Paper Mario VS The Thousand Year Door | Comparing Paper Mario 64 and TTYD

[Music] paper mario the thousand-year door was one of the first rpgs i ever played in fact it might have been the first one but i can't remember if i played mario and luigi first or this one either way it pretty much introduced me to a whole new world of video games to a whole new idea of what they could do to the stories they could tell to the different types of gameplay mechanics that could be utilized in these sorts of games so let's hold out a special little nostalgic hole in my heart and i think back to it very fondly in fact for a very long time i've considered it one of my favorite games but i also enjoyed the first paper mario even though i played it after the thousand year door i downloaded that bad boy on the wii virtual console and beat it very quickly i remember after beating it i had a slight preference for the thousand year door but i thought it was also really really good now you know how this usually goes i don't like the new paper mario i don't want to play that whatever i don't blame people for being disappointed but i haven't really played many of those games so i'm not gonna say much about them i have played super paper mario though and i enjoyed that but that's beside the point instead of comparing these games to other games that are trying to do something way different i thought hey why not put the first two games head to head without further ado this is paper mario vs paper mario the thousand year door [Music] sorry i spoke too soon one note when i talk about paper mario i'm referring to the n64 game and when i talk about the thousand-year door i'm referring to the thousand-year door like i'm not referring to the paper mario series when i say paper mario okay yeah that's it bye have fun with the video bye [Music] the first paper mario's overarching story is typical mario fare yet again the big turtleman is kidnapped peach of course some details are a little different than usual though this time bowser has the power of the star rod on his side in order to counteract that mario's gotta go collect seven magical macguffins dubbed star sprites after being expelled from peach's castle the adventure begins however this simplicity reveals just how much details and presentation matter more so than in any other mario game i've ever played bowser has real presence as the primary antagonist i mean i love how he comes across in galaxy but there he's this force of nature this thing to be reckoned with in this game though he's got quite the personality his diary is hilarious he wants to have fun with his minions his goofy nice guy man-child personality lends the story an overall air of levity but still actually gives him i don't know substance something to grab onto his most dastardly deet is easily telling peach to smile just a menace nobody can stop this girthy man but despite all this goofiness since he immediately thrashes mario he still feels like a threat like something that's going to be difficult to come up against later many other villains and characters have similarly lively personalities luigi keeps his own diary where his jealousy for his brother gets revealed as well as his fear of ghosts the koopa bros are showy idiots who despite their delusions of grandeur can't manage to do anything right their theme music combined with their costumes really sells the fact that they think they're the best thing to ever happen to bowser's minions there's tuden koopa tutan i don't know how to say this there's tuden koopa who continually delivers spooky threats as mario delves deeper into his runes however once mario starts making real progress the facade cracks my personal favorite is professor colorado an explorer who keeps putting himself in harm's way there are even sections where you get to play as peach who helps mario in his quest by sneaking around and finding information about where the star sprites are hidden i could go on but i think you get my point paper mario has a large colorful cast of characters that frequently make the simple story shine in general the mushroom kingdom feels incredibly alive here the player finds themselves in a variety of locales there are grassy plains a medieval style castle a desert rooms a haunted mansion a toy box a tropical island a volcano a flower garden cloudy skies a snowy town and more in and of itself this variety is immediately engaging and it makes it seem like we're seeing more of the mushroom kingdom than ever before and i say than ever before but keep in mind i've never played super mario rpg i know that's not good but yeah there you go but even more importantly paper mario is structured like an epic road trip adventure so sure there's an overarching narrative tying everything together but each area has its own characters and problems to deal with my favorite of these narratives comes from chapter 3. in this chapter mario must go through a haunted forest of sorts as he hunts for the shine sprite hurt star sprite not shine spread that's a different game however bowser's batty already lost the star and it's been captured by lady beau despite this villainous act on her fiendish personality lady beau has noble motivations she needs someone to help get rid of taba blubba a seemingly invincible fiend who's been eating booze from here she joins mario's team keeping him invisible and safe from tubba bubba as the player tries to uncover his weakness other chapter's narratives are similarly strong chapter one is the player facing off against the koopa bros chapter two is a trek through the desert as the player searches for hidden runes chapter four sees toad town getting invaded by shy guys and so on i can see reasons why narratively any of these chapters could be someone's favorite but the story of the thousand year door is different and it immediately sets itself apart from the first game instead of the mushroom kingdom we've got rogueport before mario even sets foot there he's told it's dangerous and it lives up to its reputation immediately a goomba girl is nearly kidnapped a couple mobsters beat some guys up in broad daylight a thief steals half of mario's coins there's even a gallow smack dab in the center of the town the color palette is dull full of browns and grays graffiti is the only major source of color the sprawling sewer system below the town is similarly drab everything just looks kind of dirty and ruined to put it simply this place is a crap hole rogueport makes a strong first impression especially because this is a mario game previous mario games had players returning to a sprawling castle a tropical paradise colorful world maps ms paint cutscenes you know all that good mario stuff even though individual areas and other mario games got a bit darker in terms of tone and coloring the player always returned to something more pleasant in the thousand year door it's just the opposite mario goes to a variety of worlds but he always comes back to this scummy place the message is simple but powerful this is a different kind of mario game new species new villains new locales new music and this happens yeah i still don't really understand how that got into this game but we're just gonna keep on going through these things and many others the thousand year door carves out its own identity but simply being different isn't enough even outside of comparisons with other mario games this adventure stands out because there's so much variety here mario will slay a dragon become the champion in a fighting arena get shipwrecked solve a mystery on a train shoot himself to the moon stop people from getting turned into pigs by a sadist and yeah that's a thing that happens too and more throughout its 20-some hour long main story this game has an impressive amount of variety in fact there's so much variation here that i wouldn't blame people for thinking this takes place over multiple games it's just that good the game's consistently funny dialogue and characters manage to pull together these potentially disparate ideas into one cohesive campaign there's kroop the mayor of petalburg who can't hear a thing mario says rock hawk the overconfident champion of the glitz pet flavio who fancies himself a leader but is really more of a coward the kid who might be willing to eat his own mom when she turns into a pig and so much more each set piece and area gets explored not only through the aesthetics but through the characters that inhabit them many of these characters and ideas build up throughout the game's entire run in clever ways too take for example the black chest demons throughout the game these guys curse mario but it's not actually a curse it's just a power-up that lets mario progress on his journey and actually without them he wouldn't have been able to do all this stuff and save the world this way the game flips the idea of a power-up on its head creating something exceptionally memorable out of an idea that's usually included in games as a matter of course what makes this even better is that mario is aware of this throughout the game's run and gets to the point where he simply wants to get the bs over with and move on with his life and even better than that the last one of these guys is actually a good fellow who just really was looking forward to doing this curse additionally these four black chess demons are the four heroes who originally sealed away a major enemy in the game so there's some saucy lore for those who want to dig into the game's optional side content or happen to talk to this guy on the roof this type of build up occurs throughout the game's run in more minor ways too for example flavio can be found in the bar and rogueport from early on in the game even though he won't become important to the plot until chapter 5. miss mouse runs the bad shop in rogueport which is presumably why she's stealing badges in the first place darkly can be found in the back alley as soon as mario gets his paper mode ability but they aren't necessary to the game's progression until chapter 4. i could go on and on the first game did something similar with characters who would appear in toad town long before they were necessary to the plot but it's even more present here in other words it feels like this game is really building upon that idea that the first game had however in other ways the game simply mimics the original both games task players with collecting seven star-shaped macguffins the first partner in paper mario is a goomba who can tell you all about the world and its enemies and oh look the first partner in the thousand-year door is a goomba who can tell you all about the world and its enemies then the second partner in both games is a koopa similarly the first chapter of both games involves a town full of koopas and going to a medieval style castle chapter 5 of both games tasks players with going to a tropical island the thousand-year door even mimics the fake out that occurs at the end of chapter 5. here the game breaks away from its narrative structure by making it look like chapter 5 has ended but then it tosses the player right back into mario's shoes without jumping over to peach of course this also means that both games involve taking control of peach between chapters in addition both games have snowy areas large sewer systems many shared enemy types and i could go on there's a lot of similarities between these games the potential problem here is that the thousand year door could end up lacking its own identity fortunately that isn't the case because most of the time these ideas are expanded or changed in some way for example that fae code in chapter 5. in the original game you just have to run out of the volcano and then everything goes back to normal you jump over to peach and this break-in structure doesn't really amount to much of anything in the thousand-year door though this moment is awesome you team up with the boss you just defeated to defeat some other guy that's been hiding out in your team this whole time as a kid i was pumped up about this and i was still pumped up about it now as a grown man oh yeah speaking of that whole section both games have these tropical islands like i already said but the thousand-year door frames it as a shipwreck as a group of people trying to survive in a dangerous place full of ghosts again there's a bit more of an interesting narrative here and a unique framework for this portion of the adventure instead of the koopa bros the thousand year doors medieval castle has hooktail a giant dragon there inside koopa's dead bodies litter the ground which might just be the single most metal thing to ever happen in a mario game similarly goombella and coupes may look and function similarly to gumbario and cooper from the first game but their personalities are totally different the snowy areas and sewer systems i mentioned have vastly different layouts and aesthetics peach's chapters have entirely different narratives additionally both games might involve collecting seven macguffins but that's just the structure of the game even if that structure is important there's a lot of room to play around with it and the thousand-year door does just that so yeah at times the games have striking similarities but the thousand-year door isn't simply aping the first game it's building upon its foundation and doing a lot of its own things too in general the thousand year doors mini narratives also have a lot more going on yet at the same time they managed to feel more cohesive there are a whole bunch of reasons for this but the partners are a big part of it in the first paper mario partners largely felt incidental to me in other words they didn't really feel integral to the plot of the areas they were introduced in gumbario joins mario simply because he wants to go on an adventure cooper joins mario because cooper's a brave boy bombat joins because she needs help getting out of the cell and then she decides she wants to fight pericary joins because he might as well i mean he's looking for his letters anyway watt joins because mario saves her sushi joins because she likes looking after people in general and lacka lester joins because he likes mario's attitude about fighting and doesn't want to fight for huff and puff anymore in all these cases mario himself and the narrative surrounding him doesn't really feel necessary to the partner's personalities one important thing here is that we don't generally see these characters grow and change much throughout mario's adventure they join mario by and large because of who they already are and once they've joined their arcs are done basically they just are who they are the only character who's a bit different from this as lady beau after all she drives the narrative of chapter 3 by kidnapping the star sprite and forcing mario to help her and that's one of the big reasons why i find her to be the most interesting partner in that game now don't get me wrong i'm not saying i dislike any of these partners however in the thousand-year door many of the partners are far more involved in the many narratives of the area they come from in addition a good number of them grow and change becoming more complex and engaging in that process coops wants to go to hooktail's castle because he wants to avenge his father finish what his father started protect the other koopas and he wants to prove to himself that he's not just a weakling and a crybaby basically he has a slew of reasons for wanting to come with mario and for wanting to go where he's going even without this hooktail is a cool aesthetically appropriate boss but this way there's a very personal reason behind defeating her this sells hooktail as truly being a monster not just because of her design or the koopa's corpses but because of her actions and because of what she's done to a character that we know in addition it gives an emotional weight to her defeat because it's not just that you defeat the boss it's that koops beat the boss too and proved something to himself in that process basically if you removed mario here coops could serve as the protagonist of this adventure that works super well because mario is necessarily a flat character and that wasn't a paper pun i just said it okay it was an accident it's the other characters around him who need to make this more interesting there's also the yoshi kid who feels very personal to the player the player saves the yoshi gets a different color of the yoshi depending on how long it takes for the egg to hatch and even gets to name them then at the start of chapter 5 admiral bobbery can't bring himself to sail because his wife died while he was out at sea but the player procures a note from his late wife and bob rejoins them again there's a change here in this case that change is touching and really meaningful the player helps a broken man become whole and from there he's invaluable it's not the sort of stuff i'd really expect to see in a mario game but it's certainly welcome in my opinion though the best example of this partner mini narrative cohesion comes from vivian in chapter 4. this chapter takes place in twilight town the tone is immediately clear this place is creepy the colors are predominantly deep reds purples and blacks the doll-like citizens eyes are cast in shadows the music has a haunted drawn out quality to it naturally the narrative matches this tone whenever the creepy steeple's bell tolls one of the citizens transforms into a pig of course mario and his friends go over to the creepy steeple and find dupless a sadist who's been tormenting the town's citizens because he thinks they're depressing boring and dim-witted basically he just finds tormenting them fun regardless fighting him is easy when he's low on health he reveals that he can copy mario's physical form but he's so close to being ko that it hardly matters mario defeats him collects the power star and the chapter ends but then the chapter continues the player presses and the shadowy version of mario jumps up the version that the player just defeated after wandering back to twilight town dupless tears through the sky and reveals that he's taken mario's identity there mario finds vivian a villain who's been sent to fight him however she's being abused by her siblings and they've left her alone mario helps her find a weapon her oldest sister dropped and they join forces from here vivian unwittingly helps mario regain his body and find the crystal star he needs and just as he takes back his place in the world takes back his identity she finds a new place for herself a place with people who will care for her and where she can be a better person than she was before needless to say vivian's journey as a character is tightly interwoven with the wacky narrative of this chapter and despite mario being a flat character they managed to reflect that narrative in him too once again the thousand year door manages to create this impressive cohesion between its characters and its many narratives and it's something i love about that game and about this chapter in particular as i've already mentioned and as this very strange sequence of events already alludes to the thousand year door has plenty of its own original ideas the player controls bowser through 2d platforming sections there's a tournament arc there's a demon that's going to destroy the world there's a slew of brand new characters enemy types and species there's the pit of a hundred trials a three and a half hour long gauntlet of enemies with the game's toughest boss capping it all off again i could go on and on this game is willing to take risks and in doing so it separates itself from any other mario game before or since its release basically the game is incredibly ambitious unfortunately though the thousand-year door doesn't always succeed the first issue i want to bring up is a cardinal sin that many video games commit unskippable cut scenes most of these cutscenes are fortunately short enough that it doesn't really bother me but there's one big exception the cut scenes right before and during the shadow queen boss fight these cutscenes alone take 11 minutes of course this would take slightly less time if you mash through the dialogue this is bad enough for people who want to play through the game again but way worse for those who died during this fight having to watch this cutscene again turns the story itself into a punishment for dying needless to say that's not a good thing to have happening especially right at the end of the game as a kid this really messed up this moment for me the way i always play these games is that i avoid a ton of the optional enemy encounters so i wasn't exactly that strong going into this and i lost many times i spent way too much time watching this cutscene fortunately that wasn't really a problem for me now but that doesn't stop it from being a problem in general to be fair though the first game had a very similar problem during the final bowser fight where players were forced to watch a lengthy unskippable cutscene but it's even worse that this sort of simple issue hasn't been fixed in the sequel i mean guys please this is a message to anyone anyone who's developing a game just let me skip your cutscenes if you do i'll love you forever i'll send you a smooch in the mail but if you don't i won't be mad i'll just be disappointed i'll be a little bit upset so do do it for me please love you the only other instance where cutscenes really started to annoy me was in chapter three a fan favorite chapter across the whole paper mario franchise the problem comes from scheduling matches in the tournament assuming that you never lose a fight you'll have to do this 21 times each time the player goes up to this game boy talks with grubba about the restrictions that will be placed on them in this battle waits for the security guard to come up watches a shortcut scene introducing the enemy and then watches a shortcut scene after defeating them in total this adds up to a little over one minute but let's just say one minute for simplicity's sake if this happened a few times it wouldn't even be worth mentioning it wouldn't even cross my mind but when it happens 21 times 21 minutes is a lot of time to be dedicated to something like this to be fair some of this process is necessary or understandable like introducing the enemies it sets up the tone but i really wish i didn't have to go up to the game boy every time hear about the unique battle restrictions and so on i would have liked to been able to just walk over and do the fight at my leisure after a while the system made the chapter drag on don't get me wrong i know people will be annoyed with me for this and say i'm nitpicking i like this chapter it's great but it would have been even better if scheduling battles didn't take so much time but the biggest issue with the game story runs deeper than some unskippable cutscenes the story starts off charming with enough mystery to keep players engaged the exynots a group of villains led by a mysterious man named grotus are looking for seven crystal stars with these in their possession they'll be able to open up the thousand-year door which is hidden beneath rogueport legend states that a great treasure lays hidden behind the door in reality this so-called treasure is really a thousand-year-old demon called the shadow queen this shadow queen is powerful enough to control the entire world grotus however believes that he could harness this power to rule the world himself this is somewhat new territory for mario game i mean i know bowser's always wanted to take over the mushroom kingdom and all that jazz but he's not really so much into the awakening demons part of things so naturally there are a lot of questions here chief among them is who is grotus and by extension who are the x-naughts i mean when i see this guy who's managed to build a base on the moon and who strives towards world domination i get curious about why he wants to do these things and how he's gotten so many people on his side he doesn't seem particularly charismatic so maybe he just paid them to join him but that doesn't explain lord krum's strong desire to impress him and succeed in stopping mario either way wanting to rule the world isn't all that interesting the interesting part is why but unfortunately we never really get any of that despite there being plenty of time for the game to dig into his character a little deeper that just doesn't happen as such grotus remains a one note and in my opinion boring villain throughout the game's entire story i guess it's nice that they're trying to introduce a new character and do something new but despite how much more ordinary paper mario's narrative was i actually preferred the villain there sure we've seen bowser many times but he had a different personality we knew why he was doing what he was doing basically we just knew a lot about him and he was easy to latch onto because of that this might have been more forgivable if beldum was more developed after all she's basically the main villain here the one manipulating grotus into collecting the stars and the one who wants to bring the shadow queen back to life but again i have to ask why and we don't get a reason beyond the fact that she was the shadow queen's servant way back in the day it's good to know that she was a servant but the important part is why and also why does dupless end up helping her with this is it just because he's a sadist or is it because beldum is tricking him now again no real answers or at least nothing i find satisfactory i haven't done all the games various side quests and all that stuff but main story points like this should be explored in the main narrative itself now i'm fine with some unanswered questions about the villains but the key word there is some in fact i'll readily admit that spending too much time on every character's motivations can be an issue that way the pacing can get all messed up but the fact that i didn't get anything i found personally meaningful about these characters in about five hours of mandatory story stuff is pretty bad this is made so much worse by the very end of the game too when goombella writes to mario telling him what's going on now this should be a cute little epilogue type thing but instead uh apparently the villains are just fine now like they all just gave up on being bad dupless is even part of a stage show or something these people were pretty horrible they wanted to destroy everything and duplis was just a nasty sadist who hurt people for fun for no real reason other than his own enjoyment if he changed if he gets off scot-free i want to see why this way though now they're just a bunch of massive karma houdini's doesn't matter what they did doesn't matter how bad they were it's fine everyone's forgiven them the varied areas the player travels to and all the new characters and the unique little mini narratives of each chapter do a lot to disguise the fact that this overarching plot really isn't anything special to me sure it's full of mystery and potential but so little of that is actually explored i understand if people like this more just because it's different from other mario games and they want to see something different of course the novelty of these characters and these ideas is worth something it certainly got me hooked from the get-go but not enough was done with those new ideas and in the end i actually find the overarching plot of the first paper mario to be better than this game but that's kind of balanced out by this game having the stronger mini narratives so if you ask me which narrative i like more overall it's pretty hard to say but i think i have a slight preference for the thousand year door because those mini narratives are so good and i just want to go back to that game to experience each of those unique locations again now we've spent a lot of time talking about paper mario but you know what else you can do with paper make art and that's where skillshare the sponsor for this video comes in if only they had a skillshare class on making better segways anyway skillshare has thousands of classes to help creative and curious people learn new skills experiment with art forms and explore their passions they have classes on animation film and video production music creation and more personally i've been exploring the creative writing section recently i checked out daniel jose older's class storytelling 101 character conflict context and craft in this class he goes over the foundational elements of storytelling in particular i found the context element of the class incredibly useful and i definitely learned some new things that i'm going to be applying to my creative writing one thing i really like about skillshare though is that there are no ads and with an annual subscription it's less than 10 us dollars a month additionally the first 1000 people to click the link in the description will get a free trial of the premium membership so yeah click that link learn some stuff live your dreams but only once you're done the video okay speaking of which let's get back to paper mario [Music] in general i'd say that level design is one of paper mario's strong points these areas are fun to traverse and explore turning the track of getting from a to b into an engaging process in its own right a big part of this stems from how active the movement is here you can press the z button to perform a spin dash which propels mario forward in whatever direction you're holding you can jump to cancel it too and string spins together to fly through the game this way i avoided the vast majority of enemy encounters spun through the game like a mad lad and had a jolly old time doing just that of course this is totally optional too you don't need to do this so if you want to take your time and soak in the sights and sounds you can do just that but me well i'll be hanging out with sanic the hedgehog personally but the movement isn't the only thing that makes traversal fun the little belts of platforming or puzzle solving littered throughout the game's environments also help keep the level traversal fresh and engaging there are also a number of unique set pieces the player gets to interact with like these slides in mount rugged that send mario flying on top of that the player gets to have an impact on environments and see them change for example chapter 3 has the collapsing mansion chapter 7 has reflection based environmental manipulation and puzzles and chapter 8 has a section where you get to raise and lower water levels to get around the castle all in all most of these environments aren't just pleasant to look at they're pleasant to move around in too unfortunately there is one part of the game where i really didn't like the environmental exploration chapter 6. before you even get into the main area for this chapter things aren't looking so hot see you need various seeds to open this door if you haven't collected them already well then it's time to run around to places you've already been fortunately i'd collected them all as i went but i'm not a fan of this type of busy work even if it didn't affect me the game already has other optional incentives that encourage players to explore the environments thoroughly namely the letters and superblocks and i think these are more than enough of an incentive you don't need to put something mandatory on top of that but i don't think this chapter gets any better once mario's through that door because the level design forces so much backtracking on the player here you start in this tiny area with six paths radiating out from it the problem here is that once you've gone to the end of one of these paths the only way back is well back through the area you came from the craters also placed some of the most aggressive enemies in the game here i mean these bees are out for your life buddy this makes it one of the few points in the game where it's actually quite difficult to avoid enemy encounters meaning that it can get obnoxious to try to get back through these places fast of course the player probably isn't going to go through these paths in the right order their first time through meaning that there's a lot of walking a little way down the path going oops wrong one and then heading back while trying to avoid these enemies fortunately though no other area in the game has this type of design as such i can still say with a lot of confidence that paper mario's level design is one of its strengths and something that sets it apart from a lot of other games in its genre this might lead you to believe that the thousand-year doors level design would be strong too i mean this is a sequel to that game right but unfortunately i don't really think that's the case actually across all the reading i did before writing this comparison the only consistent issue that people seem to have with this game is so yeah i'm here to tell you that backtracking is an issue in the thousand-year door but if you've played the game or read any reviews of the game then you probably already knew that a lot of people have problems with that but since i wanted to talk about this problem and make it interesting i decided to torture myself by isolating every instance of backtracking in the game and figuring out exactly how much my playthrough i spent backtracking in other words i put my back tracking on some tracks and backtracks through the backtracking to back up this point i'm about to make does that track the only issue with this is that you might have a different definition of backtracking than i do i'm sure a lot of people have their own variations on what they consider to be a problem or not so i made some criteria for what i define as backtracking and that's what's on the screen right now if you care about it pause the video and read it over it's also in the description with that necessary explanation out of the way here's the tally i spent one hour and 47 minutes backtracking since the game took me a total of 19 hours and three minutes to complete that means that 9.36 percent of my total play time was spent backtracking this also means that in the time i spent backtracking i could have instead watched kung fu panda not once but 1.13 times which is disturbing to say the least however it would be very easy to make this less of an issue because a lot of this backtracking occurs in big chunks the first big chunk comes in chapter four which i've seen referred to as backtracking the chapter the second occurs between chapters five and six when the player needs to immediately return to keel hall key right after they've left the third occurs in chapter seven otherwise known as i want to beat general white to a pulp with my fists in case you don't know about the general white thing this is a part of the game where you need to find this guy okay you need to find general white because he's gonna he's gonna let you shoot to the moon so you go all over the place looking for this guy you go through a whole lot of the areas in the game where you've already been and talked to random npcs and i did this i think about as fast as you possibly could too i want you to keep that in mind i took all the shortcuts to get back there i didn't do any unnecessary traveling or fights and i didn't include that stuff i just included the amount of time it took for me as quickly as possible to get to each of these areas talk to an npc have them tell me no general white's not here and then i went around and around doing that and at the end of this stupid quest the game has the gall to have it the general white is just in the town where you started this whole thing but like he wasn't there before i guess and he came back and it's so dumb anyway chapter 4's backtracking took me 13 minutes and 48 seconds the stuff between chapters 5 and 6 took me 8 minutes and 20 seconds and the general white stuff took me 20 minutes and 55 seconds to fix chapter 4 it's simple you just put a pipe in that lets the player go from the creepy steeple back to twilight town and vice versa for chapters 5 and 6 and the chapter 7 general white stuff just remove it there's no need to have this in the game if they ever make a remake of this game i hope they fix this up because the general white stuff is particularly absurd and it's one of the things that keeps me from wanting to replay this game so now if we just make these fairly simple changes backtracking has been reduced from 1 hour and 47 minutes to 1 hour and 4 minutes of course other smaller instances of backtracking should still be removed where it's easy enough to do that but this would already be a massive improvement the fact that it'd be easy to remove so much of this backtracking leads me to one conclusion this is padding which is really bizarre considering that this game has more than enough content either way regardless of what logic was used to include this stuff it's still one of the game's biggest most obvious flaws however it's unfortunately not the only flaw related to traversing this world the other flaw is even more pervasive and it's hallways sounds weird to call hallway's a problem but just just let me expand on that most areas in the thousand-year door are laid out like this with the player moving from right to left or left to right with little variation in some cases this layout makes sense like in the train in other cases i can't help but wish that they were a bit more creatively organized whether the player is going through petalburg the great boggly woods twilight town keel hall key or a whole bunch of these other areas they'll simply be moving back and forth the worst instance of this comes right after the general white thing that i already complained about there's this big cut scene where ba-bombs blast mario to the moon this moment is a real butt clencher i wondered what sort of stuff the x-naughts would have done to the moon thought how cool traversing the space could be and then i got there and it's just like wading through a pool of molasses on top of that once again i was going from left to right with nothing else really there which might work to serve as an unexpected contrast before getting to the real base but once the player gets there it's you guessed it hallways after a while it gets hard to ignore that each of these hallway areas is super similar aside from the fresh and admittedly wonderful coat of paint on top in particular i love how the great boggly woods looks it really appeals to my aesthetic sensibilities but despite that it's one of the last places in the game i actually want to traverse through the other big issue with this hallway design is that a lot of them are really thin making it difficult to avoid unwanted enemy encounters fortunately and i'll get to this more later battling is so enjoyable that this rarely actually frustrated me but when traveling through areas i had already been in and made it all the more obnoxious i can't help but wish that these areas i've shown had more unique setups of course there are moments in the game where the layouts are a little bit more unique take the riddle tower for example with its massive spiraling staircase and various puzzle rooms for me it's the most memorable area in the palace of shadows and that's because it's different i mean there are plenty of other examples too it's not like every area in the game is a hallway rogueport itself isn't like this there the player can climb up on rooftops go into semi-hidden back alleys traverse the water go underground into the sewer enter a variety of shops and so on hooktail's castle and the great boggly tree also have players going up or down large towering structures unfortunately both of these examples come with their own slew of issues though in hooktail's castle there's little in the way of connecting shortcuts what i mean is that if i make a mistake and mario drops down here then i've gotta run all the way back up here this could easily be fixed by having some keys that open a hidden staircase that offer a quick return route the great bugley tree meanwhile forces players to go up and down through the same places multiple times awkwardly attempting to control punis or blow them across gaps or get them away from dropping enemies these punish are a nuisance rather than a help and going back and forth with them results in an enormous amount of backtracking and here's where things get particularly strange for me see the designers have removed the spin dash but it would have been so great to have here sure faster travel wouldn't have fixed the root of the issue but it would have been a pretty effective band-aid now you cry hold your horses low fart you can use your yoshi to go faster now which is true you can do that but that means that now you have to constantly have bum rush out and about with you if you want to go fast before i could go fast and have another partner out ready to use their ability besides the spin dash was more active you could cancel spins and chain them together to skate through the world in other words even if it was simple traversing itself was a skill even though i'm sure some people wouldn't like the idea of it being a skill i liked it i miss it it was fun it's hard for me to see this as anything other than a downgrade from 64's movement because again you didn't need to spin dash if you didn't want to in the end backtracking a slew of hallway designs and the removal of the spin dash result in areas that look great but are a total chore to get through overall this results in me having a massive preference for the first games level design and it's the main area where i feel the thousand-year door is unexpectedly lacking paper mario's combat is a fantastic introduction to turn-based rpg battles in many ways the combat is stripped down to the bare essentials where many other rpgs will have attacks that do hundreds or thousands of points of damage attacks in paper mario rarely go above 10. keeping numbers small might not seem like a big deal but when you're working with a walnut brain like me then yeah this is a lot easier to work with i mean figuring out which attacks to choose when the enemy has six points of health and one point of defense is easier than figuring out which attack to choose when the enemy has 1260 points of health and 225 points of defense or something like that similarly the player levels up whenever they get a hundred star points and can only upgrade one of three stats health flower points which is basically mp or badge points these simple decisions make the battle system incredibly inviting by extension these decisions can make the battles go by faster because most players are going to have an easier time making informed decisions therefore they'll be able to make those decisions faster in fact many of the design decisions here are meant to make battles go by quickly the player can jump use their hammer use items use a special move or run partners meanwhile are relatively limited they can attack or switch out with another partner this way the player rarely has a lot of options to sift through where many other rpgs have a wide array of enemy type weaknesses and strengths to consider here the player only really needs to worry about their hammer and jump of course explosions fire water ice and electricity are also employed but few enemies have weaknesses to those things regardless that still isn't a lot to consider and engaging with these elements is rarely necessary to win a battle this way combat is kept simple and one side effect of that is that it rarely drags on or becomes tedious the downside of this is that battles might end up lacking depth or challenge in other words the combat might end up being paper thin get it guys i made a paper bun because the game's about paper as far as depth goes though the game gets around that with many partners and badges each partner has unique attacks and abilities this way the player still needs to consider who's going to be the best for the area they're in and for the enemies they're about to fight badges can also do a ton of stuff they can raise attack power change sound effects give status buffs when certain conditions are met give the player new attacks help the player navigate the overworld and more as such the player has the ability to customize a lot of how the battles are going to play out for me this was more than enough to keep the battles fresh throughout my 12 hours of playtime the battles are definitely easy though i flew through most encounters in this game however the fact that enemies can mostly be avoided in the overworld makes this a non-issue for me because this way i only had to fight a handful of enemies in each area along with whatever bosses were in store for me even though the bosses weren't horribly difficult i was under leveled enough that i still had to think through each encounter regardless of its easiness though the game managed to keep me engaged in other ways mainly through the use of action commands here instead of just selecting an attack and watching it happen the player needs to correct the time inputs to pull off many of the moves most of these inputs are simple but they still force the player to remain present throughout the fights if you want to perform well you can't just zone out select the attacks and have the battle be over with quickly there are two big reasons why i love this it provides an added layer of challenge no matter how small because now this isn't all about strategy it's also about physically being able to pull off the move properly for example when performing a power bounce the player needs to press a as mario lands on the enemy's head however with each bounce the window for correct timing gets smaller and smaller sometimes whether or not mario jumps on the enemy's head enough will mean the difference between life and death this manages to lend the battles a certain amount of tension even if they are easy because no matter how small the chance is the player always knows that they can screw up the attack even after they've selected it in addition the way action commands are used grants the battle system a sense of kinesthetic immersion which might sound pretentious but we're going with it of course every attack could have been mapped to the a button with correct timing resulting in stronger hits or pulling off attacks at all but instead different moves are mapped to different parts of the controller this provides physical feedback that becomes a sort of immersion with the game as the way the controller is used often seeks to replicate the attack in miniature so to use mario's hammer hold the joystick back and let it go at the right time to use pericary hold the joystick back and wait for the reticle to hover over the enemy this gives the move a slingshot ask quality to use both smack hammer the joystick to the left over and over again after this bo will smack the enemy multiple times kind of like how you you know smacked the joystick for a simpler one press a when you land on the enemy's head so that you have the chance to do another one pressing a adds to the impact of landing on the enemy's head by making you impact the button and of course there are a whole lot of other attacks i could use as examples battles are also engaging on an aesthetic level too see they take place on a stage of sorts with each area having a unique backdrop it grants these battles a very playful tone in addition this meant that i wasn't just curious to see how new enemies would attack i was curious how the stage itself would look to see how the game's designers decided to replicate these areas in a stage play format i was actually surprised by how much that element of the game added to my enjoyment it really goes to show how a creative coat of paint can impact the gameplay experience a lot even if gameplay itself hasn't technically changed all in all i have nothing but praise for this battle system i really enjoy it so what i'm about to say might seem strange it's hard to go back to it and that's because the thousand year door improves upon it in just about every conceivable way the thousand year door has one of my favorite battle systems at first it seems incredibly similar to paper mario's it's simple the options are paired back you only have one partner out at a time you use action commands and i could go on and on basically this battle system inherits a lot from the first game but the way it builds on those systems is what makes it so special first of all there's that whole kinesthetic immersion thing i mentioned earlier that's back in the game but it's even better now the controller is used in even more creative and varied ways for example to use bumrush's ground pound rapidly press r here you flutter your finger and it also takes quite a bit of effort and look yoshi's putting in a lot of work too and he's fluttering to use bomb rush's stampede alternate between l and r this feels a bit like stomping down because the triggers have so much travel i could go through other examples but many of these attacks are mimicking the first game's attacks some of them are even pulled straight out of the first game however it's still nice to see that the thousand thousand-year door is building upon that system and not simply letting it be additionally the attacks are creative in ways that go outside of this kinesthetic immersion particularly i love how vivians are handled she's the partner who can hide when mario is out in the overworld this idea is reflected in a pretty interesting way here many of her attacks involve hiding the button prompt from the player until the last moment or using randomization to make the attacks different every time you use them as such the attacks are kept invisible to the player it's not necessarily a type of immersion but it still does a wonderful job of reflecting who she is as a character in general the attacks here are just a little bit more complex this particularly comes into play with special attacks in paper mario you'd select a special attack and it would do what it was going to do there were no other inputs required from the player however in the thousand year door each one of these is a little mini game if these minigames were too long they could become tedious and bog down the battles but they're kept quick and snappy and i never found myself annoyed with them instead they added some welcome variety to the battles since most of them also change a bit every time you use them i also didn't get to the point where i just didn't want to touch one of these after playing the game for long enough which is something i find can definitely happen with these mini game ask attacks so i'm very happy to say that that doesn't happen here overall there are just more options here too but at first that might seem like it goes against the simplicity of the first game fortunately though that isn't really the case these additional mechanics are all easy to understand well communicated to the player not necessary to use or reflect systems that already exist for example now partners have more functionality in the previous game they could attack or swap out that was all now they can use items too in paper mario only one badge existed that modified the partners but now there are various badges that increase partner stats or give them different abilities the partners also now have their own hp all in all even if mario still has more abilities than the partners the partners are much closer to being at his level in the end they're just more useful here and that was done without making the battle system all that more complex another example of an added simple system is the super guard using this mario can reflect or counter most attacks in the game with a well-timed press of the b button and when i say well timed i mean well timed the game runs at 60 frames per second and you've got three frames to pull this off this is an addition to the guard option where the player can press a to reduce the damage taken by one of course the window for this move is wider well i know some people feel the super guard can trivialize combat i never felt that way instead it just added this nice risk reward element to the combat i had to ask myself if i wanted to take the safe option of guarding or if i wanted to go for the super guard which honestly i had a decent amount of trouble pulling off consistently and that simple act of questioning myself added a lot of tension to these battles but i haven't got to the really special thing about the thousand-year door see the smart people over in intelligent systems decided to just pull the camera back from the stage and boom amazing now there's an audience watching the performance the audience works extremely well simply by creating a rich atmosphere with hooting hollering and cheering however what makes the audience really special is how they affect the battles themselves first the audience interacts with the battle in some fairly small ways they'll throw trash and helpful items and some will climb up on the stage and mess with stuff individual types of audience members also have slightly different mechanics for example booze will sometimes come up and make a character invisible crazy daisies will sing causing the rest of the audience to fall asleep luigi will throw rare items to help you out and so much more but they also interact with the battles in more extreme ways if they're pleased they'll cheer invigorating mario with some star power with enough star power mario can use bigger attacks that are unlocked as the player collects the seven crystal stars of course these are the special attacks i already mentioned there are a few different ways the player can get the audience to cheer them on both mario and the partner can outright appeal to the audience which will grant them a hearty amount of star power but that'll count as that character's attack for that turn the other way mario and the partner can get star power is the more important way if the player performs additional button presses at the right time during an attack they'll pull off a stylish move this gets the audience excited and will get the player more star points with some attacks the stylish button inputs occur after the player's done damage with others performing the stylish attack might put the player at risk of missing another important button press the audience also grows larger every 10 levels that mario levels up granting a further sense of progression giving this sense that as mario travels around parts of the world he's becoming more renowned in this way the audience contributes to the narrative as well as the battle mechanics sometimes this gets pushed even further with bosses who will interact with the audience either way though these stylish moves in the audience add another layer to the combat and it's a layer that's incredibly charming and dynamic once again this goes to show how much an aesthetic change or in addition to the game like this can add after all this didn't need to be an audience it could have been anything you could have just performed a charge attack or something like that to get more star points or done and fancy attacks and for some reason that invigorates the character but just by having this audience here by contextualizing this within the game in a different way it adds so much and it's one of my favorite things about the thousand year door i have no doubt i'll be going back to this game in the near future just to play some of these battles again at the end of all this you might have one major question which one's better paper mario or the thousand year door and if i did have a strong opinion i'd be honest about it i would tell you that i think this one is better than the other but i don't really these games both have their own strengths and weaknesses overall i'd say paper mario is the more consistent of the two games but i also think that despite the lower lows the thousand-year door has much higher highs really i think both of these games are worth playing and really well done even if i do have some qualms here and there with both of them so if you're someone who's never played either of these games before i highly encourage you to do so you'll probably have a pretty good time however i also wouldn't get my expectations up too high if you're someone that's been hearing forever that oh the thousand-year door is the greatest thing to ever happen it's the best rpg uh maybe you'll feel that way in fact if you do that'd be awesome but i would go into it just expecting to have a pretty good time and if it's better than that then hey that's even better i wish i could end this off with some spicy take but that's my honest opinion on the matter hey there thanks for watching the video and sticking around to the end i hope you enjoyed it this is a little thank you to my patrons aren't they great don't they have beautiful names yeah they're awesome also i have some other videos you can check out i have a bunch of videos on nintendo games and mario games in particular i've been covering a lot recently so if you like that i encourage you to subscribe to the channel and check out the other stuff i've done either way though thanks for spending i don't know like 45 minutes or something in your life here with me have a blessed day see you next time

Channel: Lowart

Views: 80,876

Keywords: paper mario vs the thousand year door, paper mario vs the thousand-year door, mario and luigi, paper mario switch, super paper mario, paper mario color splash, mario and luigi paper jam, paper mario vs ttyd, paper mario 64 vs the thousand year door, paper mario vs paper mario the thousand year door, paper mario 64 vs ttyd, paper mario vs paper mario ttyd, paper mario 64 vs paper mario ttyd, paper mario vs paper mario the thousand-year door, old paper mario, best paper mario

Id: 3NhElqiOIAQ

Length: 49min 51sec (2991 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020