Another Crusade Wants To Be Super Mario RPG's Spiritual Successor

Suikoden spiritual successor and Super Mario RPG homage Kickstarter campaigns...
Sorry, after TW101 I'll just buy copies of each for normal prices.

Big yikes from me and hard pass

Sure it has the combat system but the rest (atmosphere, visual style and narration) reminds me more of Diablo or Baldur's Gate. SMRPG has more charm and wit in its dialogue, music and characters.

Also I can't say after beating SMRPG that it's one of the best Nintendo games. It's good but with some flaws like horrible platforming.

It kinda looks rough this early. I hope they make it better.

Id rather have a real mario RPG made by Nintendo and square enix haha.
Man please Nintendo! If a reveal like that ever happends, Nintendo wins the Live show from the start 🤣🤣🤣

If anyone wants to be my spiritual successor, please feel free. The key elements to nail are painfully forced puns and an over reliance on autocorrect to fix my atrocious spellig.

Spiritual successor and 'inspired by' basically means they do nothing to take the gameplay forward, but change Mario for another theme.

Life is too short to play the same thing. Mario RPG is a classic. I'll wait to see if they bring their own thing. But if it's 'Ace because it's just like Mario RPG, then it's worthless.'

(I'm in a harsh mood today. sorry.)

I will wait for its release, but it doesn't look bad at all.

@GrailUK I totally get you. I feel similar about that JSRF game that got shown here yesterday.

But I am also confused because I really want to play it, since SEGA is not providing us an option for the OG.

Annoying situation. Indie people should not have to make these "Star Wars Fan Films", and instead focus on their own original idea.

Yeah, it's not. You can't just say your game is the spiritual successor to something and that makes it so. The art style just doesn't even come close, and neither do the character designs, nor even the HUD. It has a few similar elements and that's it. The fan-made Mother 4 (not called that anymore) is far closer to a "spiritual successor" of some beloved Nintendo franchise than this game is. Now, I'm not saying Another Crusade is good or bad, but just saying what it's not.

@Yanina A-to the-men! One could argue that we haven't hade another Mario RPG because they haven't thought of a way of succeeding it (Super Mario World -> Yoshi's Island being possibly the best example. Now you can't tell me a 'spiritual successor has that kind of foresight. Mario RPG became Paper Mario. That what a successor does. Takes something forward (unless it's AAA lol) Worse still, imagine secretly working on a Mario RPG sequel and then this releases, stealing the thunder and sating folk's desire for it.

I get the pang of wanting to play a newer version of 'forgotten' games, but I don't think for a second companies forget their IP. They just need to make sure they can move it forward in a meaningful way. I suppose that gets harder the more gaming becomes prolific?

I'm probably being cynical, but the hardest part of making a game is the idea. (The rest is a skill). Copycatting past classics is devoid of creativity, and mimicking stuff gets past that hurdle of being creatively bankrupt.

It's certainly an odd scenario. I am definitely confused lol.

@GrailUK the problem is they don’t seem to think they need to move every ip forward in a meaningful way though. I love Robobot, but was that a meaningful move forward from Triple Deluxe? Does 2d Kirby have to break the mold? Or any other Mario spinoff title for that matter? Hell Super Mario Party has got the best sales for the series and it still feels like a bare bones Mario Party release from back when Hudson made them.

Though I agree about there being a difference between a spiritual successor (Mega man to Mega Man X works here) and a direct sequel or a (looking for a kind way to say ‘rip off’ that sounds more like x-like where x is the previous game. As used in many a rogue-like).

@Roam85 I know. I do have to clarify, I'm not saying I'm right. If anything I posted a knee jerk reaction. It's all rather conflicting. For example, should I feel differently if it was the original folk who created it starting a kickstarter? Should anyone be able to regurgitate game ideas. I don't know. I suppose we can only wait for a review and see if it stands up on it's own. But judging from the screenies, I don't have much to hang my hat on.

I don't know if I'm up to a game where my 'timming' matters.

Idk... the game looks nice (and could look a little better) but the audio really isn't selling it for me... those sound fx sounded so bland and boring, and the music sounds like it will put me to sleep, specially since the music was so catchy and memorable in SMRPG. I might give this one a pass depending on what the quality of the game's music tracks are when it gets released.

The sound fx does bother me a lot though, it sounds like one of those old free-to-play PC MMO games from back in 2006...

@GrailUK I personally think Bug Fables mixes up the Paper Mario RPG formula in interesting ways despite being an homage.

@brandonbwii Fair dos. And hey, if that type of game is someone's fave genre, then the more the merrier. (Like I said, I'm in a harsh mood today lol.)

@Roam85 'moving forward' is maybe too grandiose a sentiment. But at least try to be different.

Anyone else catch how at 0:33 they say "An action turn based game, where TIMMING plays an important role?" =D

Wow. This game looks cool, but it’s just a carbon copy of Mario RPG and it’s not doing a good job of hiding it.

When 'timming' plays an important role, you know it's gotta be good...

@RazumikhinPG you buying a game cheaper that you get much much earlier than the pre-order that you aren't guaranteed to ever receive? I really wish for Kickstarter to go bankrupt

@Rhaoulos if I'd I took that approach to Kickstarter after the flop of Super Dungeon Explore I'd never have continued investing in campaigns... Glad I didn't because is have missed out on Zombicide and so many other big box board games.

Why haven’t Nintendo and Square-Enix made a Mario RPG sequel yet?

"Spiritual successor" is used here to lightly. "rip off" would be better.

This is what I imagine if five-year-olds were to make a Mario RPG successor. Hopefully they change the graphic style completely before it's released.

I'm not sure who Tim is, or why TImming is so important, but this game looks pretty good!

Looks very cheap and generic. No thanks!

I dunno, the game looks...fine? I don't like that they're basically saying "look who's cottails we're trying to ride!". Especially when they're trying to get financial support. Another Crusade needs to figure out what it's about. What it emulates from Super Mario RPG isn't important, it's what it does to set itself apart.

@Kabloop I thought Super Mario RPG was a good game in its time.
I remember being initially disappointed, but only really because I remember Nintendo Power leaving us thinking it was going to be Final Fantasy with Mario characters because of the Square collaboration.
It was a good game by itself, but expecting a sprawling game on the level of FF5/6 is not what one should do.

@k8sMum @Severian @shazbot @itslukec That's not the only mistake they made in this trailer.

Apparently, they also want you to "think your strategy" and "resolve your puzzles", which to me sounds like I have to solve my puzzles AGAIN after I've just done them already...

There's also some mistakes in the menu and inventory. For example: potion is called "sap"...

They had better hire someone to do spell checking and grammar, before they're actually going to release this game on consoles, otherwise it's even going to be of a far worse scope than the odd "all your base are belong to us"...

I hope tha th is an alpha/beta in the trailer.

I hope it does well. They seem to be going for a hand crafted look like Yoshi, but it feels harsh and under saturated. Plus whoever picked the fonts has prioritized wimsy over readability. (Truly lots of text heavy games have font problems.

I wish them well. But I hold my breathe.

looks record breaking in generic character and enemy design

You can replicate the gameplay of Mario RPG, but can you replicate the heart of it? The system was fine but the game was enjoyable because of the story, the characters and the world.

This looks very unpolished.

Looks cool but need more polish, glad they didn't just fan-made the original.

@ThanosReXXX resolve your puzzles! haha. I sort of like that

looks ok but not great I need great.

You know who needs to make a spiritual successor to SMRPG. SquareEnix!

I wouldn't mind another SMRPG, but I think a game needs to do more than directly ripoff its inspiration to be worth our time. I want games that iterate on something I know I love, not games that retread the exact same ground.

Might pick it up if it makes it to production, but they definitely haven't sold me on this.

@SwitchVogel Sometimes these successors surprise though. I have to bring up Bug Fables again as you can look at and assume it’s just a rip off when it’s actually much more than that.

If square thought the fight system and all was worth preserving they would have had another game out of it with their own characters. Truth is they moved on to better rpg styles and so should we. It was pretty basic, I don't remember anything about it that square just never improved on with later RPGs.

@Henmii and you loved cheap stuff

Good luck to them! I hope their game is successful!

I grew up with SMRPG, so I'm doubtful on a true spiritual successor. It wasn't the combat or platforming that made it special (though it was a great combination of different game genres), it was the atmosphere. It was the quirky writing and story, the AAA music OST, and the VERY unique worlds we got. The depth between world interactions and hidden cuscenes (for example, going into debt at the Marrymore hotel and working as a bellhop to pay it off). The characters drove the plot. It was a true exploration game.
I'm not sure if that same experience can be recreated.

This is such a low goal it already has a publisher and they're just gauging interest or can be a lost project easily once development cost go past like 3 months.

Anyways not interested in this at all. The art style is so basic and the story looks barren that it doesn't look to make up for a battle system I like.

If they try tot closely to follow the look and animations of the original - it's going to look a bit rough - SMRPG was a 'look of a time' but it's hard to make that look good in 2020.

I think they need to take a bit more liberties with how they honour the original.

I love me some isometric though.

Ugh... mistakes can be made, but if you have a 20 second clip at least be 100% sure there's no typos in there.

Unless the main character is called Tim and his special move is timming it...

@RazumikhinPG have to agree, I'll probably not back anything else on Kickstarter for a long time after STILL not receiving my copy of the Wonderful 101

The typo is embarrassing. In fact, the promotional text in general is a bit awkward, which doesn't bode well of the game's writing, unless the trailer was rushed and the in-game writing will be better polished.

That said, it looks like the gameplay itself is a pretty good recreation of the most distinctly average, middle-of-the-road Mario RPG. The mechanics are all there for a good foundation, so I think it'll probably turn out okay. Something great could even be built up from this.

Unfortunately, I don't have money to spare for a kickstarter, since I already bought some cool Shantae t-shirts this month. I wish them luck!

No, I want to play the Legit Super Mario RPG on my Switch. A Proper re-release with a cleaner Pixels for HD screens. Don't need a full on re-master.

@The-Chosen-one, Its called Mario & Luigi. Are 4 games of it. The fourth is a combination with Paper Mario.

The timing/combo system has been done much better on Xenogears, not to mention that game is miles ahead of Mario RPG. This thing though, screams of freemium touchscreen crap. Super generic and uninteresting design, horrible grammar on the presentation... It's Mexico, they don't need 40k to make this game a reality.

I just want Super Mario RPG to be available on Nintendo Switch Online since I never had the chance to beat it

@Alucard83,

trololol, I love it when a game looks and sounds great but has a low price (that's why I almost always buy indie games when they are discounted, and not earlier). But this game just "looks" cheap, or just plain old weak. No buy from me!