The day that many gamers have been eagerly awaiting is almost here. Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door has almost come to the Nintendo Switch! It might seem odd to be so excited about a remaster/remake from 20 years ago, but most agree that this is one of, if not the best RPG that Mario has ever been in. Plus, it’s definitively the best game in the paper-themed series. Gamers have been asking for its return for years, and Nintendo is finally giving it to them via the Switch. The good news is that based on reviews of the title, it’s just as good, if not better than you hoped.
On Metacritic, the first wave of reviews dropped. At present, 61 reviewers have weighed in and given the game a score of 89! Furthermore, all the reviews are positive! There’s not a single “mixed” or “negative” review in the bunch. That says a lot about the quality and character of the title.
To that end, just about everyone agreed that Paper Mario The Thousand-Year Door was upgraded in the “right ways” while not losing what made the game so fun on the Nintendo Gamecube. For example, the story, gameplay elements, and more are pretty much identical to what came before. It’s the visuals that have been overhauled alongside some quality-of-life elements to make the game even more accessible to players of all ages.
In fact, the only “criticism” that many people had was that it might have kept things “too preserved.” By that, we mean that there are some areas, like the ones with Princess Peach, where a “touch-up” or two could’ve helped make the game even better, but Nintendo decided to leave it as is. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, because, unlike a certain RPG remake from last year, this game didn’t have too many things that needed to be remade, so going all out for this might have turned some people off. Or, it could’ve hurt the main narrative. We’ll never know.
The point is that this game is just as incredible now as it was back in 2004, which is what gamers wanted to hear. Nintendo fans were so eager to get the remaster/remake that places like Walmart had to start canceling pre-orders because they simply got too many! Hopefully, Nintendo takes this as a hint regarding the game’s popularity and will make the changes needed to return to what this classic RPG did so that a true follow-up can be made.
