The long awaited sequal has arrived!
Graphics 10/10:
The graphics are fantastic. The follow the 2D styles Paper Mario is famous for as the story is set out like a pop-up book, everything is bright and colourful and wonderful to look at! Mario looks great, tre to his form and all his animations have been done very nicely. All partners and enemies havebeen done fantastically as well and add the extra depth some modern games are missing to the game.
Gameplay 10/10:
The gameplay in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is out of this world. It follows the true styles of RPG battling in turn based battles. However, what is nice for a change, instead of running around and randomly running into battles you can see the enmies and only if you run into them do the battles start. This makes avoiding useless battles easier and generally less frustrating. The battle system itself has a few main key features, as Mario you have options between using your Hammer to attack, jumping on the enemy, using star power, items or other strategies. Each has its own distinctive styles and power. You also get to control one partner per battle which adds extra attacks and extra fun to the system!
Outside of battling you have a fairly large world to explore with plenty of sidequests and a fairly long main quest to contend with. The main storyline ill probably take you about 20 hours, maybe a little less depeding on your skill however there are heaps of little sidequests to follow and one main sidequest that takes many, many hours to complete. Your partners are also fun to have and most of them have great personalities to entertain you with, however they are no where near as interesting as partners in the previous Paper Mario game.
Sound 9/10:
Your typical happy, mobile ring tone Mario music The vast majority of it is very nice and its great to sing a long to and your happy to move around in areas with it. A few of the bg music, however is not quite as good and its just not as nice to listen to. All sound effects are great, Mario making various funny sounds as he attacks and even footstep sounds have all been done nicely.
Story 7/10:
As much as I hate to say this I was really let down by the story. After the typical, yet amazing story of the first Paper Mario game this one just didn't seem to be as good. I think the main problem I have with the story is Bowser is not the main villian, yes you hear me right. The X-Naughts are the bad guys in this one, and while Bowser does play a role it is fairly minor. There is also some pretty average storline cutscenes as well. To give you a basic idea of the story There is this huge door below Rogueport and it is rumoured to have an uncountable amount of richies behind it, but the only way to open it is with the Seven Crystal stars, and so the hunt begins.
Replay Value 9/10:
Its basically what'd you expect from any RPG, a nice long main game and plenty of side quests to keep you going, but once you've beaten it once there is little point to go back and do it again. However, i'm sure u'd at the very least play therough it twice, because it is a very good game.
Conclusion /10:
Paper Mario 2 is a great game, there is no doubt about that and if you never played the first one in the series i'm sure you'll enjoy it more than I did (even though I enjoyed it heaps!). It was just I was expecting more from it than I got, anyway it is a great game and definetly worth buying.