The credits are literally rolling as I'm typing this. I gathered a lot of thoughts on Superstar Saga during my playthrough and I wanted to see it through to the end before I put them into words. Needless to say I got very antsy.
I didn't play this game during its heyday, but I did play Partners in Time (and Super Mario RPG) and held that game in high regard. It's the only other M&L game I played and I have an appreciation for its combat system. A four-person party with each member assigned to a different face button, along with a plethora of various team attacks and offensive items that both require an understanding of the timing to pull them off while also rewarding peerless play by allowing seemingly infinite combos until the time window to pull them off gradually become more difficult. It's fun, stylish, an addictive. I played Partners in Time twice, once as a kid and later as a teenager (I'm 23 now) and both times I couldn't resist running into every enemy in the overworld to have another attempt at mastering each and every attack.
I was aware of Superstar Saga and its premise. My understanding was, being Partners in Time's former, that it was just a more primitive, simple version. That turned out to be true, but my experience and feelings got a little more complicated as I sunk my teeth.
At first glance, SS is as charming as your standard Mario fare and more. After looking at Alphadream's Tomato Adventure (a game I am now currently playing) you can see why Nintendo chose them for the job. This game is brimming with bright colors and beautiful spritework for the GBA. The writing is entertaining and the humor works more than it doesn't. My experience through the first act of the game went joyfully, only being minorly annoyed by the lengthy tutorials for some menial menu navigating here and there.
But as you get settled in... does the colorful paintjob start to peel? What's left underneath? It's a slow and painful peel, as enemy encounters become more plentiful and complex while your arsenal of your own... doesn't seem to evolve as much. SS painfully lacks the multitudes of combat options its predecessors grant you. What is sparsely given to you, whether a hammer attack or a Bro Command, is dripfed to you throughout what seems to be a needlessly overly-long campaign, one that is incessantly padded with fetchquests within fetchquests, constant meaningless backtracking, and an obtuse world map. All the while the vastness of the Beanbean Kingdom slowly just becomes one blur, areas upon areas of similar looking tiles, assets, and locales. Try finding a crucial NPC in a nameless cave when the entire world you're adventuring is one massive square, filled with smaller room shaped squares of green grass and flowers, all with their own nameless caves that lead to god-knows-what except your destination.
SS becomes a game of walking around, either avoiding enemies or accidentally getting into fights you don't want to be in.
The game makes its attempts to break the pace with its dungeons but man. None of them are good. Not a single one. Every single dungeon in this game is a non-linear sequence of square rooms that use the same sequence of puzzles. Use a hammer to open a door. Use a hammer to squish Luigi into the floor so he can go under a grated fence and use his hammer to open a door for Mario to open a hammer to open the boss door. Use a hammer to squish Mario so he can fit through a small opening and use his hammer to open a door for Luigi to go into to use his hammer to press a button to open a door. Use the hammer. Use the hammer. Press a button. Squish Mario. Squish Luigi. Hammer. Button. Squish. Barrel. This is done in just about every combination sequence possible, and they just get longer and longer and longer. Because late game difficulty is longer puzzles.
And then you're back walking around and around and around and trying to find one damn thing in one specific corner of the game world that you were given one line of dialogue of description to find. Just one meaningless macguffin to find and then it's on to the next one and the next and then the game is over. By the end of the game I barely felt any different than the Mario and Luigi I started with. Maybe even with a little piece of my soul missing after all the aimless walking and hours wasted.
The balancing also just seems.. odd. I tried my god damnest the whole game but I could not get either of the Bros to be even remotely even stat-wise. In any combination of stat bonuses and equipment and badges and what-not, Mario just always trumps Luigi in stats. The absolute best I could do was deprive Mario of Bro Points and make him the designated physical combatant and dumped all possible BP gain onto Luigi, sort of like a mage. It sort of worked but if was the only sort of control I could get out of that situation.
General consensus is that this is a 20 hour game and it took me about that. The problem is that this game should be 10 hours. By the first act I felt a little drained by the lengthy tutorials but I was eager to level up and learn new abilities. By the ending of the first half I felt barely any different, and I was already tired of the incessant travelling and clunky, time wasting, copy-pasted puzzles. By the last quarter I had long wanted out, but by principle of sunk-cost fallacy I felt like I had to push it through to the end. How I feel/felt by the end? Right now? Looking at my handheld emulator right now giving me the "Thank you for playing" screen? Empty, I guess. Drained.
And yet it's not the worst JRPG I've ever played. Even if the exploration itself is as monotonous as they come it's not even downright bad. It's just boring. I'll take a monotonous game coated with visual sugar and interactable spice combat the way this game did over some of the meandering menu-flipping fare that comes out today. It can be a hair-pulling experience but it's one with things to still appreciate. I love the characters of the Beanbean Kingdom. Fawful had great dialogue. Bowser's role in the story was intriguing and was a good way to make him a more involved character, especially in a conflict that didn't particularly involve him. The entire arc of the game focusing on Luigi was the most fun part of the game and had some depth to how he views himself in the world. I loved the Prince and his characterization as a stunning heartthrob and companion that didn't fall into some insufferable narcissict archetype. It's a cute game that's brimming with color and style that falls flat when it decides to meander you with its gameplay, but it's far more appreciable than what you'd expect.
I didn't play this game during its heyday, but I did play Partners in Time (and Super Mario RPG) and held that game in high regard. It's the only other M&L game I played and I have an appreciation for its combat system. A four-person party with each member assigned to a different face button, along with a plethora of various team attacks and offensive items that both require an understanding of the timing to pull them off while also rewarding peerless play by allowing seemingly infinite combos until the time window to pull them off gradually become more difficult. It's fun, stylish, an addictive. I played Partners in Time twice, once as a kid and later as a teenager (I'm 23 now) and both times I couldn't resist running into every enemy in the overworld to have another attempt at mastering each and every attack.
I was aware of Superstar Saga and its premise. My understanding was, being Partners in Time's former, that it was just a more primitive, simple version. That turned out to be true, but my experience and feelings got a little more complicated as I sunk my teeth.
At first glance, SS is as charming as your standard Mario fare and more. After looking at Alphadream's Tomato Adventure (a game I am now currently playing) you can see why Nintendo chose them for the job. This game is brimming with bright colors and beautiful spritework for the GBA. The writing is entertaining and the humor works more than it doesn't. My experience through the first act of the game went joyfully, only being minorly annoyed by the lengthy tutorials for some menial menu navigating here and there.
But as you get settled in... does the colorful paintjob start to peel? What's left underneath? It's a slow and painful peel, as enemy encounters become more plentiful and complex while your arsenal of your own... doesn't seem to evolve as much. SS painfully lacks the multitudes of combat options its predecessors grant you. What is sparsely given to you, whether a hammer attack or a Bro Command, is dripfed to you throughout what seems to be a needlessly overly-long campaign, one that is incessantly padded with fetchquests within fetchquests, constant meaningless backtracking, and an obtuse world map. All the while the vastness of the Beanbean Kingdom slowly just becomes one blur, areas upon areas of similar looking tiles, assets, and locales. Try finding a crucial NPC in a nameless cave when the entire world you're adventuring is one massive square, filled with smaller room shaped squares of green grass and flowers, all with their own nameless caves that lead to god-knows-what except your destination.
SS becomes a game of walking around, either avoiding enemies or accidentally getting into fights you don't want to be in.
The game makes its attempts to break the pace with its dungeons but man. None of them are good. Not a single one. Every single dungeon in this game is a non-linear sequence of square rooms that use the same sequence of puzzles. Use a hammer to open a door. Use a hammer to squish Luigi into the floor so he can go under a grated fence and use his hammer to open a door for Mario to open a hammer to open the boss door. Use a hammer to squish Mario so he can fit through a small opening and use his hammer to open a door for Luigi to go into to use his hammer to press a button to open a door. Use the hammer. Use the hammer. Press a button. Squish Mario. Squish Luigi. Hammer. Button. Squish. Barrel. This is done in just about every combination sequence possible, and they just get longer and longer and longer. Because late game difficulty is longer puzzles.
And then you're back walking around and around and around and trying to find one damn thing in one specific corner of the game world that you were given one line of dialogue of description to find. Just one meaningless macguffin to find and then it's on to the next one and the next and then the game is over. By the end of the game I barely felt any different than the Mario and Luigi I started with. Maybe even with a little piece of my soul missing after all the aimless walking and hours wasted.
The balancing also just seems.. odd. I tried my god damnest the whole game but I could not get either of the Bros to be even remotely even stat-wise. In any combination of stat bonuses and equipment and badges and what-not, Mario just always trumps Luigi in stats. The absolute best I could do was deprive Mario of Bro Points and make him the designated physical combatant and dumped all possible BP gain onto Luigi, sort of like a mage. It sort of worked but if was the only sort of control I could get out of that situation.
General consensus is that this is a 20 hour game and it took me about that. The problem is that this game should be 10 hours. By the first act I felt a little drained by the lengthy tutorials but I was eager to level up and learn new abilities. By the ending of the first half I felt barely any different, and I was already tired of the incessant travelling and clunky, time wasting, copy-pasted puzzles. By the last quarter I had long wanted out, but by principle of sunk-cost fallacy I felt like I had to push it through to the end. How I feel/felt by the end? Right now? Looking at my handheld emulator right now giving me the "Thank you for playing" screen? Empty, I guess. Drained.
And yet it's not the worst JRPG I've ever played. Even if the exploration itself is as monotonous as they come it's not even downright bad. It's just boring. I'll take a monotonous game coated with visual sugar and interactable spice combat the way this game did over some of the meandering menu-flipping fare that comes out today. It can be a hair-pulling experience but it's one with things to still appreciate. I love the characters of the Beanbean Kingdom. Fawful had great dialogue. Bowser's role in the story was intriguing and was a good way to make him a more involved character, especially in a conflict that didn't particularly involve him. The entire arc of the game focusing on Luigi was the most fun part of the game and had some depth to how he views himself in the world. I loved the Prince and his characterization as a stunning heartthrob and companion that didn't fall into some insufferable narcissict archetype. It's a cute game that's brimming with color and style that falls flat when it decides to meander you with its gameplay, but it's far more appreciable than what you'd expect.
2 Comments
I can't even fathom doing that without save states. Having to go through that first form every time just to wipe to the last form's first attack over and over and over again like I did. What the fuck man.
smaench
2 years ago