booting up this remake for the first time felt like being a little kid during christmas again. paper mario the thousand year door is a game i have a very long history with. it was one of 3 console games that were in a set of the first home console games i ever owned alongside super mario sunshine and luigi's mansion which i got for my 4th birthday. afterwards, the thousand year door was my favorite game of all time for my whole life up until my late teens. in that time, i've played this game front to back upwards of 20 times with a few 100% runs sprinkled in there as well.
needless to say, i have a lot of history with this game and it's very special to me, so a remake like this is something i was going to keep my eye on, even as someone who's usually disappointed when a remake actually comes out. this time is different though. it feels like it harkens back to the super nintendo and playstation 1 days of when remakes actually cared about the art direction and intent of the originals, with the art direction finding a beautiful middle ground between the originals texture and sprite work and the papercraft aesthetics that were only hinted before on the gamecube but brought to life on the wii u and switch, and with that middle ground sitting very firmly closer to the original gamecube side. npcs are actually expressive this time around as well, making the world feel just a bit more vibrant and alive and i couldn't be happier. other than some indoor locations not having the best lighting and some screen rotations that were seamless in the original going to black screens instead i have absolutely no complaints about this game visually, especially when there's already 60 fps patches. audio wise might be a different story, though.
the music in this remake is redone, given a more "origami king" esque jazz band flare to it which i don't feel fits the game well at all. the soundtrack definitely leans into the more "boingy" sounding ost ttyd and super had and the redone ost is definitely better than the poor showings we got in trailers, but i still prefer the original soundtrack. there is a badge that restores the original soundtrack, but i've yet to test to see how it reacts to the new songs added for the remake and to be honest i'd really like to hear them this time around so someone else will have to let me know about that eventually lol.
even with its few minor flaws ttyd for the switch is a truly a masterful remake of a classic, and i can't wait to reexperience this cornerstone of my history with video games with this loving remake going forward. the new localization that makes things more accurate to the original while keeping much of the 2004 localization in tact alone makes me prefer this version until someone inevitably patches it back in to the original, but even beyond that they took a world near and dear to my heart and miraculously brought it back to life again more vibrant than ever and that is always going to be deeply special to me. this game is still a very entry level jrpg and the remake doesn't change that so i definitely can't recommend it to everybody, but to anyone who loves the mario series at all or wants to get into rpgs with baby steps this game, and especially this new version, is a must.