I have a confession to make - 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door never quite clicked with me. It’s not that I don’t recognize the game’s appeal. Between the epic story, charming characters, and engaging gameplay, it has so much to love. I want to love it. I’ve tried to love it, replaying it multiple times over the past 20 years to see if my opinion of it has improved, but every time I find myself giving ꦕup around the halfway p𝄹oint.

It feels wrong, like I can’t have closure until I’ve developed the same adoration for the game that so many others have. But I simply can't get past what is, to me, a fatal flaw. One that I found so egregious that it single-handedly impacted my enjoyment of the game, and one I’m hoping next month’s remake fixes: the excessive backtracking.

I know backtracking isn’t inherently a bad thing. Revisiting the🦂 same areas again with new abilities can keep the player inꦅvested in the environments they’re exploring without the developers having to devote time and energy into ballooning the map size. Plenty of games have done it right. Thousand-Year Door is nඣot one of them.

The Original Paper Mario Already Fixed This

Paper Mario Wagging Finger

It’s a problem that the original Paper Mario managed to avoid for the most part. Despite havin⭕g an admittedly formulaic approꦜach, each chapter was designed in such a way that you never lingered in one area for too long. Typically, you would travel through a natural area, stop in town for a breather and some story progression, and then work your way through a ‘dungeon’ capped off with a boss battle.

For example, the game’s second chapter has you climbing Mt. Rugged, crossing a desert, seeking out information 𒉰in Dry Dry Outpost, combing the desert in search of the fabled Dry Dry Ruins, then finally exploring said ruins before rescuing the Star Spirit at the end. Most of the game’s other chapters feature a similar variety of locations wit🧜h few ever overstaying their welcome.

Even areas like chapter six’s F𒊎lower Fields, which many consider to be the game’s biggest offender as far as same environments go, mercifully divides the map among six paths, each around three screens at the most, making retreading old ground less overwhelming. Occasionally, you may find yourself retracing your steps more than you’d like, only to be suddenly met with a fight against 🔜Junior Troopa or something else new to break up any potential monotony.

You Forget How Much Backtracking The Thousand-Year Door Has

mario and a koopa confronting a dragon in paper mario the thousand-year door
via Nintendo

From the beginning, you get the impression that Thousand-Year Door will follow its predecessor’s design philosophies. The first chapter started off innocuously enough—not surprising, since it’s more or less the first chapter of the original game with a fresh coat of paint. It wasn’t until chapter two’s Boggly Woods that the flaws began to rear their heads. So many areas throughout the game’s eight chapters have you backtracking between the same handful of screens time and time again with nothing ne♓w happening.

It’s a potentially en꧃gaging story hampered by long, needless stretches of backtracking down the same narrow path littered with near-unavoidable enemies.

Take, for example, chapter three, and all the times you have to trek back and forth between Twilight Town and Creepy Sꦉteeple. Traveling from town to steeple to get the crystal star? Fine. Going back to town once to confront Dooplis for stealing your body? Eh, a little backtracking never hurt anyone. Having to travel back to the steeple just to learn the guy’s name? Well, at least you have a new companion in Vivian to make the constant battles along the path slightly more interesting. Having to go back to town to confront him ag꧒ain? If you think reading about it is repetitive, imagine actually playing it.

Then, instead of finishing him off then and there, you have to chase him back to the steeple one final time. It&r✨squo;s a potentially engaging story hampered by long, needless stretches of backtracking down the same narrow path littered with near-unavoidable enemies. By chapter’s end, I found myself utterly exhausted.

You deal with a similar gameplay loop in the game’s fifth chapter, where you🌺 have to trek through the jungle to find Admira🌱l Bobbery, return to camp to grab him a cola, bring him the cola, return with him to camp, and then travel back through the jungle together to reach the grotto. The game is so full of needless busywork that the developers even lampshade it with the infamous General White quest in chapter seven, during which you have to revisit all of the game’s previous major locations to find the general, only to discover he was right where you started from.

All of Thousand-Year Door’s padding for the sake of padding leaves the game feeling unnecessarily bloated when a more streamlined presentation could have done wonders for it. But with Nintendo’s recent announ🌊cement of the remake having ‘updated features’ and ‘changes to make the game easier than ever to enjoy’, I can&ไrsquo;t help but hope the backtracking is gone.

Obviously, it would be unreasonable to expect full-on overhauls to the game’s maps, but a fast travel system, even something as simple as an extra warp pipe here or there, would be easy enough to implement without having to alter things too much. It’s a smalꦓl change that would go a long way in making the game less of a slog and more enjoyable to replay.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is like a fine cut of meat surrounded by excessive fat. 🌱To some, it gives the meat extra flavor. But for me, it’s just something cut around to get to the good stuff, significantly hampering their experience. If the remake’s developers trim the fat and eliminate the original game’s excessive backtracking, they could finally make Thousan💫d-Year Door the prime cut I always knew it could be.

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Your Rating

168澳洲幸运🉐5开奖网: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
RPG
Adventure
Systems
Top Critic Avg: 88/100 Critics Rec: 98%
Released
October 11, 2004
ESRB
E For Everyone Due T𝄹o Mild Cartoon Violence
Publisher(s)
Nintendo
Engine
Origami King's engine

WHERE TO PLAY

PHYSICAL

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a remake🐲 of the well-loved RPG first released on the GameCube. Relive this iconic adventure that turns 2D on its head and turns Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom into paper.