Nintendo improves something that was already great.
Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door seems to improve on everything that was good in the original. The graphics look even better, the music is slightly better, and there are some innovations to the gameplay. This time around, you have an audience that watch your battles, and sometimes they participate. They might throw rocks at you if you use to much time to think about what to do, but if you make them like you, by appealing to them or pulling of stylish moves, they might give you a mushroom, or throw a bucket at your opponent. You still have action commands and you have party members to help you, and I feel there is more strategy and skill to the combat this time around.
The story goes as follows. Mario receives a letter from Princess Peach, containing an ancient map she found. Mario will have to travel to a place called Rogueport, which is full of thieves. Soon Mario find himself searching for the seven crystal stars in order to open the Thousand-Year Door and it turns out the princess has been kidnapped by a gang that also want the crystal stars. This makes it even more important to get the stars and save the princess – and the world. The story is not very good, but at least it is not the cIassic Bowser-kidnaps-the-princess-and-you-must-save-her affair.
One thing I like better about this game, is that unlike in Paper Mario, where you would reach the maximum lot of badge points, HP and FP after a while, there is a much higher maximum level, so you have more freedom to choose your priorities (I for one chose to get a really heavy amount of badge points). Another thing I enjoyed, was the games ability to surprise me. I want go into details here and spoil it all for you, but there are some twists I wouldn't have expected.
All in all, the game just delivers, both in terms of combat, puzzles, humorous dialogue, graphics and sound. I only have minor complains here. One of them, is that at times the fact that Mario and his enemies are flat may cause some trouble. At one point you have to jump on a spider that is hanging over a pit, and if you miss (which might happen a lot because it is hard to tell where you should jump from), you had to go back to where you were. Also, if you run towards a door, you might press A after the ! has appeared, but the console will still misread it and think you are jumping and not opening the door. That happens to me a lot.
Conclusion:
Buy this game if you haven't already done it. The game might look silly for one that hasn't tried it, but it is silly in a very good way, and you will get yourself thirty hours of pure enjoyment.