Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

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Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

Time to Completion: 36 hours

Platform: Nintendo GameCube

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is the first sequel to Nintendo's N64 Mario-themed JRPG Paper Mario, developed by Intelligent Systems, which others might know primarily as the developers of beloved Nintendo-exclusive strategy games in the Fire Emblem and Advance Wars series.

In TTYD, you play as Paper Mario, who travels to Rogueport, a rough-and-tumble 'hive of scum and villainy' that is infested with thieves, brutes, and is controlled by a local crime organization loosely styled after the American Mafia after Princess Peach writes him a letter telling him about a treasure map she bought. Princess Peach is kidnapped by a mysterious group of villains called the X-Nauts, and Mario is swept up into a globe-trotting adventure as he seeks to rescue Princess Peach and find a group of ancient artifacts called "crystal stars" that are used to unlock the ancient Thousand Year Door nestled within the depth's of Rogueport's sewers.

As should be immediately apparent from my description, the world of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is one rife with far more danger and filled with far more personality than is typical of most games associated with Nintendo's famous plumber. This game is full-to-overflowing with new and unique characters, most of whom are reasonably fleshed out and either motivated by some form of past trauma or who are enmeshed in the Indiana Jones-style adventure narrative that spans the game's various episodes.

Another atypical element of this game is the environment diversity. Mario games often tend to be set in very... samey locales, but TTYD features a new and usually very creative environment to explore every time the player progresses into a new chapter: standouts include Twilight Town, a 'cursed' place whose residents are transforming into pigs (with all of the accompanying existential dread one would expect from the people waiting to turn) as a result of some unknown paranormal force; Glitzville, a town built around a massive battle arena; and Keelhaul Key, an isolated island hiding a pirate treasure trove.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, like the N64 original before it, is a linear, story-driven JRPG. As such, Mario gains experience points when he levels up, although the way in which the game allows you to power up Mario is interesting. Every time Mario gains 100 experience points, he is allowed to power up his character in one of three ways: increase Mario's HP, his flower points (flower points, like mana points in other JRPGs, are used to perform special moves), and his badge points. In TTYD, badges function a bit like a combination between normal equipment in JRPGs and Materia in Final Fantasy VII; it takes a certain number of badge points to equip a given badge,and badges can do anything from increase the player's HP/FP total to granting them immunities, damage bonuses, or allowing them to use special moves. One's badge loadout, as such, will have a dramatic impact on how well one fares across the game's various turn-based battles.

Mario is never alone in battle. Alongside him, he'll almost always battle with one of a variety of partners throughout the game, who are also fully controllable by the player, and who can also be customized via badge points to some extent. These partners can easily be rotated in and out of active use at any time, as they're all traveling in Mario's party. The use of partners outside of battle is mandatory to progress in the gain, as they each have special abilities that the player needs to use to uncover more of the environment. For example, one of your partners is a bob-omb who can be used to blow holes in structurally weak parts of the environment. Additionally, hidden collectibles called Shrine Sprites are hidden throughout the game, and these can be used to further upgrade your partners and give them access to more powerful hidden abilities.

The signature and defining innovation of the Paper Mario series is its approach to turn-based battles. After the player selects an action for a character to perform in battle, there is always some sort of skill-based input required from them afterward. This can be anything from timing button presses to pull of multiple attacks when Mario bounces on an enemy's head to inputting long strings of button commands to properly pull of a particular skill. When Mario uses his hammer to attack an enemy, the player physically pulls back on the GameCube's springy analog stick and then lets go at exactly the right moment to maximize damage.

There is more to it, though. Battles in this game are contextualized as performances, akin to something you'd see in a stage play. As such, you're always playing to an audience. Throughout the game, the size of your audience will increase, and interaction with them will become particularly important in some of the game's lengthy and moderately punishing boss battles. Audience members will frequently attempt to throw objects on stage; sometimes, they're hostile and will throw objects that damage Mario. Other times, they're friendly and will throw helpful items to aid you in winning the fight. The player is prompted to press a button on their controller any time this is about to happen in order to have Mario, or one of his partners, rush out into the audience and attack the offending culprit. This can happen regardless of what the audience member is about to throw, though, meaning that carelessly pushing the prompt any time it pops up can prevent you from obtaining much needed health restoration items, or items that boost your abilities somehow. The player manages a star meter in battle, which fills when Mario and his partner pull off attacks particularly well via timed button prompts, appeal to the crowd directly, or otherwise get their audience pumped, and this meter is used to pull off a variety of special skills that tend to be extremely powerful and will often swing the tide of a losing battle when timed correctly.

In these ways, the battle system does an amazing job of making each encounter feel unique and fresh, and it's, quite honestly, one of the most engaging turn-based battle systems I've ever engaged with in a JRPG.

I already mentioned how partners can be used to help the player progress further in the game, but Mario also find upgrades throughout the game that allow him to assume new forms and travel to locations that were previously impossible to access. This world being made of paper, these upgrades usually turn Mario in some variant of paper object, such as a paper airplane, or a rolled up sleeve of paper. Each of these transformations is typically acquired in a new dungeon or area and is often needed to locate the dungeon or area's primary boss. Additionally, these transformations allow for an increased amount of possible exploration when the player is backtracking through the game's connected world. This incredibly Zelda-esque nest of lock-and-key game design makes it where the player is constantly incentivized to revisit locations they previously traveled through.

Another incentive to backtrack is that NPCs frequently change their dialogue in response to story events. I often find myself skipping optional dialogue in many older turn-based JRPGs, but I went out of my way to frequently speak to everyone I encountered in this game. Going along with the atypical flavor of TTYD, character dialogue is often snarky, disarmingly somber (I did a double take the first time I ran across a Toad pondering why he was even bothering to continue living his life), or even riotously funny. I don't think I've ever laughed this much when playing a game before. The superb writing in TTYD extends to both surprisingly nuanced characterizations of its main cast as well as witty banter, recalling a time when Nintendo's localizers knew how to flavor the writing in a game without adding doge memes.

Paper Mario's unique combination of flat, 2-Dimensional character models with 3D environments has always been incredibly striking, and it's not uncommon for these games to be the best-looking titles on their respective Nintendo systems. While the GameCube plays host to a variety of attractive games that have aged rather well over the years, almost nothing else on the system has aged as well as this game. The art design works so well that Nintendo could literally boost the resolution, change a few of the game's environmental models, and sell this as a brand new Switch game. It's flat out gorgeous. These screenshots aren't doing it justice, frankly.

Musically, the game has a decent amount of range, and tracks often suit the environments or situations they appear in. Apart from the final boss' theme (which I'm not going to link, because spoilers), none of the music in this game really stood out as something I'd want to listen to outside of the game. It's a decent OST, but in a game with so many excellent qualities, it stands out a bit as a weak point.

Every game has flaws, and TTYD is no exception to this truth. With that said, I really don't have a ton to complain about. I only have two major complaints. My first issue is with the side-quests in this game. In the hub city of Rogueport, there's a "trouble center" where people will commission you to help them out with a problem. Invariably, this involves backtracking to some previous location and finding or doing something. These quickly become monotonous, though, both because the majority of them don't yield amazing rewards, and because the side-quests themselves don't have properly engaging gameplay or narrative elements to make them feel worth while. Aside from one or two, they're a waste of time, frankly.

This kind of leads into my other complaint: backtracking sucks in this game. Granted, you'll eventually open shortcuts that make the various parts of the connected world easier to get to, but it can still take an uncomfortably long time to go back to previous areas in side-quests or even when you're just hunting around for missing collectibles in order to 100% the game (which I don't recommend, frankly). A big part of my issue with it is that these shortcuts are accessed via Rogueport's sewer system, and this environment is large and complex enough that I often found myself getting lost when trying to find something.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door was a pleasant surprise. My first experience with the series, via the Nintendo 3DS' Paper Mario: Sticker Star, was negative enough that I was dissuaded from engaging with other games in the series for years. But, while it's not perfect, TTYD is one of the most compelling and consistently delightful JRPGs I've played in a long time, with awesome writing, a huge cast of lovable personalities, reasonably engaging storytelling, RPG mechanics that strike a balance between depth and approachability, and a fantastically quirky sense of humor and saturates the entire experience with personality.

Misc. notes:

• I was surprised by how decent the dungeon design was in this game, and how frequently I encountered puzzles in them. They're not quite as fleshed out as something like your standard Legend of Zelda dungeon, but they're still quite good.
• While the actual locations are often quite large and complex, the environments connecting unique locations are so linear that they feel like themed hallways. It's not a big deal, though, as these are often no more than a few screens long, and are used to add a sense of distance between locations. I do wish there had been more secrets in some of these connecting environments, though.
• I love how even several of the antagonists in this game have compelling character arcs.
• Some of the special abilities you can activate via the star meter are quite creative. One involves clicking on tiles that pop up with alarming speed in order to buff your attack and defense stats. Another, which feels like something ripped straight out of Okami, tasks you with free-drawing circles around groups of enemies to damage them. The larger your circle, the more enemies you can potentially damage; these also take longer to draw, however, so it often makes more sense to limit your circles to smaller groups of enemies that you do more damage to.
• Vivian is best girl. TEC is best boy. End of story.
• The player frequently receives emails from previously encountered characters, news updates on developing events in various locations, etc. These are sometimes informative and almost always extremely funny
• Luigi apparently goes on his own adventure, parallel to your own, and, if queried, he'll describe events that happen and people he encounters in often excruciating detail. It's a small, purely optional thing, but it's just another aspect of this game where the designers went above and beyond with the writing. There are even post-game biographies you can buy in item shops discussing the significance of Luigi's exploits.

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Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright

This (Well, the whole Fates trilogy) seems to be one of those controversial Fire Emblem entries that people either like or dislike. At its core, it's still a fully serviceable and enjoyable series entry in my opinion, even if IS did make some questionable decisions. I'll be comparing some aspects of this to Conquest as I've also played that entry.

I played on Hard/Casual. I reset enough as it is whenever I lose too many units or key characters. I don't need to go through the extra stress and grief each time I'm afraid someone will die, thanks.

Positives

• The graphics, for a 3DS game, are pretty decent. The 3D effect makes the environments pop even more, so it almost seems like the player is moving units around on a three-dimensional diorama. Cutscenes are also beautifully rendered.
• Many staple mechanics make a return, including the weapon triangle, pairing up units, flying units being weak to archers, armored units taking increased damage from magic tomes, etc.
• A few of the new classes in this version, exclusive to Hoshido (such as Samurai, Ninja, Onmyoji), are fun to play around with...though some do seem more gimmicky (Mechanist) than anything else.
• Compared to Conquest, the story here is, IMO, better. The plot still has a few pitfalls, but it is, on the whole, more logical.
• Like Awakening and unlike Conquest, this version of Fates allows the player to accumulate as much gold and experience as they need. This leaves plenty of room to experiment and grind any and all units up to snuff.
• The game's music is decent, but the piece that stands out to me the most is the signature song for all of Fates, Lost In Thoughts All Alone. Such a beautiful piece, and one that I've listened to quite a bit on YT.
• Some character supports are well-written, meaningful, and also hilarious at times.
• Compared to Conquest, the end boss here is way better IMO. Though I may be slightly biased towards crazy draconic megalomaniacs vs. a possessed guy with anger issues.

Neutral

• Many of the characters aren't bad per se, and some of them are indeed quite interesting. I much prefer many of the characters in Conquest, however. Some of the characters on this route just have less...personality, or just weren't thought out too well. For example, I'm surprised anyone likes Azama, and Setsuna...what the heck? At least the Royals are interesting, as are a few route-exclusive characters like Kaden and Oboro.
• While I generally had fun with the maps, there really wasn't much variety past "Defeat the Boss" or "Rout the enemy" in this game. Conquest definitely had better maps overall, and more variety.
• My Castle, while interesting to experiment with, doesn't really thrill me very much. Sure, it's nice to have an area to regroup, but I also don't really need a game within a game like that. Some of the perks are useful, but a lot of it just feels like extra fluff that doesn't really need to be there.

Negatives/Nitpicks

• While some of the child units are dead useful depending on their parentage (I used Midori, Kana, and Selkie a lot), most of their personalities seem a little base and annoying. Plus, some are clearly modeled off of characters in Awakening.
• To go with the above....While I appreciate that really decent child units can be obtained in the game via relationships with other characters, the explanation as to how these kids are "fighting" age is completely ridiculous. At least this mechanic kind of made sense in Awakening, but here....I really think they could have come up with a better explanation.
• If they're going to eliminate breakable weapons, why wasn't this also applied to normal staves? I understand limiting the rare/special ones, but this seems like a waste with the common ones.

Odd design decisions and some complaints aside, I really enjoyed the 60+ hours I spent with this game. I wouldn't call it the strongest Fire Emblem entry out there, but it's by no means bad; I'd rank it about in the middle of the other entries I've played. It's easy to recommend this one to series fans and to those who like turn-based strategy games, even with its missteps.

I'm not sure if I'll ever get to Revelation. It's DLC-only, and I've heard mixed things about that route. I'd be more apt to try it if the cartridges with all three games on it weren't so rare....

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Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl

1st Stratum - The Beginning

This was my first true experience with the Etrian Odyssey franchise. I think I knew of the series' existence even before IV but the fourth entry was the one that truly got me interested. I was following its release with a keen eye. I played through the demo and really liked it. I kept reading its thread here for months when it was released in America. But when it finally came out in Europe, I didn't buy it. I honestly don't know why.

Less than a year later, they released another Etrian Odyssey game. This time it's a remake of the first game, the game I'm talking about today. I played its demo too. I enjoyed it. And yet again, I didn't buy it.

Years later they start having frequent discounts on Etrian Odyssey games and I pick them up here and there. I was going to start playing IV but I only created bunch of characters because I had this bright idea of making them based on Zero Escape characters. I made more characters than you'd ever need and it wasn't necessarily easy to make them resemble their ZE counterparts. It was the wrong approach. This happened in 2016.

Fast forward to 2020 and I finally decide to truly play Etrian Odyssey. After some debate I decided to start with Untold. It's a remake of the first game so it felt like the right place to start. And unlike most EO games, it has a story mode with predefined characters. I thought it could be a nice way to ease myself into the series. No need to worry about character creation.

2nd Stratum - The Dungeon

The structure is simple. You go further and further in a dungeon and come back to the town to heal, stock up on items and receive and report quests. There are couple of other things you can do but those are the basics. The game loop works well. Some could say it can get bit repetitive but I didn't mind.

Etrian Odyssey is known for its use of the touch screen to create maps of the dungeons you explore. Untold has an option for auto-mapping but I went the traditional way. You take couple of steps, draw some walls, take couple more steps, draw more walls... I don't think it's for everyone but I found it fun. The dungeon design is great. The layouts start out really simple but they get harder and harder to traverse as you go along. The map making becomes more interesting too.

3rd Stratum - The Hook

The first thing that stood out to me was the combat. It's fast and fun. I really liked the character customization. Each class has its own skill tree but in addition there are also things called Grimoire Stones that you can equip that give you access to skills from other classes or even from enemies.

Of course, I didn't have quite the full access to the customization options since I played the story mode and didn't get to pick my classes but I really liked the characters I was given. Each character had unique skills, some of which I hadn't seen in any other games. For example, one of the characters has a skill that can trigger any time you take damage to attack a random enemy on the field. That's nice. A chance to counter. But what makes it interesting is that you also have bunch of skills that can be used to give buffs or deal damage that also damage yourself. That way you can also trigger the skill on your own turn.

One thing I liked from the start but really began giving more attention to once I reached the 3rd Stratum was the music. The music is just awesome. I just had to know who worked on the music and yeah, it's no wonder it was so good, Yuzo Koshiro has been making the music for all entries. I also just noticed while writing this that you can also find the music on Spotify. Time to update my playlist.

4th Stratum - The Struggle

I played the game on Normal since I was new to the series and I knew EO can get hard. I think it was a good choice. I found it to be a bit too easy at first. My first death was in the 4th Stratum which is quite far into the game. That's when I noticed that Normal gives you one retry per dungeon. The game probably mentioned it while choosing the difficulty but it came to me as a surprise. And it was a pleasant surprise since it had been 45-60 minutes since I last saved. I was glad I didn't lose progress. The hardest battle was in the 5th Stratum on a bridge. I died there couple of times. Also died once to the final boss. The battle was going so well for the first half that I started to get lax on the second half and that's when the more dangerous attacks came in. I was able to bind the boss on my second try which prevented them from using the attack that killed me previously. Finished the battle with everyone at full health.

5th Stratum - The Future

The game took me 60 hours. I did all the available side quests except for one. I believe I still have bunch to do now that I've beaten the game. I would like to go for 100% but I doubt I will. I'm glad I was able to finish it before Xenoblade came out. That'll be my focus now but I'm already looking forward to starting another EO game. But which one? Do I continue with the second game and enjoy the story? Jump to IV so I can make my own party? Play Etrian Mystery Dungeon since I also like Mystery Dungeon series? Or maybe I'll defy all odds and play Persona Q even though I have no previous experience with the Persona series? I have all of them and would appreciate suggestions on which to play next even if I won't be starting another EO for a while.