Yup, it's pretty kino. Few games make you feel so "badass" when you defeat that boss.

If a playable anime fight scene reminiscent of Demon Slayer, Afro Samurai, or Sword of the Stranger sounds up your alley, you will love this.

I'd rate it higher, but unfortunately, it throws away this promising framework during the last boss, killing the game's momentum.

I've never played the original on the SNES for reasons I don't understand. I loved the older Paper Mario games so the father of those games was sure to click with me. Thankfully it did, it's pretty damn good. That said, it definitely shows its age in some places. There's a couple parts of the game I'll just say had questionable design and slowed the game's pacing to a halt.

That said, this game has plenty of good. Battles are pretty fun. They're very streamlined with some nice decision-making. I especially liked the variety of enemies on display. There's some really out there enemy designs that made me want to fight them, hoping I'd see something new and weird. I also really liked the held items. It added some extra strategy deciding on what for each of my party members to equip. It got annoying a few times running into enemies when I was trying to get some place, but for the most part I enjoyed the battle system.

The highlight of this game was definitely the writing though. It was consistently witty and funny. I wish Mario games had half this much heart and soul. The characters were so well defined despite it not being a very long game. Definitely elevates this from being a decent game to an instant classic.