Paper Mario 2: The Thousand Year Door is a very strange game. After all, how many RPGs do you know that can let you turn into a paper aeroplane? Though it has many of the hallmarks of a standard role playing adventure, it’s rife with innovation, humour, and unique twists that make for one of the most absorbing and entertaining games of recent times. The world of Paper Mario is an interesting, lively, exciting and magical place full of memorable and unique characters and (usually) involving tasks – it has a unique magic to it that most other RPGs lack. Some call it the Nintendo Difference. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
The most obvious feature of Paper Mario 2 is the visual style – the environments are all 3D, but Mario and all his companions, foes and acquaintances are two dimensional – like they’re made out of paper. Never fear, graphics whores – while at first this game looks no different from its predecessor, as you play through the game you’ll find that this game does in fact take advantage of the Cube’s hardware in order to produce some dazzling special effects, as well as throw hundreds of wafer-thin foes at you all at once (which it does several times throughout the course of the game). Of course, the main man Mario is equally thin, and while in the first Paper Mario game on the Nintendo 64 this unique visual twist was purely cosmetic, the GameCube sequel actually takes advantage of the fact that your character is paper-thin to add all sorts of gameplay-enhancing abilities to the game. You can fold into a paper aeroplane and, later on, a paper boat, as well as make your way through thin cracks in the walls and roll through small gaps. As you unlock these abilities, you begin to realise that the game environment has much more depth than you first realise. There are sections where you can jump behind the scenery, go down a pipe and end up in the background, slide through the gap between two buildings to reach the back alleys…like the entire game, there’s much more depth to the world of Paper Mario 2 than first meets the eye.
The battle system hasn’t changed all that much from the original Paper Mario – but there is a key difference. When you begin a battle, the fight takes place on a theatre stage, with an audience sitting in front of you and watching you fight. If you perform stylish moves, the crowd cheers and increases your Star Power (which is used for special moves and increases as you play through the game). The audience can also chuck items at you, which can be either dodged or collected during battle. Aside from that, it’s the usual RPG fare of turn based battling with moves that get upgraded as you go and can be added by use of ‘Badges’ to equip moves of change stats. There is an added smidgeon of real-time battling thrown into the combat by having to tap ‘A’ at the right time, flick the thumbstick or so forth in order to pull off the move effectively. This makes the combat much more involving than standard ‘sit-back-and-watch’ RPGs.
Another unique aspect of this game are the characters you meet along the way. All the members of your party, all the enemies you meet and all the citizens of all the towns you visit are individual and (usually) very amusing to talk to. Not only is it possible to engage in various side-quests and earn items by talking to the people around town, but each of them has their own little bit to say, a little remark or comment that is often rather funny – to the point of even laughing out loud at some of the in-jokes and remarks that the characters make.
Like all RPGs, the game has the usual formula of town-dungeon-town, but each new area you visit is so markedly different from the next that visiting each new town is a entirely new experience in the game. From the gloomy, dismal Twilight Town to the glamorous Glitzville, each new town or city is full of new things to see, new things to do, new people to meet. As for the dungeons, Nintendo again twists the formula by changing things round to make the game a much more refreshing and varied experience than most other RPG games. For example, instead of fighting through a dungeon in one chapter of the game, you fight your way through a battle tournament, rising up through the ranks so that you eventually become the champion and hopefully obtain your prize, while at the same time uncovering a hidden plot that is unfolding at the same time as your tournament bouts.
Including all of the side-quests, the game lasts around 30-40 hours, more than enough for your average RPG. However, don’t be fooled – Paper Mario 2 is full to the brim with that classic magical gameplay that only Nintendo can produce. It’s witty; it’s fun, and highly original in terms of both visual style and gameplay. Even if you hate RPGs, you can’t go wrong with this little gem. Highly recommended.
James Hamilton
