I managed to do all of Chapter 2 in Paper Mario: TTYD today, after doing some more exploring in town and finding some better shops, a minigame room, train and blimp rides, and another section of the sewers with more people, a cola bar, and an even better shop.

The next star was in the Boggly Woods area, a kind of snowy forest though it never said it was actually snow at any point. A small creature (called a puni) there took me to their Great Tree, but it was locked, and we went to get help from someone named Flurrie, but she wouldn’t help us until we recovered her necklace. It turned out to have been taken by the three Shadow Sirens we saw earlier on, and after beating them I got the necklace back, returned it to Flurrie, and she joined our party, adding some wind-based abilities.

We got into the Great Tree via a secret entrance and discovered X-Nauts like the ones that kidnapped Peach there, and had to find a couple keys to rescue the rest of the punis that were locked up. This involved having to drag a group of them around, getting over some spots by using Flurrie to blow them across, and fighting some mosquito-like critters that had also invaded. There was also a simple puzzle that earned me the spin jump boots, which lets me smash through boards on the floor.

I found the crystal star, but Lord Crump (leader of the X-Nauts here) stole it from me and set off a bomb timer. I had to escape, dragging all 101 punis along behind me, and it was frustrating and caused me to fail the first time since the framerate suffered a lot and that made me keep failing jumps at a couple points. I caught up with him at the exit though, he stopped the timer (maybe I didn’t need to drag those damn punis back with me after all), and a boss fight ensued that wasn’t really too difficult, and I got the star back from him.

This ended the Chapter and I got another Peach scene, where the computer ‘observing’ her wanted her to teach it to dance, with a hologram of herself as a partner. Yes, computers can be creepy… And there was also a Bowser scene that played out just like the original Super Mario Bros for a short stage, except with Bowser in control.

Back in town I explored a bit more with Flurrie, since she could blow away certain torn pieces of walls, and found the Pit of 100 Trials, though I don’t think I’ll be doing that anytime soon. And I popped back to the door and discovered that the next star is in a place in the sky called Glitzville, and I’ll need to ask the mob boss for a ticket for the blimp to get there.

I finished off Hooktail’s castle in Paper Mario: TTYD tonight, and it consisted mostly of switch puzzles where I had to use Koops to trigger them from a distance. And I also got ‘cursed’ again, this time with the ability to turn myself sideways so I can fit between vertical bars, which lets me into a few more areas.

Hooktail himself was a bit of a challenge the first time I met him, and I just barely defeated him, only to run into a second stage of the battle where he healed himself up to half, and by that time I was spent. There was a hint about defeating him easily that implied ‘cricket’ was important, and then I realized that I’d picked up a badge along the way that says it changed Mario’s attack sound. I equipped it, and sure enough, his attacks now sounded like crickets, and Hooktail was much easier to beat the second time around as he took more damage and dished out less. I got the Crystal Star and gained a new ability, though I haven’t tried it out yet.

This ended the first chapter and I also got to play short segments as Peach, now kidnapped by some “X-Nauts” and being watched by a computer that wants to learn about love, and as Bowser, now heading off after us since he’s the only one allowed to kidnap Peach, of course.

For the next game I’m going a bit retro (but only a little bit) and doing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for the Gamecube. I actually have the original Paper Mario as well, for the Virtual Console, and haven’t finished it yet, but it’s not like continuity is important in this series anyway. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s kind of an odd action/platformer/RPG game in the Mario universe where the world is 3D, but the people in it are like 2D paper cutouts.

I didn’t have much time left today so I only really got through the introduction (the Princess is missing, and sent me a treasure map) and basic combat tutorial (kinda RPG-ish, with some action elements), met my first party member, a female goomba (how do you tell?) archaeologist named Goombella, and found a couple star pieces in the first few buildings (I can’t remember what they’re for).