Apparently I am a contrarian dipshit, and my feelings about Thousand Year Door will not rehabilitate that image. I know people really love this game, it's considered one of the strongest titles on the Gamecube and the best entry in the Paper Mario series, but man, I'm just not feeling it.

My thoughts on it aren't particularly complex, I don't have a lengthy teardown of precisely why the game didn't resonate with me, it just didn't. It's overly long with too much backtracking, dungeon gimmicks generally disinterested me, I couldn't get into the story, and aesthetically I think the leap in fidelity hurts more than it helps.

It's still a fine game. I don't hate it. I think the wrestling section is incredibly funny and well executed, definitely a highlight and probably the closest I got to really feeling as invested in the game as everyone else seems to be, but it just failed to rope me in otherwise. A real shame given how much I liked Paper Mario.

(11/8/22) Editing this into the review: I think my complaint about the aesthetic could be elaborated on a bit more: The original Paper Mario is very blocky as a consequence of being a Nintendo 64 game, and the very rudimentary shapes and hard edges that comprise geometry helps sell the papercraft aesthetic. The Thousand Year Door I think loses some of this with the bump in polygons. It's not bad by any means but between the two games I've played I definitely prefer the look of the original.