While it doesn’t have as many bosses as the likes ofElden RingorHollow Knight,Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door still offers players a decent number of big baddies to test their skills on. Some of these bosses are genuinely tough fights, while others are seemingly there only for comic relief.
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That’s not even necessarily a bad thing in a Paper Mario game, though, sincecomedy and overall charm are a big part of what makes the series special.Difficulty is great, but in this game, offering a good mix of both qualities is what matters most.
This dude ain’t so tough.
East Rogueport
Gus is basically a run-of-the mill Craw who likes shaking passersby down for coins. It doesn’t take anything special to beat him and the fight itself isn’t terribly remarkable. His reaction to being defeated is predictable too: he just runs off all upset like any other bully.
23Gold Fuzzy
Gold isn’t always great.
Shwonk Fortress
Self-conscious
Like the Gus fight, this encounter can hardly be called a boss fight. It’s just a bunch of normal fuzzies and one more that just happens to be gold. The whole fight wouldn’t have had to happen at all, but this particular fuzzy has it out for the world for some reason and just couldn’t let Mario walk by without dramatically declaring its dissatisfaction.
What kind of person just walks up and whacks someone’s tentacle like that?!
Rogueport Sewers
Blooper is another mini-boss that isn’t all that difficult to defeat. All Mario has to do is attack its tentacles until it falls down and whittle down its HP from there. This fight is 100% Mario’s fault, though. This Blooper was just hanging out until Mario walked up and smashed one of its tentacles with a hammer. Just about anyone would be looking for some payback after something like that.
21Magnus von Grapple
Surely X-Naut engineering can do better than this.
The Great Boggly Tree
Self-Confident
While detachable fists probably sounded good in the design phase, in practice they don’t help Magnus von Grapple deal with serious threats like Mario. They’re rather fragile at only two hit points each, so they can be easily cleared. This leaves the mech suit with only one predictable attack per turn and gives Mario and co. a clear field to just wail on it. Lord Crump would have been much better off just directly fighting Mario.
20Hooktail
Frogs are the key.
Hooktail Castle
20 (+10 later)
Sick to her stomach
With high attack and a decent health pool for the early game, Hooktail should be an enemy Mario needs to treat with extreme caution. And she is very much a threat if he goes into the battle unprepared. Fortunately for Mario, Hooktail just cannot stand frogs.
It seems she got some bad food poisoning from eating one once, so from then on, even just the sound of one is now able to turn her stomach. Mario can exploit this with the Attack FX G badge and severely weaken her attacks and defenses.
19The Three Shadows
Thereisa weak link here, but it ain’t Vivian.
Boggly Woods
9 (Beldam), 12 (Marilyn), 10 (Vivian)
1 (Beldam), 2 (Marilyn), 1 (Vivian)
Nefarious, “Guh!”, Sad
From the moment the Three Shadows are introduced, it’s made clear that Beldam is desperate to show the world that she’s the best of the three and that Vivian is the worst. She takes every opportunity to punish the other and put them down, saving the worst abuse for Vivian in retaliation for the other shadow pointing out her mistakes.
In battle, Beldam can be safely saved for last, as both Marilyn and Vivian are bigger threats; Marilyn in particular. Beldam probably realizes that she’s actually the weakest on some level, hence the massive overcompensation.
He really doesn’t have a clue.
Bower spends the entirety of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door trying to play catch-up with Mario, except that he doesn’t even know what’s going on. He does manage to find Mario in the Glitz Pit after Mario defeats the Magikoopas, charging in and demanding a fight so as to get what’s “his.”
While he’s not a pushover, the biggest threat from Bowser in this fight is his ability to shut down one of Mario’s options if his ground-pound attack isn’t blocked. Just land those blocks, don’t jump on him and serve him a resounding defeat.
17Dark Bones
Don’t give this one any time to cook.
Palace of Shadow
Dark Bones is a particularly powerful Dry Bones variant found exclusively in the Palace of Shadow. Like its cousins, it can rebuild itself if it isn’t bombed or set on fire, and itwillbuild allies until it’s permanently taken out. The best thing to do for this fight is to hit it hard and fast, and make sure to have Admiral Bobbery deal the final blow.
Curiously, this enemy may not be a thrall of the Shadow Queen as its dialoguecouldbe read as trying to prevent the queen’s resurrection rather than as a threat to her enemies.
16Lord Crump & X-Naut Crew
Who could have seen this coming?
Keelhaul Key
30 (each phase)
Too confident
To no one’s surprise, the dude who looked just like Lord Crump did, in fact, turn out to be the man himself, and he actually pulls a decently smart move by attacking with a full crew of X-Nauts when Mario should be too tired to resist. This time, he relies on strength in numbers, calling on his crew to whittle down Mario’s health and even roll right over him for big damage.
The fight doesn’t end until Crump goes down, so only focus on the normal X-Nauts enough to keep things manageable.
15Atomic Boo
Boos can get really brave if there are enough of them.
Creepy Steeple
Nice and spooky!
Atomic Boo is an optional secret boss that can be challenged in the main chamber of Creepy Steeple at any time after freeing the Boos. They start hanging out in that main chamber and will swarm Mario until he disperses them with a super hammer swing. Doing this enough will cause them to form up into the Atomic Boo.
This boss gets its own theme, has a whole audience of Boos rooting for it and primarily attacks by throwing boos. It’ll either attempt to crush Mario or try to swarm in as a bunch of smaller Boos. Take it down to finally get some peace and quiet.
