Top positive review
70 people found this helpful
It's pure joy. Pure joy.
By Phillip on Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2023
This is an absolutely phenomenal, hyper faithful, and even improved version of Super Mario RPG's Legend of the Seven Stars. One of the greatest RPGs ever made. In some ways, it's probably the greatest Mario game ever made. This remake only changes one tiny relatively insignificant thing in a way that I find questionable, it changes several things in ways that make sense and are probably objectively better, and then it makes a number of dramatic improvements that feel like they should have been there all along in the original game from 30 years ago. Everything looks gorgeous. The game is absolutely delightful and hilarious. The music is iconic and infectious. You're going to hear it in your brain for the rest of your life. And that's a GREAT thing. It brings life to the Mushroom World In a way that few games ever have, even in the 30 years since this game originally came out. It makes Mario into a fun character. It gives personalities to icons like Peach and Bowser. This is the game that introduced various features of these characters that we would go on to see in later games, especially stuff like Peach being equipped with umbrellas and frying pans, or treating fireballs as sort of a default power that Mario has up his sleeve, even without picking up a Fire Flower (as we see in Super Smash Bros). This game also introduces a number of unique new characters who are absolutely fantastic, and deserve to be in dozens of more games. Geno, Mallow, Croco, Booster, Johnny, etc. In a year when The Legend Of Zelda:Tears Of The Kingdom came out, Super Mario RPG's remake ended up being my Game Of The Year. As great as TOTK is, and as much crazy big ambitious stuff and complexity as it rings to the table, it falls faaaaar short of achieving its true potential, and there are huge swaths of that game that feel lacking and incomplete. Super Mario RPG does not have that problem for even a second. Everything in Super Mario RPG feels like it is living VERY close to the maximum potential of the Mario franchise. Every second is fun. Everything is interesting. The whole world is full of stuff to find and do, and people to talk to, and silly jokes and gags, and interesting little story bits. How many dungeons and boss fights are there in Zelda TOTK? Maybe 10 if you count one instance of each species of big regular monster (Ganon, Temple bosses, Hinox, Gleeok, Talus, Flux Construct, etc?) I have literally no idea how many boss fights Super Mario RPG has. There are so so many. Super Mario RPG has like 4-5 boss battles JUST within the tutorial area. I can think of at least 30 bosses in Super Mario RPG, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch. It's not a perfect game, but for a game that came out 30 years ago, and has only been minimally upgraded in this remake, it is SHOCKINGLY close. Of all the Mario games that exist, this one is One of the must-have games in the series, alongside: Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with all the DLC, Super Mario Bros Wonder,.....and the remake of Super Mario 64 that they absolutely desperately need to make..... This is better than the original Mario Bros, the original Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros The Lost levels, Super Mario Bros 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, all the Paper Mario games, all the Super Mario Land games, all the Mario Party games, almost all of the Mario Kart games, all the Mario sports games, etc etc etc. This belongs in that core handful of Mario games that every gamer needs to play to understand how phenomenal Mario can truly be. It's a tiny thumbnail-sized game cartridge full of happiness. 🤷🏻♂️
Top critical review
1 people found this helpful
Definitely A 1996 SNES RPG in 2023
By Ben K.S. on Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2023
The problem with remaking video games is the design philosophy around what a remake should even try to accomplish. Video games just don't age as well as products from most other mediums. True, I love video games and they are my favorite way to pass time, but game mechanics, graphics and interactivity can resonate with older audiences that hadn't encountered them before while newer ones will often at best find them quaint and others find them cumbersome. Should a remake essentially tart up the aesthetics and keep the core gameplay the same, winning over the original audience but potentially losing the new? Or should a remake shake things up, evolving what was rusty from the ground up, risking the loss of what made the game special to begin with? Super Mario RPG is unabashedly in the first camp. It is very safe. It introduces some minor mechanics like the triple attacks that don't factor much in moment to moment gameplay at all, and adds some boss rematches and such. It sticks close to the original, remaking the graphics and music but not really shaking up the script, the general story, the turn based gameplay or the bad platforming (for a Mario game, even an RPG, that's honestly a serious flaw for a game with a lot of it). Speaking as someone who has always had a fascination with Super Mario RPG, but never played through it entirely, this remake gave me my fill. I still prefer its successors; the first two Paper Marios are simply tighter, more engaging experiences. Regardless, this game is funny, quite charming, and has lots of cute metagame moments, like a boss that literally disables your attack options (novel for 1996). I do think it loses a bit in the jump to 3D; the original 2D, chunky graphics were beautiful and strange and compelling and gave rise to many memes because of it. The remake looks good but in a bland way, not blocky and puffy like the old sprites but losing a bit of their memorability. The music is of course fantastic. Yoko rarely misses. It's a strangely unbalanced experience, in terms of pacing. Some stars are found much quicker than others, and a decent amount of the story feels like padding, albeit amusing padding. The final area(s) feel rushed and the finicky imprecise jumping controls I feel really falter here. If it sounds like my review is a little harsher than kind, it's because I hadn't grown up with this game and I'm approaching it as an N64 kid playing it for the first time being almost in my thirties. People who played and loved the original will have plenty of fun seeing what was changed, reliving iconic moments and so on. In all honesty it's a good game, and still worth playing. All Mario RPGs, and even many RPGs in general now, borrow a lot from this game and that has to be acknowledged. It's influential for a reason; the people at Square clearly loved making this game, and that rubs off on the player. I just wish that reverence could factor into bolder gestures toward making the game fresher over 25 years later, and by not charging full price for what is nearly the same amount of game content from '96. Recommended if you like Mario, easy SNES RPGs, and big Yoshis, and especially if you like all three.
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