24th May 2005, 6:23 PM
(This post was last modified: 24th May 2005, 9:12 PM by Dark Jaguar.)
I'm just a friendly reminder, the 24 hour thing is just a rumor, you can't have that ROM for even one moment without it being illegal :D.
*nitpicker mode off*
Good show old... spice. I totally agree with this assessment of an awesome game. This game just has so much, but I think I'll add a few things as I'm too lazy to just make my own seperate review.
First of all, it's amazing all the detail they put into this game. Basically, in most games you can sort of abuse the physics and screw around for a laugh. Here though, they KNOW you will do this and have countless surprises for you. For example, in the first town alone, if you decide to time it just right and jump on one rapidly running toadstool kid, you can do it. I laughed when I succeeded, but then I realized they actually programmed in a little joke for those that did this, and after the mushroom kid ran around 3 times Mario suddenly jumped off, shook his head around, and collapsed out of dizziness. Also in this town is a hidden corner where someone tells stuff to you if you happen to explore it for some reason, and if you sorta jump around inside one store and work your way on top of a shelf, the store owner yells at you. It's detail like this that really makes this game seem so full and alive instead of dead as some RPG worlds can be. Oooh, and they make fun of all the standard RPG conventions too. At one point when you go inside someone's house, they yell at you asking who in their right mind just goes barging into people's houses without knocking. Elsewhere, if you find a certain chest block hovering in someone's house and take the contents, later an old man will yell at you for stealing from him.
As you may have noticed, it's not just an RPG. The areas outside of battle have a number of platforming elements to them. You can jump about, working from spinning blocks onto others, that sort of thing, but in 3D and in a somewhat limited capacity. By the end you'll even be running along a collapsing bridge jumping over fireballs (which if you touch starts an enemy encounter).
Like all the Mario RPG games to follow, the battle system involves timed action. Hit A just as you are about to attack, and you will do extra damage. Hit A just as the enemy is about to attack, and you can block it and reduce damage. All the special moves have their own little rules. Some require rapid fire pressing of a button (and trust me, the game DOES know if you are using a rapid fire controller for this, it detects certain patterns), some time hitting Y at just the right time, sometimes over and over (the super jump for example, try doing 100 in a row!), some require charging up an attack until just as the animation finishes, some need you to roll the direction pad around in circles as fast as you can. And, to top it all off, when you use any item in the game, if you hit X at just the right time, you get a "freebie" and the item you used isn't deleted from the list.
Oh, continuing on about how flushed out the game world is, go back to various towns you've been to after EVERY story event you see! The NPCs change what they say almost constantly during the game, which shows how much work they put into it! Instead of some games where you can end up going back to town and talking to people and then you are saying "Um, I just DID that, it was ALL OVER THE NEWS too! what are you talking about?", they really keep up on the info. They also make jokes about this. For example, I remember going back to mushroom castle and talking to someone who just repeated something that, considering what I just did, was no longer appropriate, it was outdated. But then, she was all, "oh wait, you mean that's differnet now, OH!".
The overworld map is nothing to write home about, but it does everything it needs to do. Basically, just select where you want to go, and you eventually go there. The reality is the paths inside every area all lead around in a circle until it reaches Mario's house again.
There are also a number of in-battle challenges hidden away for you to find. Experiment with the sheep item and eventually you may find yourself with a new item sending forth an army of sheep. As I said before, try jumping as many times as you can. There is also the matter of something Square is famous for, a super boss. Culex is a hidden boss that is more powerful than Smithy. He exists purely as an added challenge for those who want more out of the game. Also, he's hilarious. Basically he's a parody of every Final Fantasy end boss. In fact, when you fight him the Final Fantasy IV battle music plays in the background, and when you win it plays the Final Fantasy victory song (but with Mario RPG instruments :D) and then the Final Fantasy crystal theme as he vanishes. He also starts out the battle with a very long and reality altering to the point of being silly speech. "I am life, I am death, I am matter, I am antimatter, I am time, and I will kill you" or something like that.
Basically, Square was AWESOME when they made this game with Nintendo. I really hope Square-Enix works with Nintendo in the future for Super Mario RPG 2. I mean after all, if it wasn't for this game, we wouldn't have the likes of Paper Mario or Mario and Luigi.
*nitpicker mode off*
Good show old... spice. I totally agree with this assessment of an awesome game. This game just has so much, but I think I'll add a few things as I'm too lazy to just make my own seperate review.
First of all, it's amazing all the detail they put into this game. Basically, in most games you can sort of abuse the physics and screw around for a laugh. Here though, they KNOW you will do this and have countless surprises for you. For example, in the first town alone, if you decide to time it just right and jump on one rapidly running toadstool kid, you can do it. I laughed when I succeeded, but then I realized they actually programmed in a little joke for those that did this, and after the mushroom kid ran around 3 times Mario suddenly jumped off, shook his head around, and collapsed out of dizziness. Also in this town is a hidden corner where someone tells stuff to you if you happen to explore it for some reason, and if you sorta jump around inside one store and work your way on top of a shelf, the store owner yells at you. It's detail like this that really makes this game seem so full and alive instead of dead as some RPG worlds can be. Oooh, and they make fun of all the standard RPG conventions too. At one point when you go inside someone's house, they yell at you asking who in their right mind just goes barging into people's houses without knocking. Elsewhere, if you find a certain chest block hovering in someone's house and take the contents, later an old man will yell at you for stealing from him.
As you may have noticed, it's not just an RPG. The areas outside of battle have a number of platforming elements to them. You can jump about, working from spinning blocks onto others, that sort of thing, but in 3D and in a somewhat limited capacity. By the end you'll even be running along a collapsing bridge jumping over fireballs (which if you touch starts an enemy encounter).
Like all the Mario RPG games to follow, the battle system involves timed action. Hit A just as you are about to attack, and you will do extra damage. Hit A just as the enemy is about to attack, and you can block it and reduce damage. All the special moves have their own little rules. Some require rapid fire pressing of a button (and trust me, the game DOES know if you are using a rapid fire controller for this, it detects certain patterns), some time hitting Y at just the right time, sometimes over and over (the super jump for example, try doing 100 in a row!), some require charging up an attack until just as the animation finishes, some need you to roll the direction pad around in circles as fast as you can. And, to top it all off, when you use any item in the game, if you hit X at just the right time, you get a "freebie" and the item you used isn't deleted from the list.
Oh, continuing on about how flushed out the game world is, go back to various towns you've been to after EVERY story event you see! The NPCs change what they say almost constantly during the game, which shows how much work they put into it! Instead of some games where you can end up going back to town and talking to people and then you are saying "Um, I just DID that, it was ALL OVER THE NEWS too! what are you talking about?", they really keep up on the info. They also make jokes about this. For example, I remember going back to mushroom castle and talking to someone who just repeated something that, considering what I just did, was no longer appropriate, it was outdated. But then, she was all, "oh wait, you mean that's differnet now, OH!".
The overworld map is nothing to write home about, but it does everything it needs to do. Basically, just select where you want to go, and you eventually go there. The reality is the paths inside every area all lead around in a circle until it reaches Mario's house again.
There are also a number of in-battle challenges hidden away for you to find. Experiment with the sheep item and eventually you may find yourself with a new item sending forth an army of sheep. As I said before, try jumping as many times as you can. There is also the matter of something Square is famous for, a super boss. Culex is a hidden boss that is more powerful than Smithy. He exists purely as an added challenge for those who want more out of the game. Also, he's hilarious. Basically he's a parody of every Final Fantasy end boss. In fact, when you fight him the Final Fantasy IV battle music plays in the background, and when you win it plays the Final Fantasy victory song (but with Mario RPG instruments :D) and then the Final Fantasy crystal theme as he vanishes. He also starts out the battle with a very long and reality altering to the point of being silly speech. "I am life, I am death, I am matter, I am antimatter, I am time, and I will kill you" or something like that.
Basically, Square was AWESOME when they made this game with Nintendo. I really hope Square-Enix works with Nintendo in the future for Super Mario RPG 2. I mean after all, if it wasn't for this game, we wouldn't have the likes of Paper Mario or Mario and Luigi.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)