So, why would I choose to play this game first over Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros 3?

I don't know, it just looked interesting and, basically no one ever talks about it, and, well.

I had a pretty fun time with it! It's a pretty enjoyable little game.

Peach controls really great, the variety of moves she has and the ones you unlock make her feel really capable and fun to control.

The levels are, very serviceable, if a bit forgettable, though in all honesty, 2D mario games don't really have very memorable levels in general, I mean, who can remember 3-2 from SMB 1 or, 5-3 from New Super Mario Bros U? It's basically the same case here.

The artstyle is, super cute! It feels like what an original Mario game would've looked like on the GBA and, I say that very much as a compliment, the animations on Perry the umbrella are also so expressive and adorable, I love how the game looks!

And the bosses are pretty fun actually, I enjoyed the bosses.

My main issue with the game is how overly-easy it is, it's closer to Kirby than Mario in difficult, finding all the collectibles doesn't make it any more difficult either so, yeah, I'd recommend you play this game on the side while tackling another, more difficult game, so you can come back to this one when you feel frustrated with the other game.

Overall, really fun and serviceable platformer, I really liked it!

"Breaking News: Big Earthbound Fan Plays Earthbound for First Time, is No Longer Earthbound Fan."

Jokes aside, with how much I've adored games like OMORI, Yume Nikki and the all of Toby Fox's work, this has always been a game that's on my bucket list.

I'd try to start it multiple times, but eventually get really frustrated by it; I'd tell myself it's just the early game that's bad, with how frustratingly difficulty it is.

So, for this one time, I powered through it, hoping to finally experience the entire game, and, well...

This is a 3/10 game with 10/10 moments.

For example: the battle system is pure dog shit.

Attacks miss more than they hit and it is so extremely basic with what you're able to do, there's no depth.

And you have to Constantly, throughout the entire game contend with enemies spamming status ailments and crits on you, with you often being unable to cure these ailments due to not having unlocked the appropriate Heal PSI, and not wanting to waste the inventory space on the specific item that heals it.

But also: Moonside is one of the most surreal and influential sequences of any game that's ever been made, it's genuinely so alien and creepy and it's executed so perfectly.

Another example: Navigation is needlessly slow, and often extremely frustrating with the constant spam of, not "Random Encounters" but basically "Forced Encounters" with how fast enemies can target you.

But also: that slow navigation adds to the tension and creepiness of certain sections, like Gigygas's lair or Moonside.

Example: Music is often really good!

But also: tracks like the dungeon man's music make me wanna rip my ears out.

Example: story is an incredibly barebones "chosen one defeats unspeakable evil", characters are barely given any amount of depths, dialogue from random NPCs is often grating (in my opinion at least), and the humor can be downright terrible with bosses like "big belch".

But also: Giygas is one of the most interestingly written bosses of any game that I've ever played, I'm not gonna go too further into it cause it's genuinely worth experiencing.

So in conclusion, this is a game of Extreme highs and Extreme lows, playing it is Awful, experiencing it is Amazing, I genuinely think you shouldn't play it, but I absolutely recommend watching a walkthrough of it, while I certainly felt really disappointed with it at the end, at the very least: it gives me more insight and appreciation of works that it inspired.

So, first things first: if you play this game on original hardware without any sort of speedup function.

This is a 0/10 absolute piece of fucking dogshit, horrific abomination of a programming mistake, how the actual hell did they make this game slower than the first one??? Why the fuck do I need to watch every deactivated enemy do Nothing? Why does field movement take SO LONG? Why are battles so slow, even with animations turned off????

But, if you do play this with speed up like I did, then this is honestly a really, really fun game!

The stages are designed incredibly well, always challenging but never unfair, and the plays you can make them in make you feel really smart!

The difficulty is pretty good all throughout the game actually, and while balancing is a bit off with how much better flying units are above all the others, very few of the demon races are outright "worthless", specially in the early game, and compared to the first game, your human protagonists don't become completely worthless near the end which is really good (tho they honestly get kinda, too good... I had one of my party members min-maxxing speed and attack and he killed the final boss in one turn).

Writing's quite good, the characters were endearing and bounced off of each other pretty well, the ending I got felt kinda weak but, that was the Neutral-Neutral ending so, who knows, maybe the other endings are better!

Visuals, I felt initially were really weak compared to the first game, but honestly? I've come to really like them! The GPS system aesthetic is done really well and it makes the game really readable.

Music is also Stellar but, if you play with speedup like I did, it unfortunately becomes too sped-up to be good.

So overall, a VAST improvement over Majin Tensei 1 and a really, really good game in its own right! I'd highly recommend this one if you like TRPGs!