Topic: Super Mario RPG Remake

While I do love this game, there's one area that I really don't like... and that's the beanstalk climb. The first part wasn't actually too bad for me, but there's a later part that especially sucks. There's a leftmost beanstalk that you'd have to climb, but it's nearly out of reach, which resulted in so many failed attempts to grab the dang thing. And even when I do grab onto it, I slip off when I try to climb up. Just... why? Because I grabbed the very bottom of the beanstalk? Then I found the solution by complete accident. There's an invisible platform on the center beanstalk that you have to hit like it's an invisible question block. And now you can climb that beanstalk. While I'm glad I made it through that part, I have to ask... how was I supposed to know that, game? I'll give it this, though. Maybe there was an NPC I somehow skipped who'd tell me about this...?

@MarioLover92
Oh my gosh, YES. I cruised through this game and had such a fun time UNTIL I got to this part. And I'm a platforming fan, but the physics in this game just isn't meant for real platforming, and I almost walked away in frustration.

@rallydefault Yeah, the platforming isn't too great in this game. Especially coupled with its isometric viewpoint. I do recall this is the only part in Super Mario RPG that blew, I've finished the game on Wii VC long ago, so now that I've finished the beanstalk climb, it should be relatively smooth sailing from here on out.

There are many secrets in this game, many of which will drive peeps insane. And yeah, the remaster missed the opportunity to fix the important stuff with that path. But it did fix quite a few issues.

I am here posting right now for what is a case in point with that last part, via the following link as I'm wanting to display in general. (Spoiler tagged, hopefully, especially since I did make the video, which involves the battle for the 6th Star Piece for game spoilers, and also some more...political material, but I can't even tell how NL is handling links because what's a Preview option?)

Here's the summary with what happens in that battle: Bowser's Physical DEF Ally Buff is awesome. Even early on in when you have Bowser, you're getting to wall some of the lighter physical attacks if you have a Timing Chain active, which believe me is not hard to do, and this is even outside Booster Tower, which was tailor made for teaching the player how Bowser operates. Bowser's Physical DEF Ally Buff ends up with even more to scale with, eventually helping against mid-tier power attacks so actively, because of armor progression, which softens his equipment fall-off in the original because you'd have to have him fielded to have the Ally Buff active. What really helps Bowser along? Why, physical attacks from enemies sometimes having multipliers above 1x, because those can be particularly nasty. Because of the way the game calculates the damage of those enemy attacks, Physical DEF boosts are amplified against those attacks.

Now this isn't a perfect solution, because ANY physical attack that deals damage is blockable and therefore can have its direct damage fully nullified, making the Physical DEF Ally Buff pointless in any case of perfect play where everything blockable is sweetspot blocked. This is practically theoretical, and I can also point out that single target enemy spells always have their own damage be blockable, and not only do those tend to rely on the player not knowing how to block them and otherwise involve little in the way of execution, but the only one I can think of as not independent of the caster for knowing the block timing is Bolt, which eventually doesn't deal that much damage, though its abrupt nature does let it disrupt Chains if you don't recognize when to block it. Enemy physical attacks, by contrast, like to be consistently confusing and involving the attacking enemy, so you're much more likely to end up half-blocking those. I will say that AoE damage magic attacks are still a problem forever and Bowser can't do anything about that, but with the new, improved inventory system, I can live with that.

What particularly lets the video punctuate Bowser's Physical DEF Ally Buff being so good is one particular rule I am involving in the challenge run: always choosing Magic on Level Up. More HP would allow being able to take more hits for the Physical DEF Ally Buff to kick in for, so Peach (Magic DEF) just gets persistent competition, and more Physical DEF from Physical would mean more nullified damage per hit, meaning Geno (Physical ATK) wouldn't have enough to try to inflate before Bowser probably lets your people straight up wall some of Special variant enemies even when their 50% boost is actually applying to Physical ATK. I don't even have either luxury and Magic simply gives Mallow, whose Magic ATK Ally Buff is already argued to be the best even if it's thanks to potential juggernauting, something to scale off of, yet Bowser's PDEF boosting definitely stood out with barely the standardized clothes on my people's backs. When an originally incredibly obnoxious attack, when targeting the mage character with even relatively junk Physical DEF, would end up dealing less than half of the damage it would otherwise do (for reference, Geno Boost's Defense Up barely cuts damage in half and doesn't even stack with Defending) and would have even smaller percentages against other characters with more Physical DEF, you can tell how much this elevates a character who had serious problems, especially around this point and beyond, in the original where he didn't have this. This stands out even more because the boss in question, in their own right, was difficult in the original at the very least. Here I am getting to work so actively with a more unorthodox plan of attack.

We should nickname the game "Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Physical DEF Ally Buff" at this point.

I loved how the game introduced the Triple Move mechanic.

For the most part I think the game's updated soundtrack is awesome, but my expectations were so through the roof based on what I heard and the fact that its modernized Super Mario RPG music that occasionally it doesn't hit the same. Some of it is that it has the issue that trying to accurately recreate midi music with real instruments does not always mean you get the same thing from it, because those sounds were supposed to sound like music you would hear on an SNES (and not even that, Mario RPG sounds fairly unique and weird for an SNES game). I feel the same way about how trying to accurately remake the gameboy Zelda as a Switch game with modern updates is almost surreal and isn't the same, for better and worse.

Granted this is more an interesting case of how re-creating the magic for something truly incredible is also incredibly difficult rather than a real issue with the soundtrack, which in fact is still better music than you'll get from the vast majority of games, easily. And some of it not only nails it but does improve it, I think so far my favorite example being Mushroom Kingdom, which sounds like it was always meant to sound like this.

Also because most of this game is just a remake of a great game so I don't know what I'd add. I will say, this is probably the quickest paced game in the series, its amazing how quickly you go on to the next thing, compared to Paper Mario where there was an entire section of the game to play just to get to the next chapter.

Started playing on Tuesday and have six of the seven stars now. This is gonna be a short RPG.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. Obviously, it's a BEAUTIFUL game. Probably the most attractive title I've played in handheld mode to date, so there's worth to it purely on an aesthetic level (although it bothers me that, not only is there not voice acting, but there's not even sound effects when characters stumble, scream, etc. It's very weird). The script is decent, with some fairly funny moments peppered throughout. And while there's not much to the soundtrack, what's there sounds decent (although, sadly, I'm not taken with the battle theme).

The pacing is weird. It feels like it rushes you from one thing to the next, so it doesn't feel as substantial as something like a Paper Mario game, and you're not given long enough to become attached to characters.

I love the idea of Peach, Mario, and Bowser needing to team up to combat an external threat, but that threat remains largely abstract throughout the game. You would think a world where wishes can't come true would manifest itself in more explicit ways.

The triple moves are interesting. Remind me heavily of the stylized Showtime attacks from Persona 5 Royal.

The dungeon design... ugh. Not my cup of coffee.

There's also this preoccupation with minigames that don't really amount to much of anything in terms of how they integrate into the rest of the game.

I'm enjoying my time with Mario RPG, but I guess I'm just amazed this is the game people have been raving about all these years. Even compared to other Squaresoft contemporaries, this isn't terribly impressive. I understand the novelty it probably represented at the time, but we've seen many decent Mario-themed RPGs since.

@Ralizah Honestly, the writing makes the game for me. I'm not excited by the plot or a lot of the actual gameplay, I just love the humour. This was my first play of the game and I'm still not finished; I've been slowly taking my time with it over a few months because I discovered I wasn't enjoying it as much if I rush through the game whereas if I play it in small chunks every piece feels like a marvel.

@FishyS It's funny in parts. Not as sharp-tongued as Paper Mario: TTYD, but it definitely established the... tone... that would go on to define early Mario RPGs, I think.

@Ralizah
Yea... I liked it for the most part, but I'd take any of the Mario & Luigi games over it.