantastic, but the TTYD game is on another level, it´s awesome, as for me, my favorite spin-off Mario game, one that can easily compete agains´t the mainline Mario games. TTYD was originally released on the Gamecube, we already know that console was poorly sold and so did its games, so this is actually a cool opportunity to play the game without having to disburse too much money.
TTYD could be considered a sequel I think, but there´s no need to play the Nintendo 64 Paper Mario game, anyways, there are a few hints or references that you would get in case of doing so but it´s not necessary. The story begins with Mario getting a letter from the Princess Peach, something about a legendary treasure, plus you get a map from said letter. Mario gets to Rogueport and this is basically when the game begins. Rogueport is basically a location that gives an aura of being a place you shouldn´t go actually, a place which many questionable things are going on, something you wouldn´t see in your regular Mario game. Rogueport is the central point of the game, in which you´ll be able to get to the other areas from the game, it feels alive by its own with many things happening, and of course, as you progress through the story, you are going to be able to reach even more places.
Paper Mario: The Thousand - Year Door is a turn based rpg, which means we´ll have turns per attack, the main weapon of Mario being his hammer, he can deal tons of damage to ground enemies, you can also hit aerial enemies later but with a certain skill which lets you to throw your hammer. Besides your hammer, we can stomp on enemies, with the exception of spiked enemies that will hurt us instead, both jumps and the hammer can be upgraded through the game so we´ll be able to do more damage, one way of upgrading your equipment is by the use of badges.
Badges are basically one way to increase our number of attacks, there are tons of badges throughout the game we can find, for example, there are jump badges which let us to stomp on all the enemies once, which is extremely useful for when you have to fight aerial enemies with wings. Also, we have badges related to our hammer, as I said before, there is one way to deal damage to aerial foes with your hammer, and that´s by throwing it, you can do that if you have equipped certain badge, there is also a badge which lets you to do q quake using your hammer, dealing damage to all ground foes at once, I think you get the general idea. Badges are not exclusevily for fighting only but also we can even change our clothings with certain badges, just to give an example, we can use Luigi´s clothes if we use certain badge.
When fighting, it´s important to get our crowd excited, this way we can receive Star Points, these Star Points we´ll let us to do some strong attacks and we´ll unlock many more attacks through the progress of the story, the only way to get our crown excited is by doing Stylish Moves, we have to press A in the exact moment after an attack so the Styligh Move is executed, that way we´ll receive Stars Points from the crown. Not only we have to entertain them, but also some members from the crowd will try to sabotage our fights so we´ll have to keep and eye to them from time to time, and of course, there will be some members that love us and maybe they´ll throw at use some item we can use to the fight. As you can see, not only you have to fight a lot of enemies through the game, but also, the crowd will be an active party of the fights, keep in mind that.
Mario is the main protagonist of the game, but besides Mario we´ll have many allies, I mean, our main party. We´ll unlock a new ally as we progress through the story. I won´t say these are the best written characters of the world but I do like that they are charismatic enough, they are likeable and some of them actually pretty good to Mario´s standars if you get my drift. They are not just tools to use, they feel as actually characters with their own motives to accompany you through the story, with their own background, story and struggles, that something I really appreciate from the game. We can use our party when fighting of course, each one of them have their own skills, so it´s actually important to get to know them, there´s a way of upgrading their power but I think it´s up to you to find how.
When we are not fighting, we are actually exploring the world, which is actually entertaining, as I mentioned, as we progress through the story, we´ll be able to unfold even more of Rogueport, and with our main party we can reach some others locations that would be impossible to reach, I mean, there is always something new to see when exploring. Paper Mario TTYD consists of many chapters, each chapter is quite different and each new world or level is entirely different, you could say each world has its own gimmick. For example, my favorite world is Glitzville, an area where we have to fight our way to the top in a fitghters league, we´ll go from top 20 to top 1 and even defeating the main champion, this area is amazing, the peak of the game, I can´t tell you more but I can promise you it´ll be an unforgettable experience.
I have actually beaten the game already, it took me around 60 hours I think, the game wouldn´t last that long tbh, it´s just I really took my time while playing it, my actual goal right now is to complete it at 100% , when I do so, I´d even post about it, idk. Is this remake even necessary? I think so, it was awfully hard just to buy it and they have done many changes to upgrade the original experience, it´s way better to just play the remake and not to touch the original game, and I can´t deny it looks beautiful, they did an astonishing job with this remake visually speaking.
All of the screenshots were taken by me