So I have at last finished Super Mario RPG! I may be 18 years late to the party, but this one was worth the wait--and turned out to be more fun than I expected.
This was definitely a quintessential step into Mario's past, before the establishment of a fixed design for Peach's Castle (just before, as it turns out, as SM64 would be only a few months away when SMRPG was released), not to mention probably the last game where the princess went by the name Toadstool outside of Japan. The Chancellor is not yet Toadsworth, and we get introduced to numerous species that (so far as I know) we never see again outside of this game: the frogs/tadpoles of Tadpole Pond, the moles of Moleville, Mallow's cloud people of Nimbus Land, and most infamously the one and only Geno.
I also like how Mario and Bowser become allies (even if not friends) for the first time in franchise history (not counting games like Super Mario Kart, etc.). Granted I wish Bowser had been a more useful player in the game (he spent most of my run on the bench), but the thought was nice. He had some interesting story moments and character development too--I loved his reevaluation of his reasons for going into Smithy's Factory after the defeat of Exor!
The visual style and the gameplay really show how far the SNES had come here at the end of its cycle. It's interesting really, in that around 1994 or so, Miyamoto disparaged the art style of Rare's DKC trilogy and sought to take his next Mario game, Yoshi's Island, in a completely different direction visually. Now by 1996, it appears that the Mario team had capitulated as you can see a heavy influence from Rare here. The early areas in the game in particular look like they were lifted directly from the map screens of DKC3, the Midas River sequence (first part) reminded me of the K. Rool chase on the waters at the end of DKC3, and even Mario's Pad looks like it was directly inspired by DK's cabin at the beginning of the original DKC. And yet even more interestingly, in this game's sequel, Paper Mario (and its successors) the developers went right back to the style of Yoshi's Island and Yoshi's Story. I'm not really making a point with all this--it's just an interesting observation to me.
The game is not particularly difficult at all. There were a couple times I had some scares when one or two party members would go down during a boss fight, but I never experienced a game over through the whole adventure (not counting failing the courses in Bowser's Keep behind those six randomly generated doors). Your party's arsenal and skills will generally be a little ahead of your adversaries as you progress through the world, so the learning curve is lenient (esp. if you're like me and faced off against as many enemies as possible to build up as much EXP as I could). You have three bonuses you can choose from each time you level up, and I deliberately alternated and spaced them out evenly as I powered up my party. That's perhaps not the absolutely best way to do it (for instance there's no point in adding magic/special bonuses on a party member whose special moves you almost never use). And of course once you get the Lazy Shell weapon and armor, the game absolutely becomes broken as your party crushes the resistance while being nearly impervious in its own right. Even the mighty Culex wasn't much of a problem by the time I was done.
I should say that the battles are (in general) the easiest part of the game. Nearly everything else ranges from difficult to absolutely cumbersome. While I'm a fan of the isometric visuals in the game, it makes for some unintuitive platforming, and nowhere was this more on display than in the 3-dimensional maze in the Sunken Ship (something which only belongs in games like Super Mario 3D Land/World) and the two "action courses" inside Bowser's Keep. If you've ever played this game, well, I'm pretty sure you know what I mean.
The mini-games I'll confess were not particularly fun. The Yoshi races (or Mushroom Derby) required a sense of rhythm I really don't have, and having no skill in music, the Toadofsky songs escaped until I just looked them up in a guide. Midas River and Booster Hill were vaguely amusing but sort of monotonous as well. Mole Mountain (the mine car ride) was more fun but only as a diversion. Grate Guy's Casino was a good idea in theory but terribly boring in execution (sort of like the mini-games in NSMB on DS). Perhaps I'm used to the good mini-games in the Zelda series, but it was obvious in SMRPG that the game makers had a ways to go.
Back to the main game, there were some really neat moments I liked. It was a little bit hilarious how shocked Mallow was to find he's not a tadpole when he looks nothing like one at all. And I loved Bowser's comic relief throughout the game, from his crying when reminiscing on the good old days when Mario was his only adversary, to recruiting Mario to join the Koopa Troop, and to being ignored by the Manager or Director near the end of the game. The stuff in Nimbus Land was really great too, to Valentina's blatantly obvious act, to people being confused how big "Prince Mallow" (i.e. Dodo) was but just rolling with it anyway--and one of my favorite moments in the game was when Mallow goes into the castle to reunite with his parents, and we see Mario pull out an umbrella (Toadstool's Parasol?) right before it starts raining with his tears.
Smithy put up a proper good fight in the finale (though I think Cloaker and Earth Link may have given me even more trouble) and was a very rewarding final boss. Add Smithy to the likes of Wart among villains I'd like to see return to the Mario series in some capacity (even as secondary to Bowser). The ending was cool, and I like the parade during the staff credits--which from what I understand is a Mario RPG tradition. When the sun went down and those floats lit up had to be some of the most breathtaking visuals I've seen on a 16-bit machine! I'll be curious to see how Paper Mario compares.
It's a shame we won't be seeing Mallow or Geno anymore. I know a lot of people clamor for the latter to be included in Smash Bros. I certainly wouldn't be against that, but I see Geno more as assist trophy material rather than a full fledged fighter character. If nothing else, I would love to see the upcoming Smash Bros. game give SMRPG some love in the trophies and music dept.! Also, since they're bringing the Koopalings into Mario Kart 8, why not Mallow and Geno? I think that'd be a great comeback for them.
Finally I conclude with an observation. Have you all seen much of the official art for this game? (You can find it in downloadable versions of the instruction booklet and player's guide.) And it's absolutely gorgeous. What makes it so wonderful to look at (and you can tell the game was trying to make it look this way too, though it's not apparent with the 16-bit limitations) is that all the characters look like toys and dolls. Heck, even the maps in the player's guide look like plastic play sets! And this is a recurring theme we see in the game: Booster uses dolls of Mario, Toadstool, etc. to rehearse for his wedding, and Gaz in Rose Town plays Mario vs. Bowser with his dolls in a very meta reenactment of the players ourselves playing an elaborate game of Mario and party vs. the bad guys. And especially given that this game is an RPG--a role-playing game--it takes the genre literally and produces a really neat result. It's interesting that the characters in this game look like dolls, and in the next installment the art direction is a bit more overtly modified with Mario and all the characters being made out of paper and the whole of Paper Mario looking like a story out of a pop-up book.
One could almost say that this was a precursor to the idea in the original Super Smash Bros. of the Master Hand representing a child playing with his/her dolls in a playroom.
I don't think I can really rank this game against the Mario series platformers, but if I did, I would say it's approximately on par with Super Mario Sunshine (another game I liked more than I thought I would) for me. I really would love to see a game like this again--a proper RPG with a full party, etc. The art style for this particular one would look magnificent on the Wii U. It's probably just a pipe dream, though.
(Side note: Shout out to Peardian because his SMRPG maps were immensely helpful during my run!)
Anyway, up next is Paper Mario! From what I understand, the RPG elements are a bit simplified in this game, but it looks like it has a lot of its own charm. I'll get started on that one tomorrow night hopefully.
