For as huge of a fan as I am of the Mario franchise, I feel like one major subsection of it has eluded me all these years, that being all of the RPGs. I didn't actually sit down and finish a Mario RPG until, kinda fittingly, Mario RPG's remake last year and I blame this in part on just how inaccessible Nintendo has often made these games on modern consoles (though they have been doing better recently). So, despite hearing several people go on and on about just how great Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door was I was kinda just resigned to never playing it and not getting the appeal. That being said, Nintendo being as unpredictable as ever worked a miracle for the fans who thought their voices would never be heard and remade the one game they had been asking for all these years. And because of this miracle remake I can now finally see why everyone praises this game up and down, at least for the most part.

I think the most standout part of Thousand Year Door to me was just how interesting and different it's world was from anything seen in any other Mario game. Instead of taking place in the Mushroom Kingdom like 90% of Mario games do, Thousand Year Door takes place on a completely separate continent complete with its own locations, inhabitants, atmosphere, and history. It's through this entirely different setting that the game really shines, introducing new races of creatures and putting spins on familiar ones to make characters that stand out and leading you to explore several different locations that are far more interesting than the familiar archetypes that other Mario games so often fall into. The game is just so commendably creative with its worldbuilding, and I was always excited to move on in the story and see what kind of new ideas it would throw at me next.

Thousand Year Door's story is another really strong part of the experience. Plot-wise it's pretty standard, Mario has to rescue Peach and collect 7 crystal stars while he's at it to unlock the titular Thousand Year Door and the treasure hidden behind it, but despite the plot being generic the journey to it is far from. Throughout the course of the story you'll find yourself in several fun and interesting scenarios like uncovering a conspiracy in a floating city while you try to become the world's greatest wrestler at the same time, or solving family drama within the Pianta mafia just to name a few. There's also several heartfelt character moments that come from the companion characters that join you along the way and how they develop. While not all of these characters were super compelling to me, the ones that were I found myself becoming really endeared to and I enjoyed having them present in my party just to see more of them. While most of the story centers around Mario's journey the game does pause from his story after ever chapter to let you see what's going on with two other characters being Peach and Bowser. While in any other Mario game Peach would just be kidnapped and we wouldn't see her until the end when Mario rescues her, Thousand Year Door takes a different approach to her character allowing us to see her circumstances while kidnapped by the villainous group of the game, the X-Nauts. While being held hostage by the group Peach comes into contact with the supercomputer TEC who asks her to teach him about the concept of love seeing as he knows nothing about it, these sections are short and sweet and often involve Peach doing some menial task for TEC but they all build to a climactic conclusion by the end of the game that actually really impressed me in terms of the feelings it stirred in me. Then there's the Bowser sections which were just really fun and enjoyable in their own right. Bowser's presence in the game's story is minimal and yet that's what makes it so great. Seeing as he is for once not the one behind Peach's kidnapping and not the one to set Mario on his grand quest Bowser is playing catch up the entire game, seemingly always one step behind the events of the story and hilariously clueless to the serious events that are unfolding. It's in this state that he kind of works really well as a comic relief, never really being a super big threat but trying so hard to be one in a place where he's just out of his depth. All three of the game's stories start coming together by the end of the game and without spoiling anything, the finale is a really interesting and climactic ending to the whole expereience. Through the game's engaging characters, sharp writing, and fun and outlandish ideas Paper Mario The Thosaund Year Door tells a great story that I will not soon forget.

Finally we get to the gameplay which is where the few gripes I have with the game lie. The strongest part of the gameplay I'd say would be the actual battle system, it's very well crafted and uses all the tropes of a traditional turn based system well and in unique ways to make battles just really fun to engage in. The action commands connected to the attacks are a great way to keep the player engaged while in the midst of turn based combat and while I never fully got the hang of the Guard and Superguards they're fun to go for as well and pulling one off with the right timing feels very satisfying. My only problem with this system is just how much is left up to pure RNG sometimes. There were several times during tense fights that the game decided to just do something to screw me over like having a shy guy get up and drop a light on my party causing damafe or having the stage lights fall and burn or freeze my party out of nowhere, while this also happens inversely to enemy parties as well it's just an element that doesn't feel completely fair at times and can really screw you over if you're not expecting it, which by merit of it being random you never will be. Outside of the battles you explore the overworld and this is the part of the gameplay I had the most problems with. While running around back and forth on an overworld is something common to all RPGs there are several things that make it feel just kinda boring in Thousand Year. For one Mario moves at what feels like a snails pace, having no run button and only moving across the screen at a light trot traversing screens in this game is just not that fun. There are however, light puzzles spread around the world and things that can only be accessed with Mario's abilities and these do a bit to make this whole process a little more interesting. The dungeons in the game are also really fun, placing you in different environments with lots of puzzles to solve and unique enemies to fight all of which is capped off with a pretty fun boss fight to get the crystal star of that location. And then there's the backtracking which is easily my biggest problem with the game. After you obtain a crytal star at the end of each chapter you have to go back to the Rougeport underground and traverse all the way back to the Thousand Year Door for it to be revealead where to got for the next crystal star. While not absolutely abhorrent, the trek back to the door every time to start a new chapter just feels a bit like padding to me and I can't help but wonder if there was no better way to do this. Overall though I did have a lot of fun with the game's battles and dungeons and while the slightly boring to traverse overworld and unnecessary backtracking drag it down a little bit they weren't enough to ruin the whole gameplay experience.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is an endearing classic of a game and one that absolutely deserved the remake treatment it got after being ignored for so long. Having finally played the game I can deffinitly see why people hold this game in such high regard. While my issues with a few of it's aspects hold it back from masterpiece status in my eyes, I'm really happy for those who got to enjoy it for those who do love this game and I sincerely hope Nintendo will take a page out of this game's book for whatever they do next with the Paper Mario series.

ludic poetry tbh...every room a precisely chosen word in a line, every dungeon a verse, full of rhymes and rhythm and melodious surprises. the line between downtime and climax feels far less pronounced then in the first two installments, instead channeling a near-endless flow state thats not so much barrelling as it is Sickly and Congesting. very unpleasant and deeply compulsive to play, and absolutely the most i have ever felt Involved with one of these games moment to moment (and easily the scariest time, if that wasnt clear!). i struggle with whether to give this the edge over 2, but theyre clearly in the same ballpark...for all ive said 2 is i think still on the whole the more Unpleasent experience simply because perhaps no other games story has so effortlessly channeled Here's A Bunch Of Things That Would Suck If They Happened To You, with both a gentle human hand and fist of divine pseudo-justice. if anything, 3 makes me feel more at home, its terror lovingly vindicating. the campaign is half Having A Bad Time Walking Home and half You Can Never Go Home Again...every moment of destabilization feels like a cathartic acknowledgement of the sinister underbelly to things that people by and large Pretend Are Okay, with notes specific to my life in ways that r obvious if u know me. cheryl is on edge and looking over her shoulder and has been for years before being plunged into the events of a silent hill game...running on messy strength pulled from the experience of living in a world hostile to her Body and Self (at least insofar as she is in control of both). just rly wonderful stuff...almost good enough to take my mind off recent silent hill news!!!

I have no idea why this game would garner the attention it did back then. It is likely because the stupid content creators reacting to playing it.

The gameplay itself is not implemented well at all. The control is painstakingly janky and you knew you only played it because everyone else at school was. It is also extremely repetitive and looked like something that could only appear in a tech demo. This feels like a what a college kid makes in his free time and try to pass it along as project experience on his resume. Trust me, I know.

The game blew up for no reason and almost immediately began spiraling down like a stalling F104 Starfighter. It wasn't made with malicious intentions but ended up too big for no reason because of undeserved clout.

still one of my favorite walking sims. lots of mystery, paranoia, impeccable vibes, atmosphere, and intriguing characters.

i always considered firewatch to be commentary on how expectations can make us feel so empty. sometimes the smaller things are the things that shatter us.

see you around, D

I'm really glad I saw this game through, it has one of the best stories in any game I've ever played. It started really slow and took a while for me to actually want to play it but when that motivation hit it carried me through the rest of the game. The gameplay is kinda just the basic survival horror formula but I'm fine with that because that's my favorite genre, the only problem though is that it doesn't do enough with the horror, it doesn't make me feel particularly stressed or on edge, I get that the horror is more so psychological but all that really boiled down to for me was a few flashing image jumpscares, still though I find myself able to forgive this one tiny flaw because the rest of the game is packed with such good and interesting ideas that make me want to keep playing. The characters were great and like I've already said the story was fantastic, and there were quite a few gameplay moments that were jaw-droppingly awesome. Just a really solid game that I'm glad I finished.

DISCLAIMER: IF YOU PLAY THIS GAME ON PC, MAKE SURE TO GET RADIO RESTORED and FUSION FIX MODS. When R* re released this game on PC, they cut like more than half of the songs from the base game and DLCs due to licenses expiring. Fusion Fix helps optimize the game better and adds missing visuals.

I pretty much loved almost everything about this game except for the actual missions themselves.

I loved the interactivity of everything in the game. It's especially notable in combat when you see enemies ragdoll different depending on where they're hit or shot but the details go beyond that to just tiny details around the environment like being able to chip and break walls or windows which is really impressive for GTA game and also just makes the game feel much more satisfying.

The story was also probably my favorite so far out of all the GTA games I've beaten, its the most grounded and believable story while still retaining a lot of comedic elements of the previous games. I really like Niko as a character and especially near the end of the game, I really was invested in how the game led to where it went depending on what choices I'd made earlier in the story.

I really enjoy the design of Liberty City, I really miss the more closely condensed design of GTA maps where everything feels close together and more detailed oppose to Los Santos in GTA V that feels like a pain in the ass to drive through because its a lot more vertically positioned rather than horizontal like Liberty City.

The radios in this game are amazing as well, so many bangers. I thought it would be worth mentioning since you spend so much time in GTA driving around, listening to the radio.

Like I said earlier, the biggest gripe I have with this game is the missions. Almost all of them feel the exact same and do genuinely end up feeling like errands rather than something that I feel genuinely invested and interested into getting into. Especially with how many different characters the game introduces, it makes a lot of missions feel trivial and kind of like a slog to keep the player busy. Almost every mission is just (Drive here-> Kill this guy->Drive away from cops-> earn $___). It's very dull.

I also like the idea of the friend reputation system but in execution, it again feels more like an actual chore to manage rather than something that adds extra depth to the game. However, listening to the dialogue between friends is always intriguing, it just can become annoying when you feel the need to continuously keep up the reputation of the all the random ass friends you've gotten throughout the game.

Great game overall though, it's a game I played a lot of online of as a kid but I never beat until now.

What did the consumer say after playing Lollipop Chainsaw?
"That cutting-edge gameplay was sweet!"

This'll be how I'll do my reviews from now on, anyway the game was pretty good.
7.5/10