29th October 2004, 2:40 PM
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Kirby is totally frickin' awesome, and makes a good pillow.
Dreamland, get it?
...never mind....
So then, Mario & Luigi is awesome, and you are getting it soon. Soon, you shall have all the Mario RPGs. Sadly enough, I myself only have the first 3, but soon I'll change that too.
Now then, IS has made two Mario RPGs, both of them foldable :D. That one company that's cool but I forget the name made one as well for GBA, with an art style that just OOZES Mario. Really, it does. It feels like Mario World only with better graphics.
Now then, actually there is one thing. All the Mario RPGs are great, but the first sorta has a place for me. What I'm getting at is, I would like to see Square-Enix get another wack at it now that they are buddies with Nintendo again. That "purposfully simplistic CG" style isn't the most MARIO of all art styles, but it still fits the whole "constantly changing appearence" thing of Mario. But, not really the visual style here, but rather the whole way that game played was a bit different. I mean, they all have the flower point well for everyone, and the timed maneuvers, and all that cool stuff (Mario and Luigi has taken it the farthest so far from what I've played, being able to take one move and depending on butten presses it does many different things). But, I mean the party system. The Paper Mario games let you have one ally who doesn't level up but is powered up. Mario and Luigi explains the party system in the title. Mario RPG had a standard RPG party system with 5 characters you could switch in and out that were fully developed combat-wise. What I'm saying is the last one would be nice to explore again. They could make it look like, I dunno, they could go with a style similar to Katamari Damacy actually :D, I think that could work for Mario.
I agree, Super Mario RPG was the best of the Mario RPGs. But here's one improvement that was made from PM1 to PM2: your partners now have HP rather than being impaired for a few turns whenever they're attacked. However, you still get an automatic Game Over if Mario is K.O.'d, regardless of whether or not your partner is still standing. It's still not quite the same as SMRPG, where you get to use three characters at a time, one of whom is Mario, and they all level up and learn their own attacks. In both Paper Marios, Mario is the only one who levels up. SMRPG does a good job not making Mario seem too important (i.e. you can continue a battle even when Mario is K.O.'d, the other characters don't really rely on Mario for anything, etc.), the only thing Mario has above the other characters is that he has to be in the party at all times, whereas the other characters are interchangeable. In the Paper Marios, not only is Mario a staple at all times, but if he's K.O.'d, the game is over, he's the only one who levels up, and he's the only one who can use items, star powers, and the "Run Away" option.
Yeah... I'm rambling senselessly. In short, I agree that Square-Enix should have another shot at a Mario RPG because their Mario RPG was the best of the four, but the other three were still awesome. Thank you and good night.