Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a remake of the GameCube title most fans consider the series' high point, and the Switch version finally gave it a chance to find a new audience. Mario arrives in the run-down port town of Rogueport to use an ancient map to find the Star Crystals and open the legendary thousand-year door. His journey takes him to a fighting arena, a haunted island, a train full of suspicious passengers, and even the Moon, with each chapter carrying its own tone and its own small drama. The script is witty, quotable, and at times surprisingly mature.

Combat is turn-based, but demands active participation: every attack and defense triggers an action command that must be timed correctly. A distinctive touch is the audience—battles take place on a stage, spectators give you energy for special attacks, and if you bore them, they start throwing things at you. Mario is joined by a crew of partners with distinct abilities, used both in and out of combat to solve puzzles, while a badge system lets you build the character around your own playstyle. The world's paper nature is put to playful use: Mario folds himself into a paper airplane, a boat, or squeezes through a gap like a sheet of paper.

The remake redrew the entire game in a softly lit, almost tactile style with fabric and paper textures, re-recorded the soundtrack, and added a number of quality-of-life improvements, the most welcome being fast travel and the ability to replay the music. It runs at thirty frames per second, which bothered some players, though it has no real impact on a turn-based game. Reception was very good, and many called it the best Paper Mario available on modern hardware. Today it's one of the best-written RPGs on Switch and an ideal choice for players who want the genre delivered with lightness and humor. Anyone who never played the GameCube version gets one of the best reasons to own a Switch; anyone who did gets a dignified return to something they'd been remembering fondly for twenty years.