I think I need to be the singular voice of dissent towards this game. Not because it’s bad, far from it, but it’s a major symptom of a malady that has been turning the entire gaming industry to shit for many years.
While there was excitement for this game when it was announced, and it’s seemingly doing amazing (consistently staying above Super Mario Wonder on the eshop), it’s also something of a “why would you do this” kind of game.
The basics
It’s Mario RPG. The original is one of the most creative Mario games ever made, combining Mario’s platforming with a classic turn-based RPG. As far as console-style RPGs of the time, SMRPG is certainly on the easier side, serving as an intro to the genre, but it’s fucking fantastic.
The graphics are very nice. I do think the original looks better, but this looks great too and, due to being actual 3D and HD, there’s a lot of details that could easily be missed in the original that are completely clear here, and some designs that aren’t totally obvious in the original are very easy to understand here. Some people thought Jonathan Jones was the whole shark (I didn’t but I can see why), but now you clearly see it’s a big ass coat. For me it’s the “Octo” enemies, I thought the 2 paratroopa shells carrying them were actually eyes on sticks in the old game… this makes way more sense.
Otherwise, the game is as you remember from the original. The platforming is identical, the combat is similar (but not the same), the leveling is the same and the story is the same. Heck, even the localizers didn’t fuck with it too much this time (they changed a few lines which is stupid, but most of it is basically identical). My biggest localization change problem is renaming some of the enemies… yeah I get that “Yari” is “Spear” so “Speardovich” makes sense… but it sucks, Yaridovich is a much cooler name, fuck off. The game was good back then, and it’s still good, basically. All the secrets are there, and nothing was added anywhere.
There are a few minor changes outside of combat. Autosaves to make things less frustrating if you do somehow manage to lose a battle. The hidden treasure in the Mushroom Kingdom Castle can be found on return visits (originally you’d have to find it the first time in while Toad is guiding you to the Throne room, it was dumb). Also they did change the item system, basically giving you unlimited inventory sort of (you can have every item, but each item you have a maximum amount of (10 for each healing item, 3 for each attack item, it seems)). And that’s about it, there’s fast-travel which is just a slight time save. Oh and they fixed some speedrun skips.
And the music is great. You might have a preference for the original soundtrack, which you can switch in if you like, but the new versions are nice too. A good composition is always good.
Thankfully there is new content, after you beat the game. You get a ticket to the Marrymore suite, so after a night there, you find something weird on star hill, which leads to having to fight new versions of old bosses. The battles are all easy except for Booster and the super secret final boss that people are spoiling all over the place anyways, which is a legitimately difficult fight for the first time in the game (Booster is mostly about finding a rhythm and hopefully not getting one-shot by a bullshit mechanic). Those battles give you new equipment… except the secret one who gives you a useless item that does nothing. After that’s done… I guess you can refight Smithy with stronger weapons… Okay. Not great new content, but it’s there and it’s not bad.
This game is way too fucking easy (this section is a bit longer than I was expecting, oh well)
See, they changed the battle system. It looks the same, but it doesn’t function the same.
The original is famous for its timed hits system, where you can get more damage for timing your button presses to the hit animation. It wouldn’t tell you what the exact frames for input were, you had to figure them out. Well here the game puts exclamation marks to show when to press the button, GG. This does stop after you’ve figured out the timing, but it doesn’t leave the figuring out part to you. Then there’s 2 levels of timed hits. One just increases damage, and perfect timing not only increases damage but also hits every enemy in the battle for part of the damage (which, with certain enemies, means you can clear entire fights with 1 hit). This was a thing in the original, you could perfect block attacks for 0 damage for example, but here it’s WAY stronger. Like, ridiculously stronger. It turns most battles into a complete joke. And that’s despite considering the fact that most battles were already very easy in the original. Normal attacks were already extremely strong in the original game, this makes them to only option worth considering except if you fight an enemy that is nearly-immune to physical damage (like how dry bones require getting hit by magic), which are pretty rare.
Another big change to the battles is the defense. In the original game, you could defend against physical attacks (the better the timing, the better the defense), but magic were unblockable. Here, magic attacks are blockable… unless they’re AOE magic spells like the rock slide one. So those attacks that were guaranteed damage originally, which meant you needed to heal in battles, especially tougher attacks like diamond saw and the ice rock one, can now be blocked, so you never fucking need to heal unless someone uses water blast (whatever it’s called now), pretty much.
Another change is that, if a character is dead or mushroomed, you get the option to switch them out for one of your benched characters now. Not something you could do at all before. A character dying was a bad thing originally because you’d have to spend turns healing, now you just switch out.
Oh, and there is a change with magic, where hitting certain weaknesses will actually stun enemies. Not something that happens a lot because normal attacks are so freakishly OP, but it’s interesting.
And then, if the fact that timed hits are way fucking stronger now and that you can defend against magic now and that you can switch out characters weren’t enough, there’s a meter! When the meter’s full, you can use a super attack of sorts, which is different based on which 3 characters are on the field. Several are just big attacks that deals massive amounts of damage. The Mario/Bowser/Geno one buffs your party and deals damage which is ridiculous. The Mario/Peach/Mallow ones is a full-party heal (so if you have dead characters in your bench that you switch out, they revive too), and the Mario/Geno/Peach one is a full party protection from one attack.
So not only do perfect timed hits deal a lot of damage and hit everything on screen, you now have this meter that transfers between fights. You can charge it up before a boss fight, then launch it at the start of the boss fight, then at that point the boss will be 3-5 hits away from death, so will be completely unable to do anything. This game is RIDICULOUSLY easy. It’s just unfair to any enemy how much more powerful you are, that to have any challenge, you HAVE to fight the post-game superboss.
And for some reason, if you thought the game wasn’t easy enough after they dumbed it down like crazy… THERE’S AN EASY MODE. For a game that pretty much beats itself in its normal mode, that’s really fucking ridiculous. Difficulty levels are stupid, moreso when they make the game easier. Believe in your game design and make it as hard as you want to, making an easier mode for game journalists is stupid.
The biggest problem with this game
The biggest problem is that it’s a remake of Super Mario RPG. Why is it a remake? They went through the effort of doing everything from scratch, completely remaking the graphics and battle system… Why make this a remake? You’re literally one step away from making a new game. So make a new game? Why did we need a remake? Put the original on NSO to hype up the sequel, and make a fucking sequel. This is such a stupid release. It’s not the stupidest release (the PS5 remake of TLOU2 is considerably dumber since you can play TLOU2 on PS5 already… and it’s a 0/10 game so why would you anyways), but it’s pretty dumb when you had a much more interesting alternative in front of you and you just decided not to do it. On purpose.
A new game is always better than a remake/remaster. The original game might be better, but a sequel is a new experience. We can already play the old game, so giving us something new is inherently better. Especially in this case where the original game is better than the remake.
In the end that’s what’s really annoying about this. We’ve been asking for a proper Super Mario RPG 2 for a long time, releasing the original but worse is almost insulting.
Overall
Super Mario RPG is a masterpiece classic. The remake is still largely the same game so it’s still good… but it’s easily a lesser version of it because of the gameplay changes.
When it was announced as a remake, I was really hoping it would be a largely expanded version of the original with more content, but in the end the extra content is just refighting old bosses. Tougher versions (and the only difficult fights in the game), but still just the same stuff. So it’s a bit disappointing.
While it has cleaner and more detailed graphics, I don’t think the graphics are actually better… and that’s the only “improvement”. The rest of the game is a worse battle system, and not a single fight being even a little bit hard until the post-game. I did the whole thing underleveled (skipping a lot of regular fights) and no fight was even close to a challenge. The post-game has 2 hard fights.
Do I recommend this? Sure. If you already have the original though, there’s little reason to get this one. It’s a great game, but the original is a better game.
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