For a very long time, this was my favorite game of all time.
It's partially nostalgia for sure, but even with that aside, this game is incredibly solid. It redefined what a Mario game had to be at the time, helped bring RPGs to the West and is overall an excellent game.
The characters and world all have more personality than any Mario game to that point had even come close to offering. The graphics were incredible at the time, and in fact even looked better than a lot of the 3D graphics that followed it.
The music still lives up to this day as well (Well some of it).
What really sets this game apart though in my opinion was how much the setting, theme and their opinion of Western gamers forced Square and Nintendo to deviate from typical RPG tropes. Sure they could do the typical "Warrior, mage, healer" type of shtick, but we had to make it fit the Mario lore. To that end, Mario has to jump and has to throw fireballs. How do you make that interesting to western gamers who at the time didn't buy RPGs much? Make the attacks interactive minigames. Now all of a sudden your physical damage dealer is dependent on your ability to time your button presses for extra jumps, putting some degree of player skill and interactivity back into the player's hands.
Their decision to turn every offensive and defensive action into a minigame was actually genius, and has been the hallmark of all Mario RPG series going forward.
Their mish-mashing of classes to fit both the Mario archtypes and RPG archtypes was also an excellent decision, which led to fan favorites like Geno (Even though I think Mallow is a better character don't @ me).
The story itself is nothing too spectacular, but some of the writing along the way is excellent. I particularly like Booster Tower, Bowser's character arch, Johnny's (short) character arch and Mallow's character arch.
All in all an excellent game, and the fact that it's no longer my favorite game ever anymore is not a knock against it but rather a testament to how good some of the games have been in recent years.
It's partially nostalgia for sure, but even with that aside, this game is incredibly solid. It redefined what a Mario game had to be at the time, helped bring RPGs to the West and is overall an excellent game.
The characters and world all have more personality than any Mario game to that point had even come close to offering. The graphics were incredible at the time, and in fact even looked better than a lot of the 3D graphics that followed it.
The music still lives up to this day as well (Well some of it).
What really sets this game apart though in my opinion was how much the setting, theme and their opinion of Western gamers forced Square and Nintendo to deviate from typical RPG tropes. Sure they could do the typical "Warrior, mage, healer" type of shtick, but we had to make it fit the Mario lore. To that end, Mario has to jump and has to throw fireballs. How do you make that interesting to western gamers who at the time didn't buy RPGs much? Make the attacks interactive minigames. Now all of a sudden your physical damage dealer is dependent on your ability to time your button presses for extra jumps, putting some degree of player skill and interactivity back into the player's hands.
Their decision to turn every offensive and defensive action into a minigame was actually genius, and has been the hallmark of all Mario RPG series going forward.
Their mish-mashing of classes to fit both the Mario archtypes and RPG archtypes was also an excellent decision, which led to fan favorites like Geno (Even though I think Mallow is a better character don't @ me).
The story itself is nothing too spectacular, but some of the writing along the way is excellent. I particularly like Booster Tower, Bowser's character arch, Johnny's (short) character arch and Mallow's character arch.
All in all an excellent game, and the fact that it's no longer my favorite game ever anymore is not a knock against it but rather a testament to how good some of the games have been in recent years.