Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Switch) - 54 - Protagoneist 

"Thanks Mario, for sticking up for me by not saying anything really!" Also, the official player's guide called Vivian the best partner in the game, which, well, she's pretty good but Goombella and Yoshi are right there. She's certainly my favourite either way.

"Gee, Mario sure is acting weird weird all of a sudden. Not only did he make us go back to the Steeple to fight that shadowy guy again, but he called him Slick, just like the shadowy guy called him before he changed! But it's probably nothing!" Also, the name thing is probably a reference to Rumpelstiltskin. That's the vibe I get anyway and the Three Pigs reference means it's not that far out of the realm of possibility.

11:45 ah yes, art attack! the one reason why doopliss couldnt use this is because apparently this uses more than one SP how unfortunate for him, really

At least Mario and Doopliss got to settle things like RPG characters. There didn't have to be a 65th annual "That's My Mario" show.

fun fact: Vivian in the Imposter Mario battle is NOW ACTUALLY AFFECTED BY PARTNER BADGES

Fun Fact: The Partner HP in this fight actually matches if you have the Partners upgraded or not. For example, Goombella would have 20 HP if she's at Super Rank and 10 HP if she was at Base Rank.

3:20 that may explain why Paper Luigi lost some braincells in TOK

A shame Doopliss's old TV set is turned away from the camera. The new lighting shows that it's actually flickering through various moving scenes. Considering that he's some kind of ghost... maybe he's got a thing for crime dramas? Especially ones surrounding identity theft, I imagine... That, or those old "caught on camera" home networks that just have some nobody hosting a showcase of videos where people get hurt in ridiculous ways. Guy seems like the kind of jerk to get a kick out of those... There's honestly not much else to say here - Welderberg's work (at the cost of someone's home) really does cut a good 20/30 minutes out of this chapter. I can't imagine a good middle ground that'd please anyone - adding a section between the pipes could ruin the convenience, and forcing people to make the trek back and forth until the end of the chapter sort of... defeats 90% of why that pipe is there to begin with. Maybe a random encounter every time you take that pipe, like when you find Spinies inside one during Color Splash? Though, maybe that wouldn't fit the style... There *is* one last detail here worth noting: this being the Ruby Star. Doopliss's magic seems to be associated with the color red - his eyes flashing red when he does his copy magic, and Mario being surrounded by a red glow when he returns to normal. Maybe the reason Doopliss is a Duplighost+ is because he got some extra power just from having the Crystal Star, not directly knowing how to fully use it - it just... juicing up his usual powers. Now he can turn other things into anything he wants, and copy someone *so hard* it robs them of their complete existence. This could also explain why he functions like a regular Duplighost in his future encounters, since he doesn't have the Ruby Star anymore. ... Not sure how to tie in it's special move into this, though. I guess the Ruby Star has domain over... changing things? And instead of doing that, Mario just uses it to draw deadly circles and ovals? Not entirely sure on that one...

Seeing Vivian's English dialogue now, after having watched an Italian playthrough, is extremely jarring. In the Italian text, she is MADLY in love with Mario and openly says it multiple times, starting the moment she reappears during the Doopliss fight. Here... she barely (not) mentions it at the end of the game and that's it. I wonder if that's another discrepancy due to the Italian and other European texts being way more accurate to the original Japanese text, over Nate's work.

0:32 Apparently, Doopliss has stolen Britney Spears identity once before...

4:25 In Paper Mario 64, Mario can tell his partners from their doppelgangers, so i don’t know why his partners here can’t

I would have really liked if this was chapter 5 or 6 so you would have faced all your partners except one with a more proper elaborated battle like doopliss swapping positions once he starts getting really low on HP or smt

2:30 To be fair, the real Mario will likely also be dragging everyone back to the Steeple to 100% the recipe page

2:27 Even more so since he must've grabbed them when he went back to town for a literal second after telling him his name. 2:54 At this point I guess they were too distracted by the feast the mayor prepared for them. 9:50 This is a nice visual effect they added in the remake... 10:05 ... but this other new one is even cooler in my opinion! 11:47 Having Star Power thanks to the Magical Map seems to be a requirement to acquire and/or make use of these other powers without using something à la Grubba's machine.

I like the new paper effects at 9:50 and 10:05. Those weren't in the original.

We get jumped by our teammates and get our identity back

8:02 Give him a break, his hat blocks the giant floating buttons! Anyway, in my opinion the new pipe cuts down the backtracking to a reasonable level: once with all your partners, once alone to highlight the difference, and one last time with Vivian. Does make the end of the chapter underwhelming, though. There could've been a hidden final part of the steeple or something. Also, apparently the first and subsequent Doopliss fights have different themes! ...I can't tell the difference.

4:35 Oh, come on! This should be a total red flag for the partners, especially Goombella, who's implied to be the smartest of the group (though you did take her out before Doopliss could even say this).

Imagine if doo liss could use art attack when he’s halfway down, that would be badass

11:21 - 11:37 Out of context, Vivian's dialogue sounds like her wedding proposal. It sure would be funny if the bell above them rang right after Mario took the Ruby Star.

“Three Minus Two Shadows!” It took me a little bit to understand what Koops meant by that. Doopliss is the reason why I wish the remake let you refight bosses like in the Mario RPG remake. It would have been cool to fight Doopliss but your partners revive him constantly so you HAVE to take them out to beat him.

The funny thing is that combined with the Rogueport fast travel hub you can now get to Creepy Steeple in a minute or so from the main square compared to the massive pain it used to be. Even if one doesn't pick up the cookbook it's no longer a hassle to grab it. But it's especially handy to get to get to the Golden Leaf tree quickly, to cook up a stockpile of big FP restoratives. It probably also was doable in the original but especially in the remake it's easier to rely on heavy FP use from this point on with all the various QOL changes piling up.

You can still detect Doopliss's HP in fake Mario form with Peekaboo badge which it buy from Dazzle in Rogueport's underground town.

12:27 what an odd peach section

Yeah, I didn't enter that house with the new pipe at all, so after entering the one in Creepy Steeple it kinda blew my mind that they actually made a shortcut. ...Wonder if any future romhacks will do something similar to the original release.

9:21 Would’ve been better if Mario got the final hit, but you don’t have a choice when you can’t tattle him

0:49 To be fair, this is not the last time you're met with this keyboard. It reappears in Chapter 7, where the numbers finally come into play.

10:01 color changing text box nice

Attacking the partners may make for a more satisfying(ish) end-of-chapter battle...but when you think about it, that should make the post-battle mood rather awkward, now shouldn't it. I mean, them beating Mario up makes sense, since they were deceived into thinking he was Doopliss. The other way around...not so much. Unless, of course, one chooses to believe Mario deems it an appropriate punishment for letting themselves be fooled like this :V

12:33 TIMESTAMP JUMPSCARE

1:19 My guess is because of him being based off of Rumpelstiltsken So fun fact: the music that plays during the rematch is actually a different song from the Doopliss’s. What do you think of it? I just realized Imposter Mario doesn’t have a Health Bar despite Tattling

0:55 If I had to guess, it's because they built this to work with the European languages as well in case players thought his name contained a fancy letter. ...Not that it was really necessary, mind, since he's just named some variation of "Rumpel" in all languages except English.

As neat as this boss is, I can't help but feel that it should have been better. Having every partner in fight is genius but they are clearly missing moves that could have easily been implemented. Flurrie and Yoshi in particular only use their basic attacks while their others could have easily been implemented, especially for this remake. Gale Force could be a unique callback to attacks like Huff N. Puff's wind storm in 64, Lip Lock is basically a fuzzy's attack, and Yoshi's Gulp is already implemented in Color Splash. I also think Doopliss should switch out partners at certain HP thresholds. Does a better job at keeping you on alert for the whole fight.

12:34 think you messed up putting a backtracking timer here