For this particular holiday season, me and a buncha Discord moots did a little "backlog secret santa" where each person was secretly assigned another to pick a game out of the other's backlog and make them play it. At the moment, I'm still unaware of who gave me Superstar Saga, but I'd like them to know I enjoyed it a pretty nice amount.
Before this little event, my only experience with any sort of Mario RPG was the third of this series, Bowser's Inside Story, and a forever unfinished run of Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I liked Bowser's Inside Story a shit ton, even going so far as to call it my favorite Mario game out of all of them, but for some reason I just never got around to trying any of the others. Glad I finally did with this one, though, since I definitely had fun with Superstar Saga, although it might've taken just a while to really start getting into it.
I think a problem I had with the game that didn't start fixing itself up until about three or four hours in, was the combat. With the amount of overworld encounters you face, you will be fighting lots of the same enemy over and over again, and the way the Mario & Luigi series does battles doesn't really help its case. Combat is extremely simple, time your A/B presses at the right time for extra damage, time your A/B presses at the right time on the enemy's turn to dodge. It's not until the Bros. Attacks when things start getting a little more varied, even if it is just a few more, flashier button timings for bigger numbers. It just makes all of the fights, including bosses unfortunately, rather forgettable.
The most charm Superstar Saga provides would be in the characters, in my opinion (and I've heard this is a pretty common thing among all of the older Mario RPGs.) There are a lot of great interactions, designs, even some quick cameos that were fun to see. It's always great seeing Peach get more speaking roles, the Bean Royalty (or whatever I'm supposed to call them) are all entertaining characters, there were some lines of dialogue that I had to do a quick double take on, I just don't have enough ways to say that this game's writing was shockingly entertaining, but I guess blame that on my lack of experience in these games.
I'll be honest and say I had the music off for a good majority of my playthrough. It's nice, and obviously I let it play for a little bit whenever I reached a new area, but it's not something I'd be willing to sit through for extended periods of time. Especially considering, again, the sheer amount of overworld encounters you'll be sitting through constantly cutting off the music with the same old battle theme every single time.
It was a lotta fun. It took a while to get there, but once I did, I had fun pretty consistently throughout, and I'm glad I had something to finally push me to try it out. Even if it was a little excruciating thinking about all the other games I wanted to play/replay lmao
Very nice 8/10. Looking forward to maybe also trying out some more of its sequels.
small tangent, people overhyped the hell out of that final boss. it's really not that bad, just dodge lol.
Before this little event, my only experience with any sort of Mario RPG was the third of this series, Bowser's Inside Story, and a forever unfinished run of Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I liked Bowser's Inside Story a shit ton, even going so far as to call it my favorite Mario game out of all of them, but for some reason I just never got around to trying any of the others. Glad I finally did with this one, though, since I definitely had fun with Superstar Saga, although it might've taken just a while to really start getting into it.
I think a problem I had with the game that didn't start fixing itself up until about three or four hours in, was the combat. With the amount of overworld encounters you face, you will be fighting lots of the same enemy over and over again, and the way the Mario & Luigi series does battles doesn't really help its case. Combat is extremely simple, time your A/B presses at the right time for extra damage, time your A/B presses at the right time on the enemy's turn to dodge. It's not until the Bros. Attacks when things start getting a little more varied, even if it is just a few more, flashier button timings for bigger numbers. It just makes all of the fights, including bosses unfortunately, rather forgettable.
The most charm Superstar Saga provides would be in the characters, in my opinion (and I've heard this is a pretty common thing among all of the older Mario RPGs.) There are a lot of great interactions, designs, even some quick cameos that were fun to see. It's always great seeing Peach get more speaking roles, the Bean Royalty (or whatever I'm supposed to call them) are all entertaining characters, there were some lines of dialogue that I had to do a quick double take on, I just don't have enough ways to say that this game's writing was shockingly entertaining, but I guess blame that on my lack of experience in these games.
I'll be honest and say I had the music off for a good majority of my playthrough. It's nice, and obviously I let it play for a little bit whenever I reached a new area, but it's not something I'd be willing to sit through for extended periods of time. Especially considering, again, the sheer amount of overworld encounters you'll be sitting through constantly cutting off the music with the same old battle theme every single time.
It was a lotta fun. It took a while to get there, but once I did, I had fun pretty consistently throughout, and I'm glad I had something to finally push me to try it out. Even if it was a little excruciating thinking about all the other games I wanted to play/replay lmao
Very nice 8/10. Looking forward to maybe also trying out some more of its sequels.
small tangent, people overhyped the hell out of that final boss. it's really not that bad, just dodge lol.
NOWITSREYNTIME17
4 months ago