Let me begin by saying that THIS IS HOW YOU DO A SEQUEL. Paper Mario TTYD expands upon just about everything that made the first Paper Mario great, by adding new and memorable partners for you to use, more great bosses and other characters, a memorable and well written storyline, a battle system that works super well, etc. etc. The gameplay here is mostly the same although you'll be using new partners that help you solve new kinds of puzzles and will be utilized differently in battle than the last game but still manage to help out a lot and be fun to play as. The gameplay is more or less the same this time around although there are new power ups that Mario will acquire along the way that make more use of the whole "Paper" mechanic like when he can be turned into a paper plane to glide across spaces or a paper boat to move around the water, other than that it's more or less the same. The real highlight here though, is again the characters are story, you of course have the typical Mario characters making appearances here but since you're no longer in the Mushroom Kingdom and in a totally new place altogether you'll meet some new and seriously awesome characters who will tragically only appear in this game and no others, but fear not you get to spend plenty of time with them whether they be partners, enemies, or NPC's there's plenty to go around here. Now let's talk about the story this time around, so Princess Peach while on vacation in a new place called "Rogueport" comes across a map to a place called "The thousand year door" and learns that the map can only be opened by the use of crystal stars which are scattered all across this new land, she sends word to Mario and he makes his way there. Before he arrives however, Princess Peach is captured, not by Bowser this time but by Sir Grodus the leader of a new group of enemies called the X-nauts. Sir Grodus hopes to use Peach as a way to get into the Thousand year door himself and steal whatever riches lie beyond it, while his cohorts attempt to capture all the crystal stars before Mario (and fail of course) he eventually decides to use Mario instead to make his plan come to fruition and without getting too much into spoiler territory that's all I'm gonna say about the story. I gotta admit to you though, this is probably the best written story that has ever been in a Mario game and one of my all time favorite stories in any game ever made, this game is a bit hard to come by these days and is a bit pricey online but it's absolutely worth it and I hope many more people will choose to play this game and discover its greatness, maybe then we'll see it get a remaster for the switch or even a true sequel to the series, but let's not get too hopeful here folks.

PS. Rawk Hawk is the best Mario character ever, don't even @ me.