10 Greatest JRPGs Of All Time

9. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

xenoblade chronicles 3
Nintendo

The original Paper Mario was just alright, and the series has definitely lost its lustre in the years since, but Thousand Year Door remains one of the greats.

Thousand Year Door is about, of course, the paper version of everyone's favorite plumber, as he searches the land for the Crystal Hearts in order to unlock the eponymous Thousand Year Door.

No one's quite sure what's behind it, but well, a door that big, that old, and that hard to open, there's gotta be SOMETHING back there worth getting. But Mario will find that his opponents this time around are not the usual cartoonish oafs, but a well trained and focused organization that will require Mario to gather a team of the best random weirdos and hooligans around to beat.

Paper Mario Thousand Year Door took everything the first Paper Mario did and polished it to a mirror shine. Every inch of the game is like a swiss watch. Fussed over and endlessly refined until it was just right. The series may be a shadow of its former self now, but for a moment, Mario was on top of the JRPG world.

Contributor
Contributor

John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?