Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Chapter Tier List (2024)

In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the game is split up just like the original N64 game was and is marked by chapters. These chapters usually deal with Mario and friends going somewhere new, meeting a new ally or two, and getting an upgrade along the way. Among the many Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door fans there are, each one of them has a favorite chapter.

Each chapter offers something unique to it, so it's understandable why someone would say traversing Hooktail's Castle is their favorite part if they have their reasons for liking it. Of course, each chapter varies in difficulty, collectibles, and challenges, making it hard to choose which is the best. Each chapter has its highs and lows, its annoyances and hilarious moments, but some are a bit more rough around the edge than others. Based on objective factors such as difficulty and weight to the overall game, these chapters have been arranged into a tier list.

S Tier: Chapters 3, 5, and 8

The Glitz Pit, Keehaul Key, and The Palace of Shadow

Chapters 3, 5, and 8 top the list due to the unique nature of what they offer, from a well-paced pirate adventure with plenty of humor, to a final dungeon crawl to send Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door off with all the most difficult challenges it can muster. The Glitz Pit's unique way of handling a chapter's enemies, having players encounter them through a fighting ring in which they have specific conditions to meet, gives it an interesting pace that remains in fans' memories.

The adventure through Cortez's cave may be short, but the chapter has a good balance of puzzles and story, with the pirate spirit at the end being a memorable boss fight for plenty of reasons. While Chapter 8 is indeed tough, the puzzles offered are designed with the idea that this is the last challenge of the main story in mind, with plenty of lore and important story plot twists throughout that make Chapter 8 a wonderful note to end on.

A Tier: Chapter 6, 2, and 4

The Excess Express, Great Boggly Woods, and Creepy Steeple

Each of these chapters is most certainly interesting, but fall victim to flaws that may annoy players during their journey. Chapter 6 is rather creative, taking inspiration from Murder on the Orient Express tropes to dedicate most of the chapter to character dialogue, but the difficulty curve when battle is re-introduced and an anticlimactic ending doesn't do this section many favors. The same could be said when it comes to managing the Punies of the Boggly Woods in Chapter 2, though the Switch version fixes many of the confusing dynamics of the little creatures, chasing them down when they run away at the sight of a Pider is still troubling.

Chapter 4 has seen a fair bit of improvement in the remake, as not only is Vivian's dialogue no longer censored in English, but an extra Warp Pipe has been added to help players cut down on backtracking. Unfortunately, this is only if players find the pipe or remember to use it, which is why Chapter 4 sits below the better chapters of the game.

B Tier: Prologue, Chapters 1 and 7

Arriving in Rogueport, Facing Hooktail, and Shooting For the Moon

As the prologue of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and its first chapter serve as the starting section, it certainly keeps its tricks up its sleeves for later chapters. The first chapter also hinges heavily on the first portion of the original Paper Mario, which also featured a small town in a meadow, a castle to explore, and a shell-spinning Koopa partner, so it's not the most original experience in the game. Chapter 7, however, consists of story-mandated backtracking and some of the most complicated platforming puzzles in the game, which makes it a chore in a way most of the other chapters aren't.

None of these parts of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door are inherently bad — it's a beloved game for a reason — but even a good game has its downsides. If players enjoy what other players might consider annoying in TTYD, there's nothing wrong with that at all. After all, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door exudes charm, including its low points, so all of these chapters are plenty of fun to play even if they feel a little tedious at times.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2024)

A modern version of the classic 2004 RPG, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for the Nintendo Switch features upgraded graphics along with other changes intended to make the game as accessible as possible.

Franchise

Paper Mario

Platform(s)

Switch

Released

May 23, 2024

Developer(s)

Nintendo

Publisher(s)

Nintendo

Genre(s)

RPG

ESRB

E For Everyone Due To Mild Fantasy Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes

How Long To Beat

30 Hours

See at Nintendo