Every Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Partner, Ranked Worst To Best (2024)

In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, party members are referred to as "partners." Recruited at various points throughout the story, these partners directly aid Mario in battle. They're distinguished from one another not only by their story significance, but also by their movesets. Each character in Paper Mario: TTYD has a variety of different options in (and sometimes out of) battle: attacks, defensive maneuvers, healing, buffing, and debuffing spells.

But not every TTYD character is created equal. Some are just better than others, either because of higher inherent stats or more effective moves. These are all the partners who can join Mario's journey in The Thousand-Year Door, ranked from worst to best.

7 Ms. Mowz Is Paper Mario: TTYD's Worst Partner

Recruited After Chapter 4

Although she appears various times before her eventual recruitment, Ms. Mowz can first join Mario's party beginning after Chapter Four. However, recruiting her can be a pain: first, players must accept a task at the Trouble Center entitled "Elusive Badge." This requires them to travel back to Hooktail Castle and revisit Hooktail's room, where they can use Flurrie's Gale Force ability to reveal a hidden badge. After that, Ms. Mowz appears and offers to join the party.

And even after she joins, it's not worth it. Ms. Mowz is probably the least effective party member in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Her overall attack power and HP are some of the lowest in the game. Her regular attack, Love Slap, is interesting in that it can ignore enemy defense. But it's so weak and so annoying to perform, requiring repeated back-and-forth flicking of the thumbstick, that it's barely even worth it.

Ms. Mowz does have one unique benefit: she can steal items from enemies with Kiss Thief. However, this is only really useful in certain situations. Outside these rare cases, Ms. Mowz is best left on the sidelines. She has some healing powers (Smooch) and can make enemies dizzy by using Tease, but she's outclassed in every other category by other available party members.

6 Admiral Bobbery Is A Good Tank, But Not TTYD's Best

Recruited In Chapter 5

Admiral Bobbery is recruited automatically during the story, first appearing when Flavio suggests him as a potential navigator. He weaves a tragic tale: he lost his wife, Scarlette, of a fever while he was at sea, and blames his absence for her passing. Mario eventually returns Scarlette's last letter to Bobbery, at which point he joins the crew. But he's separated from them in a shipwreck, and Mario must find him again - and bring him a Chuckola Cola - to get him to join permanently.

Admiral Bobbery is a half-decent tank with some good attacks, but everything he does is done better by a different partner. As a Bob-Omb, most of his moves are explosively themed: he can throw timed bombs at enemies with Bomb Squad, or simply blow them all to smithereens with Bob-omblast. All of these are good, and his HP and defense are pretty high, but he doesn't have Yoshi's raw power or Flurrie's tanking prowess.

Some partners are useful when they first join the party, but are later replaced by other partners who can do the same things better. Unfortunately, that's not the case with Bobbery. By the time he joins, the player has a better option for almost every task he can accomplish. He has an important role in the story and is a fun character, but he's not the best party member.

5 Koops Is Good In TTYD's Early Game, But Falls Off

Recruited In Chapter 1

Koops is one of the first partners Mario recruits in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. He appears as early as Chapter 1, when Mario and Goombella travel through Petalburg on their way to fight Hooktail. He later appears near the town gate, sheepishly asking Mario if he can come along for the battle. He explains that he lost his father to Hooktail, and wishes to exact revenge on the dragon, while also hopefully impressing his girlfriend, Koopie Koo. He sticks around after they defeat Hooktail, inspired by Mario's courage.

Koops is a helpful presence in the party when he first joins, but his helpfulness doesn't last long after. He has a pretty decent range of attacks: Power Shell and Shell Slam can be used to attack multiple enemies at once, and the latter can do so while ignoring enemy defense. Shell Shield can protect Mario from attacks until its HP is depleted.

Unfortunately, as the game continues, Koops is gradually outpaced by a variety of other partners. Flurrie is the next character to join the party, and she's much more helpful to have around for a variety of reasons. That said, Koops has some nice little story beats, and he's perfectly useful for dealing some extra damage during the first couple of chapters.

4 Madame Flurrie Is TTYD's Tankiest Powerhouse

Recruited In Chapter 2

Madame Flurrie first appears in Chapter 2, when Mario attempts to get into the Great Boggly Tree. When he finds the door locked, Punio sends him to see if Madame Flurrie can help. He'll need to find her necklace to get her help, though; she refuses to be seen in public without it. She officially joins the party with a sloppy, wet kiss that sends Mario's entire party flying.

Flurrie gets a lot of flak for her over-the-top design and prima donna personality, but as it turns out, she's the best tank in TTYD. With high HP and the ability to drain enemy HP with Lip Lock, she's a force to be reckoned with in battle. She also has some pretty decent attacks, making her a respectable all-rounder. Body Slam can be used to unstick enemies from the ceiling, which is otherwise pretty difficult unless Mario has the rare Hammer Toss ability.

Madame Flurrie's greatest asset, though, is Gale Force. This move allows her to blow enemies away, literally - it doesn't always work, but when it does, it'll instantly remove them from battle. Players still earn star points for enemies defeated this way, so there's no downside to doing it. And it can be especially helpful against certain Paper Mario bosses who summon allies.

3 TTYD's Goombella Is Useful In & Out Of Battle

Recruited During The Prologue

Goombella is the first partner to join the party in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, as she's available automatically beginning in the prologue. A Goomba archaeologist, she joins the adventure simply because she's a good friend to Mario; there's no personal task or tragic backstory that ropes her in, other than her never-ending quest for knowledge. Her knowledge even helps Mario interpret the map to the Crystal Stars, sparking their adventure together.

Overall, Goombella's abilities are pretty similar to Mario's. She can use Headbonk, a variant on Mario's regular jump, or Multibonk to hit multiple enemies at once. Using Rally Wink can also grant Mario an extra action, which can make TTYD's best playable character twice as powerful. Goombella can also use Tattle to see an enemy's stats, which can help players determine the best strategies to defeat them.

But Goombella can also use Tattle outside battle to learn important information about the world around her. She can use it on NPCs to provide a brief bio, quest givers to provide tips, or puzzles to provide hints. She's basically a walking tutorial throughout the entire game, and her advice is usually indispensable. This makes her as useful in battle as she is out of it, a pretty unique qualification when it comes to Paper Mario party members.

2 Vivian Is One Of TTYD's Strongest Attackers

Recruited In Chapter 4

Vivian initially appears as an antagonist, attempting to hypnotize Mario along with her sisters and fellow Shadow Sirens Marilyn and Beldam. However, she later recognizes Mario's kindness when she meets him in Twilight Town, and joins his party. This later causes a rift between them, however, when Vivian discovers that Mario was once her enemy. However, they patch things up quickly, and Vivan joins his team for good.

Strategically, Vivian's damage output alone puts her near the forefront of the TTYD party. She can use Fiery Jinx to attack an entire enemy group at once, and although it doesn't work on certain targets, it's almost universally effective. Vivian can also use Veil to defend Mario, or Infatuate to confuse enemies.

Vivian has always been an important part of the Paper Mario story, but recent corrections make her a much better character than ever before. In the original Japanese script, Vivian is strongly implied to be transgender, but this was censored in the English localization of the GameCube version. However, this dialogue is restored - and made even clearer - in the remastered version of TTYD for Switch. Vivian is now able to realize her full potential across all versions of the Paper Mario remaster. This makes her a stronger character, and an even better party member.

1 Yoshi Is TTYD's Best Playable Partner

Recruitable At Rank 11 In The Glitz Pit

Yoshi is only recruitable in Paper Mario: TTYD via completion of the Glitz Pit, a combat gauntlet located in Glitzville. Players will need to reach level 11 in the Pit in order to receive a Yoshi Egg as a reward. The egg will follow the party around until their battle with the armored harriers, at which point, it'll hatch and reveal a new party member inside.

In combat, Yoshi makes use of superpowered forms of his usual abilities to smack enemies down before they know what hit them. Besides his regular attack, Ground Pound, he can use Gulp to swallow one enemy, then spit them at another; Mini-Egg to damage enemies and grant the Shrink status effect, or Stampede to attack all enemies at once. With high damage and lots of potential for multi-target attacks, Yoshi is one of the best offensive characters in the Paper Mario party, an asset in almost any battle.

Yoshi is also uniquely customizable: players can name him whatever they wish upon first recruiting him. It's also possible to pick Yoshi's color in Paper Mario: TTYD, as long as players are willing to manipulate an in-game timer. This customization gives players a little more agency over Yoshi than any other party member, which gives players a little more connection to an otherwise blank-slate character.

While some partners are inevitably useful more often than others, every party member has their place in Paper Mario. It's more important to swap characters and experiment frequently than it is to have all the strongest partners active at once. Testing out a variety of party compositions can create the best experience in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Mario returns to the paper-powered world of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, initially released on the Nintendo GameCube in 2004. The game follows the titular hero on a quest to save Princess Peach after a new mysterious enemy known as the X-Nauts appears and kidnaps her. The Thousand-Year Door incorporates the unique paper-like style of the first game and simultaneously brings and revamps the partner system.

Franchise

Paper Mario

Platform(s)

Nintendo GameCube

Released

October 4, 2004

Developer(s)

Intelligent Systems

Publisher(s)

Nintendo

Genre(s)

Adventure , RPG

ESRB

E