The Thousand-Year Door defies belief twice over. First, that a Mario adventure with this amount of creative liberty was ever allowed to exist in the first place; and second, after over a decade where Nintendo seemed eager to bury this era as deeply as possible, that they BROUGHT IT BACK.

I will admit upfront that the first three Paper Mario games have been some of the most influential in my life - on my taste, my art style, even the types of stories I want to tell. But ironically, despite the remake's many improvements, the differences in graphics and music were enough to finally clear the haze of reverence from my brain, and for the first time I could actually fully see and internalize a lot of the common complaints about this game. Ok, yeah, the level design loves tunneling you through corridors, even in comparison to the first Paper Mario's more frequently wide-open and organic spaces. Yes, some segments can be kind of a slog if the story isn't grabbing you (or in my case, if you already know everything that happens and just want to get to your favorite parts). Put this next to Origami King or even Color Splash, and the amount of delight you'd have in exploring and solving puzzles in the actual overworld in the latter two is night and day with TTYD.

But I still think these complaints pale in comparison to this game's positives: a project made with a startling amount of heart, sincerity, creativity, depth, passion- and yes, a heaping of very bizarre humor. It might feel a little cringe to praise the emotional storytelling of a Mario game, and I know there are plenty of games out there that hit the heartstrings more deftly, and you may argue that a Mario product doesn't need all this, but- the fact that it's Super Mario is the POINT. When you grow up with something like TTYD or SPM and say "Wait, a Mario game can be THIS? You can just have a Bob-omb read a letter from his dead wife that says 'time, like love, is a tide?' And later that Bob-omb becomes dear friends with a soul-eating ancient pirate who is seemingly composed of the piled-up and recombined bones of his long-dead crew?" then you come to the conclusion that rules for storytelling exist to be broken. No franchise, no matter how silly, should be off-limits for expressing the sincerest thoughts and wildest ideas of those working on it. It's an officially-endorsed fanfic full of OCs and their very human flaws and motivations and struggles, and that's wonderful. There are character arcs. There are enough mini-stories in this larger story that something, at least something, will resonate with YOU personally. It's a game that feels like it had very little limitations placed upon it when it was being made, and it makes you want to take off your own self-imposed limitations too.

The most gratifying part about the remake is that it was crafted with the amount of care and love that its fans have long thought this game deserved. Even the most minor of characters have new expressions and animations, and the difference this makes to certain key story moments make the original scenes seem rather lifeless and silly by comparison, no matter how cool they might have seemed in our imaginations. The sound designers and composers at Intelligent have learned a lot in recent Paper Mario games about integrating music into the overall impact and humor of the experience, and TTYD is now brimming with not only new remixes but entirely new songs that punctuate the drama and humor of the plot. Add in some new quality-of-life changes, unlockable concept art that is absolutely mind-blowing for longtime fans to see after two decades, and a bit of brand-new content, and the remake creates a definitive experience that makes me feel like I can put the original away in a place of honor and maybe never take it back out again.

As someone who likes every Paper Mario game (....well, except for a certain handheld entry) for its own reasons, I feel a peace now as a fan that I haven't experienced in a very long time. I don't want to argue about which Paper Mario game is the best (and my favorite is SPM, so I know I'm losing anyway). I just want a new generation to appreciate this game for their own sake, and for it to mean something to them as it has to me. I'm seeing that happen, and it's beautiful.

In conclusion, they put kazoos in the background music when Flavio is following you around, and I NEED MORE THAN FIVE STARS TO GIVE