There's a lot of charm here - but this also shows its age quite a bit. I liked how each of the chapters was quite different from one another - and not just in setting but also in what you're doing. For every adventure through the woods, there's a fighting tournament to come out on top of or a train full of mysteries to solve. Thouand-Year Door also does a great job of differentiating the companion characters and making it so that your choice of which companion to use, and when to swap them out, plays into the strategy of the battles and the navigation puzzles of the world. I never felt like I settled in on a specific companion and battle plan, which is always a risk in these types of games.

Notably, there is a ton of backtracking throughout the game -- worst of all in chapter 7 -- which really feels like it's there just to make the game a bit longer.

On the downside, this game is a bit slow and grindy. And there is a ton of backtracking. The worst offender being in chapter 7, where you need to backtrack to nearly all your previous locales, only to have a short conversation with an NPC and move on to the next one. At those points, the game doesn't feel respectful of the player's time and instead just feels padded out.