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SMRPG is great. It's absolutely "baby's first JRPG" (but with actual stats, not the low stats of Paper Mario) and it wears that badge with pride. I don't think

SMRPG is great. It's absolutely "baby's first JRPG" (but with actual stats, not the low stats of Paper Mario) and it wears that badge with pride. I don't think there's a JRPG more accessible than this one if you're not familiar with the genre - the UI of the original is very much geared around "make it understandable to people who've only ever played the Mario platformers" and it just... works. From what I've seen, that's an element the remake has mostly left intact, which is good to see. I can't find myself saying that Geno and Mallow "don't fit the Mario canon" - we've seen characters in the RPGs who have full arcs or "emissary" style personalities (Paper Mario 64 and Super Paper Mario jump to mind immediately) and the baddies almost certainly are just as fitting as the random cadre of bosses you get in the platformers. I don't think it aged that badly either. There's a sort of oddball humor to the game because it was originally translated by Ted Woolsey who didn't have a series bible for the Mario games. (Especially since a lot of the games humor in some places was derived from Japanese anime and stand-up comedy, so he had to invent certain things from whole cloth since the references are otherwise incomprehensible to a non-90s Japanese audience). That said the game is definitely from a time before corporate brand management forced these characters to be stripped down to just their most basic personality traits. I'd say that's a good thing though. It's just a really good game overall and it's easy to see how Paper Mario ended up evolving on these concepts and what's the good old "Square weirdness" that's only present here. Makes you wonder where things could've gone, had Square not moved FF7 development from the N64 to the PlayStation.

chrisco255 3y ago
Yeah I wonder if Square could have taken the series in a more Kingdom Hearts-like direction if it had had the runway to do so.
- noirscape 3y ago
  I wouldn't consider that to be the "Square weirdness" from the Square of the 90s... For today, maybe. What I mean moreso by that is that FF games up until 9 more or less had this shared tone of "stories with gravity interspliced with extremely goofy moments and oneliners". SMRPG fits that tightrope almost as well as the more well known games it shares a platform with (Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6); there's multiple gags but the game also still treats this idea of "Bowser just got upstaged by this army of metal guys" with a completely straight face. The stuff surrounding the core story of the Seven Stars isn't undercut by anything but it's still followed up by the running gags of Mario doing impressions of the various NPCs he's met because he's a silent protagonist and they wanted to animate an explanation. Later Mario RPGs would largely ditch that gravity in favor of just going all-in on the goofiness as the RPGs went on (Mario & Luigi got a really bad case of that). Square on the other hand bled creatives during the merger with Enix until Nomura was the only one left and he got super up in his own ass about storytelling... which led to Kingdom Hearts becoming what it is.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  I dunno. I was a big fan of Secret of Mana which has a really disappointing multiplayer. Three people really can control three characters at once but if you want to cast a spell or change weapons you open up a menu that stops the action for everyone else. Sometimes I think about hacking the game so the menus appear out-of-line so the multiplayer really is fun.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    A multiplayer RPG was almost unheard of though until MMOs became a thing. Local multiplayer RPG was always quite rare. Interesting that Secret of Mana even attempted it.
    - munk-a 3y ago
      Uh... except MUDs - which absolutely dominated the early era of gaming and still exist as a small but extremely dedicated player base to this day. Text will always be an extremely compelling medium for RPGs since you're only limited in your expression by your imagination - there is no graphical hindrance to what actions occur.
      - chrisco255 3y ago
        True, and I enjoyed a space based one that I used to play quite a bit back then, but I guess I would consider MUDs to be MMOs as well. They still ultimately required an internet connection and console games didn't really become popular for net based play until PS2.
  - djtango 3y ago
    how does SoM compare to FF:CC?
tobiasSoftware 3y ago
" I don't think there's a JRPG more accessible than this one" I'd argue there's one more, though I may be biased as it's what got me into RPGs - Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. It's a relatively unknown title as it was an attempt by the Final Fantasy franchise to get beginners into RPGs. It's like Super Mario RPG in a lot of ways, including seeing monsters on the overworld. However, it's much more like table-top RPGs, without mechanics such as timed hits and with more standard RPG monsters and spells. Personally I love the art style they went with in the game, it's the peak of pixel art IMO.
- a_e_k 3y ago
  It's generally a fun game and fairly streamlined, but there are some trash fights (mainly in the fire region) where it's really easy to get stun-locked to death. Or get a game-over from having both party members get petrified by the monsters in between your turns. With SMRPG, you can at least still block while asleep/mushroomed/scarecrowed.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  FF: Mystic Quest was also my first JRPG. After playing it I had to try all the others.
- mcronce 3y ago
  Mystic Quest was my first JRPG...then FF4, Chrono Trigger, and SMRPG - I think in that order? It really kicked off a lifelong love of the genre
- aidenn0 3y ago
  Yeah, my friend and I got MQ when it first came out and beat it in a single day. IIRC, the resurrection item was cheaply available, instant-death to undead enemies, and healed living characters up to full health. There were some fun box-moving/jumping puzzles though.
  - Dwedit 3y ago
    There were no resurrection items in FFMQ. There is a Life spell for use during battles, and you automatically resurrect with 1HP after a battle.
low_tech_love 3y ago
Maybe it’s just nostalgia but neither paper Mario nor Mario & Luigi come a light year away from SMRPG for me. They feel just like bland superficial attempts at a formula when the formula is actually the least important part of SMRPG. The apparent weirdness that the reviewer mentioned is for me exactly why I love it: the characters just are what they are; you don’t have to understand, their unexplainable weirdness makes them (and the game) so unique. Game design from the 80s and 90s has an aspect that will never come back again: players could be expected to spend actual time with a game, play it without rushing, explore and find things out on their own. The world has changed and I will not say what is right or wrong, but this expectation and design will never come back.
- Trasmatta 3y ago
  > this expectation and design will never come back. This type of game design 100% still exists. FromSoftware is probably the best current example, but it's also prevelant in so many indie games.
  - low_tech_love 3y ago
    I don't know, maybe. I'd certainly agree that at least the King's Field and Shadow Tower games are like that, perfect examples of how you can start a game in a complete state of WTF and slowly get better and better until in the end you feel like Superman. And Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 and 2 might fit that too, but from then on (DS3, Bloodborne, Sekiro) it became more of a question of combat challenge than actual discovery/exploration itself. I'm currently doing a sweep of the From catalogue in release order, and I have to say, wow I love their early approach to game design with King's Field and Shadow Tower. (Armored Core is fun but not really my cup of tea)
- noirscape 3y ago
  Paper Mario was initially fine IMO. It laserfocused into a very different niche; because it made stat logic simple math puzzles, the developers were able to build out the interactive element to SMRPGs fights into something that feels appropriate, yet not too obtrusive (something which the franchise would end up losing by the time Sticker Star came rolling around). A lot of attacks in SMRPG just have one button you press to make them stronger; by contrast Paper Mario would introduce things like stick flicking, holding moves or inserting certain button combinations to make them stronger. Tonally I'd say 64, TTYD and Super manage to stick close enough to being "quirky, yet funny" with all of them having some emotional beats that they don't undercut. Sticker Star, Color Splash and Origami King all veer into self-parody levels when it comes to the writing and it just... sucks really. It's hard to take the entire thing seriously when everything you interact with makes a joke about how everything is made of paper every other sentence. Mario & Luigi for the most part isn't really based on SMRPG. Most of it's DNA comes from a game called Tomato Adventure instead. That said, it did end up borrowing the more superficial RPG elements. Superstar Saga and Partners in Time probably fare the best in terms of mixing more RPG-like elements, while the games after would rapidly swing between "way too easy" and "absurdly difficult" when it came to the interactive component. I'd say that last bit about game design only really started to fade away in... around the early-to-mid-2010s really. It was falling out of favor before that with Xbox and Playstation's approach to game design but the whole "everything is online now" means that games are trying to fight with their players against the inevitable deluge of other games out there.

chrisco255 3y ago

Yeah I wonder if Square could have taken the series in a more Kingdom Hearts-like direction if it had had the runway to do so.

noirscape 3y ago
I wouldn't consider that to be the "Square weirdness" from the Square of the 90s... For today, maybe. What I mean moreso by that is that FF games up until 9 more or less had this shared tone of "stories with gravity interspliced with extremely goofy moments and oneliners". SMRPG fits that tightrope almost as well as the more well known games it shares a platform with (Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6); there's multiple gags but the game also still treats this idea of "Bowser just got upstaged by this army of metal guys" with a completely straight face. The stuff surrounding the core story of the Seven Stars isn't undercut by anything but it's still followed up by the running gags of Mario doing impressions of the various NPCs he's met because he's a silent protagonist and they wanted to animate an explanation. Later Mario RPGs would largely ditch that gravity in favor of just going all-in on the goofiness as the RPGs went on (Mario & Luigi got a really bad case of that). Square on the other hand bled creatives during the merger with Enix until Nomura was the only one left and he got super up in his own ass about storytelling... which led to Kingdom Hearts becoming what it is.
PaulHoule 3y ago
I dunno. I was a big fan of Secret of Mana which has a really disappointing multiplayer. Three people really can control three characters at once but if you want to cast a spell or change weapons you open up a menu that stops the action for everyone else. Sometimes I think about hacking the game so the menus appear out-of-line so the multiplayer really is fun.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  A multiplayer RPG was almost unheard of though until MMOs became a thing. Local multiplayer RPG was always quite rare. Interesting that Secret of Mana even attempted it.
  - munk-a 3y ago
    Uh... except MUDs - which absolutely dominated the early era of gaming and still exist as a small but extremely dedicated player base to this day. Text will always be an extremely compelling medium for RPGs since you're only limited in your expression by your imagination - there is no graphical hindrance to what actions occur.
    - chrisco255 3y ago
      True, and I enjoyed a space based one that I used to play quite a bit back then, but I guess I would consider MUDs to be MMOs as well. They still ultimately required an internet connection and console games didn't really become popular for net based play until PS2.
- djtango 3y ago
  how does SoM compare to FF:CC?

tobiasSoftware 3y ago

" I don't think there's a JRPG more accessible than this one" I'd argue there's one more, though I may be biased as it's what got me into RPGs - Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. It's a relatively unknown title as it was an attempt by the Final Fantasy franchise to get beginners into RPGs. It's like Super Mario RPG in a lot of ways, including seeing monsters on the overworld. However, it's much more like table-top RPGs, without mechanics such as timed hits and with more standard RPG monsters and spells. Personally I love the art style they went with in the game, it's the peak of pixel art IMO.

a_e_k 3y ago
It's generally a fun game and fairly streamlined, but there are some trash fights (mainly in the fire region) where it's really easy to get stun-locked to death. Or get a game-over from having both party members get petrified by the monsters in between your turns. With SMRPG, you can at least still block while asleep/mushroomed/scarecrowed.
chrisco255 3y ago
FF: Mystic Quest was also my first JRPG. After playing it I had to try all the others.
mcronce 3y ago
Mystic Quest was my first JRPG...then FF4, Chrono Trigger, and SMRPG - I think in that order? It really kicked off a lifelong love of the genre
aidenn0 3y ago
Yeah, my friend and I got MQ when it first came out and beat it in a single day. IIRC, the resurrection item was cheaply available, instant-death to undead enemies, and healed living characters up to full health. There were some fun box-moving/jumping puzzles though.
- Dwedit 3y ago
  There were no resurrection items in FFMQ. There is a Life spell for use during battles, and you automatically resurrect with 1HP after a battle.

low_tech_love 3y ago

Maybe it’s just nostalgia but neither paper Mario nor Mario & Luigi come a light year away from SMRPG for me. They feel just like bland superficial attempts at a formula when the formula is actually the least important part of SMRPG. The apparent weirdness that the reviewer mentioned is for me exactly why I love it: the characters just are what they are; you don’t have to understand, their unexplainable weirdness makes them (and the game) so unique. Game design from the 80s and 90s has an aspect that will never come back again: players could be expected to spend actual time with a game, play it without rushing, explore and find things out on their own. The world has changed and I will not say what is right or wrong, but this expectation and design will never come back.

Trasmatta 3y ago
> this expectation and design will never come back. This type of game design 100% still exists. FromSoftware is probably the best current example, but it's also prevelant in so many indie games.
- low_tech_love 3y ago
  I don't know, maybe. I'd certainly agree that at least the King's Field and Shadow Tower games are like that, perfect examples of how you can start a game in a complete state of WTF and slowly get better and better until in the end you feel like Superman. And Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 and 2 might fit that too, but from then on (DS3, Bloodborne, Sekiro) it became more of a question of combat challenge than actual discovery/exploration itself. I'm currently doing a sweep of the From catalogue in release order, and I have to say, wow I love their early approach to game design with King's Field and Shadow Tower. (Armored Core is fun but not really my cup of tea)
noirscape 3y ago
Paper Mario was initially fine IMO. It laserfocused into a very different niche; because it made stat logic simple math puzzles, the developers were able to build out the interactive element to SMRPGs fights into something that feels appropriate, yet not too obtrusive (something which the franchise would end up losing by the time Sticker Star came rolling around). A lot of attacks in SMRPG just have one button you press to make them stronger; by contrast Paper Mario would introduce things like stick flicking, holding moves or inserting certain button combinations to make them stronger. Tonally I'd say 64, TTYD and Super manage to stick close enough to being "quirky, yet funny" with all of them having some emotional beats that they don't undercut. Sticker Star, Color Splash and Origami King all veer into self-parody levels when it comes to the writing and it just... sucks really. It's hard to take the entire thing seriously when everything you interact with makes a joke about how everything is made of paper every other sentence. Mario & Luigi for the most part isn't really based on SMRPG. Most of it's DNA comes from a game called Tomato Adventure instead. That said, it did end up borrowing the more superficial RPG elements. Superstar Saga and Partners in Time probably fare the best in terms of mixing more RPG-like elements, while the games after would rapidly swing between "way too easy" and "absurdly difficult" when it came to the interactive component. I'd say that last bit about game design only really started to fade away in... around the early-to-mid-2010s really. It was falling out of favor before that with Xbox and Playstation's approach to game design but the whole "everything is online now" means that games are trying to fight with their players against the inevitable deluge of other games out there.