If Geno has a million fans, then I am one of them. If Geno has ten fans, then I am one of them. If Geno has only one fan then that is me. If Geno has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth. If the world is against Geno, then I am against the world.

Hey look I finally managed to finish an RPG from the Mario series, that only took way too long! This remake is very interesting to me because of how faithful it is to the original, for better and for worse. I never played the original, but this was even obvious for someone like me. There are just little things here and there. Platforming with no depth perception because of the asymmetric angle can be a little frustrating. The Bowser's Keep segment of the game goes on for a bit too long with too many battles that aren't even difficult in the slightest. Scenes that play out exactly the same as the original feel weird here, because the SNES game had the sprites animate in a way that let the player connect the dots on what was going on. With 3D models in HD animated exactly the same way, it just looks stilted and awkward, the first encounter with Bowser being a great example. To get one more negative out of the way, the game's performance isn't the best. There are a handful of specific areas where the game stutters and I did encounter slowdown here and there. One of these moments was when the final boss started which took me out of it a little bit.

Now onto the positives. I want to bring up the writing first off. This game is so creative and feels nothing like any other Mario game. Besides the Mushroom Kingdom and Bowser's Keep, every area in this game is something new and whacky you will never find anywhere else in this series, with so many fun characters as well. Speaking of characters, we've got two completely original ones as party members that never return after this game. As I said from the top, I absolutely love Geno. He's probably my favorite companion from any Mario game. He stands out so much, intentionally so because if his origin, but he still fits this world so well and I love his interactions with everybody, not to mention in battle he can just straight up shoot enemies. I unfortunately didn't use Mallow in my party all that much, but I still think he's a great character. It's nothing you or I haven't seen before in plenty of other stories, but he plays off everyone else in the party pretty well. I really enjoyed Nimbus Land because of Mallow's connection to its little storyline.
This is probably my favorite interpretation of Bowser ever. Future games really lean into the comedic aspect of his character, and that's still here for sure, but he also feels like a real person with emotions and goals. I love when you run into old minions of his who are afraid of angering him, but he tells them not to worry, it's nice. Peach is...not great honestly. I used her in my party a lot because her healing abilities are insane, but as a character she's not her Paper Mario self that's for sure. She's pretty one dimensional and I didn't really care for it.

I guess that just leaves the combat! My favorite aspect of this is that everyone has different attack animations with different timing for better damage, depending on what weapon you have equipped to them. Bowser has my favorites, from spinning and throwing a Chain Chomp at enemies to just straight up throwing Mario at them, great stuff. Every character has plenty of special moves they can use and it really feels like you need to be careful about which ones you use at what time. Not only do they have different timing or inputs to get the best results, but the strongest ones use a lot of mana and you definitely don't want to run out. The remake added a meter in battles that fills up when you successfully block attacks or land the input for better damage on your own attacks. When it's full, you can use a super move, and each party formation has their own unique one! Mario, Bowser, and Geno is my favorite one personally. You can also now swap out a party member if they become immobilized or if their HP runs out, which is a godsend. Mario has to remain in the party at all times though for some reason. Battles are pretty fun in this game! Boss battles especially kept me engaged and really thinking about what I was doing. It's nothing too complicated, it is a Mario game after all, but it's still a lot of fun.

And that sums up my thoughts on this game as a whole. It's not anything groundbreaking or super in-depth or anything like that. It's a simple, sweet, fun adventure that I could revisit anytime. I love this take on the Mario universe and there's nothing quite like it, and that makes it feel pretty special.

Alright I think it's safe to say classic Final Fantasy is not my cup of tea unfortunately. This is now the third turn-based FF game that I ended up putting down. For what it's worth, I definitely enjoyed this one a lot more than FFVII or FFIX. I played 20 hours of this before I got tired of it.

While I was very much invested in the story because of Terra, Locke, and Celes, that's pretty much the extent of it I could get into. This game has too many damn characters and most of them are not important after their introductions. I can appreciate the ambition, as it's definitely impressive for an SNES game, but too many of these characters feel half-baked. They DO all have their unique attributes...kinda. The game clearly wants you to use the esper system to build up your characters with magic spells, but this makes them all feel the same. Why bother worrying about specific character abilities when the game makes it very obvious very early on that spamming magic is infinitely more effective? There are also instances where you have to use specific characters for story moments, and if you haven't built those characters up enough, good luck! I was stuck on one section for a good while just because I needed ice magic, and I couldn't use the character I had built up ice spells on, how fun! Creating a team with so many characters to pick from should be a fun experience, but the game ruins this with its own battle system. Switching out the characters you've put time into is a bad idea, and it absolutely sucks when you have to. It just makes things take longer than they should.

I do want to make it very clear that I was enjoying the story a lot, as bloated as it is. I'm a little bummed that I won't see the end of Terra or Celes's arcs, but this gameplay is just not doing it for me unfortunately. I was super into this game in the beginning, but the more I played, the more the mechanics bothered me . It being an SNES game, it has plenty of "old game-isms" that are annoying too. The pixel remaster doesn't help with these either which just confuses me. I really appreciate what it did for the time, but it's not a game I like all that much.

What will stick out the most about this game to me is the opera house segment, because the performance scene is HD-2D and nothing else in this release is. It's beautiful and I love it, but like...why?