Not as crazy about this game as others. No denying the world and characters of the Beanbean Kingdom were highlights, but combat was so simplistic all throughout. Finding out the hidden variants of your Bros. Attacks was cool, but once you do it, you just rinse and repeat for the whole game. I think my main hangup with this game is remembering Joke's End. God, what a slog of a dungeon.
A new Mario RPG series is born, this time featuring the two bros. Similar to how you could block attacks in Mario RPG, in this one you can dodge them by jumping or deflect them with your hammers. In addition to the original gameplay, the dialogue is excellent and memorable at times as well, with plenty of good humor. This game has spawned a bunch of sequels, for good reason.
I wanted to get into this game, but I’ve bounced off of it for now. I like the battle system for the most part, but what really gets me is the traversal. The button presses necessary to do many of the tasks in the game to progress just felt tedious and never sunk in for me. I just don’t think having to press the start and select buttons to toggle abilities on/off was fun and was frequently frustrated by it. Maybe I should try the 3DS remake and see if it play any better on a system with four face buttons.
This game has extremely charming visuals, dialogue and music which perfectly craft a unique identity for this series. The gameplay mechanics are also great at keeping the player invested on a moment to moment basis, but the game is so easy and the balance so exploitable that the game just ends up becoming a snoozefest at the end.