ngl this game disappointed me a little, i don't care for the character design direction much for the original characters only really the main villains i find interesting (and especially honestly fuck that little bastard prince beansly or whatever his name is if i saw that damn thing in my living room i'd stomp it till it were a small green stain)

gameplay gets repetitive in a lot of areas and while clearly the gimmick of adding timed button presses to go with animations for bonus damage is supposed to make the mario rpg franchise as a whole more appealing than regular turn based combat i feel like it's kind of counter-intuitive here only making battles drag on for longer than they feel like they should at times. and the final boss and ending suck lol

but its ok i didnt hate it or anything and i might give it another go at some point but with the gba version. i hope the other m&l games are better i'm sort of intending on doing a mario rpg spree so we'll see what happens

I went into this game not knowing not knowing whether to expect this to be better or worse than the original, But I think it might be a little better than the original.

Starting with the art style, I didn’t mind it as much as some other people. Yes, I liked the pixel art of the original and it is very nostalgic for me, but something about it has been making it feel a bit dated by today’s standards (I like the pixel art of Bowser’s Inside Story more). The 3d models of the characters and world also look pretty good, so I don’t have a problem with it. The final boss looked strange, though, since it seemed to be modeled differently and more detailed than everything else in the game. It was also animated a lot smoother, both of which made it kind of stick out in a weird way.

The music was better in the original in my opinion. It’s perfectly fine in this game on its own, but the original music just feels better to listen to. Not really much more to say about that.

I didn’t notice any big changes to the story, which is good since the story still holds up today. The humor is great, the story feels natural in its progression, and it is still as enjoyable as it used to be. The only change I actually noticed was in the pirate ship mini game where they replaced skeleton donkey kong with a generic skeleton :(.

I liked the quality of life changes they made. The switching between overworld powers is a bit easier in this one since you don’t need to search through every combo of things to do like in the original. The bros attacks are also easier to do in this one since it tells you what to do and gives you hints while doing it, which is nice.

Onto the Bowser’s Minions side quest. I like the story that it has. It’s simple and has the same sense of humor as the base game, while following the main story. But I think this type of game just isn’t for me. The battles are boring to sit through since all you do is press a button every once in a while. It makes it feel almost like a chore to get through. On top of that, you need to go back and replay old levels just to level up your troops in order to be able to beat the new levels, making it feel even more like a chore since each level can take a few minutes to clear. I appreciate that it’s optional to play, since I normally would choose to skip over this in a casual playthrough.