Let me be clear, I respect the hell out of what Super Mario RPG does. The introduction of timed presses to deliver more damage, or negate damage coming your way was a great way to retain the reflex-heavy nature of standard Mario games, while at the same time making the RPG combat more engaging, and friendly to newcomers. The idea of each defeated enemy potentially giving you an extra free turn, or a free recovery is another fun method that ensures that each attempt at clearing a sequence might go differently, and potential deaths may suddenly turn into lucky victories.
All these conveniences for the combat itself, on top of various minigames scattered around to alleviate the constant combat, a short length that ensures anybody could finish this game without getting weary, a soundtrack that is just one catchy earworm after another, and lots and lots of personality and bits of humor in the writing. Including the first effective instance of everybody simultaneously realizing that Bowser is the best character in the Mario series, actually. Give him a personality and a bunch of lines to read, and you just cannot under any circumstance hate this guy. He's a total loser with a totally unrealistic goal, and yet while I cannot root for him, I don't really want him to fail either. He deserves something good, I just haven't figured out what yet.
Anyway, all this to say, there is a lot that this game does well, as far as innovation and evolution of the Mario series goes, BUT... and it pains me to have a but in here, BUT while all of it comes together to form a cozy and accessible romp for RPG newcomers, its combat system did not hold enough weight to keep me engaged for the entire runtime, even though said runtime was already pretty short as is.
By the 2nd half of the adventure, I was able to find weapons that completely broke the balance of the game. As a result, battles no longer required any thought. I was capable of trouncing every boss using the exact same party, with the exact same strategy, including both phases of the final boss. After the game ended, I considered the idea that Mario RPG wants you to dictate your own difficulty through the equipment you choose to wear, but coming from older RPG's where equipping the best stuff was paramount to success, this line of thinking was pretty alien to me at the time. That aside, stats and equipment don't have to be the only measure of difficulty in an RPG. And the best types of RPG's incentivize you into pursuing other strategies beyond sheer brute force. And while Mario RPG starts off doing that quite decently, its latter half turns into a bit of a mindless affair, as your amount of tools outnumber anything that the bosses could possibly have.
What doesn't help is that certain attack animations from the enemies go on for needlessly long amounts of time, and if you get to fight a lot of them, that's more time wasted sitting around and waiting for the animations to finish. Combined with the lacking difficulty, every battle turns into a game of waiting until you win.
To summarize, while I do strongly feel that Mario RPG is a game worth experiencing by everybody for its exploration, its sense of charm, and as a potential gateway for newcomers to the genre... the combat turns from one of the game's best features, to a bit of a weak link, and it's one you kinda have to engage with a lot. Not as much as some RPG's out there with their insane encounter rates, but enough to the point where I'd rather be talking to NPC's in a town than doing this. I will repeat this again: Mario RPG does a shit ton of stuff right. Play it. My personal disappointment with the boss fights aside, everybody has a different reason to play a game, and Mario RPG may just align with yours.
Man, maybe I really shouldn't have equipped that OP equipment... It almost feels like that in itself is what screwed up a lot of my experience. Oh well, there's always the remake.
All these conveniences for the combat itself, on top of various minigames scattered around to alleviate the constant combat, a short length that ensures anybody could finish this game without getting weary, a soundtrack that is just one catchy earworm after another, and lots and lots of personality and bits of humor in the writing. Including the first effective instance of everybody simultaneously realizing that Bowser is the best character in the Mario series, actually. Give him a personality and a bunch of lines to read, and you just cannot under any circumstance hate this guy. He's a total loser with a totally unrealistic goal, and yet while I cannot root for him, I don't really want him to fail either. He deserves something good, I just haven't figured out what yet.
Anyway, all this to say, there is a lot that this game does well, as far as innovation and evolution of the Mario series goes, BUT... and it pains me to have a but in here, BUT while all of it comes together to form a cozy and accessible romp for RPG newcomers, its combat system did not hold enough weight to keep me engaged for the entire runtime, even though said runtime was already pretty short as is.
By the 2nd half of the adventure, I was able to find weapons that completely broke the balance of the game. As a result, battles no longer required any thought. I was capable of trouncing every boss using the exact same party, with the exact same strategy, including both phases of the final boss. After the game ended, I considered the idea that Mario RPG wants you to dictate your own difficulty through the equipment you choose to wear, but coming from older RPG's where equipping the best stuff was paramount to success, this line of thinking was pretty alien to me at the time. That aside, stats and equipment don't have to be the only measure of difficulty in an RPG. And the best types of RPG's incentivize you into pursuing other strategies beyond sheer brute force. And while Mario RPG starts off doing that quite decently, its latter half turns into a bit of a mindless affair, as your amount of tools outnumber anything that the bosses could possibly have.
What doesn't help is that certain attack animations from the enemies go on for needlessly long amounts of time, and if you get to fight a lot of them, that's more time wasted sitting around and waiting for the animations to finish. Combined with the lacking difficulty, every battle turns into a game of waiting until you win.
To summarize, while I do strongly feel that Mario RPG is a game worth experiencing by everybody for its exploration, its sense of charm, and as a potential gateway for newcomers to the genre... the combat turns from one of the game's best features, to a bit of a weak link, and it's one you kinda have to engage with a lot. Not as much as some RPG's out there with their insane encounter rates, but enough to the point where I'd rather be talking to NPC's in a town than doing this. I will repeat this again: Mario RPG does a shit ton of stuff right. Play it. My personal disappointment with the boss fights aside, everybody has a different reason to play a game, and Mario RPG may just align with yours.
Man, maybe I really shouldn't have equipped that OP equipment... It almost feels like that in itself is what screwed up a lot of my experience. Oh well, there's always the remake.