Super Mario RPG was originally released at the height of the SNES when Square Enix (then just Square) had earned an enormous amount of goodwill from many SNES RPGs including Final Fantasy and was near the top of it's game. Nintendo perhaps noting it's own lack of RPGs which had become quite popular at the time thought that Square would be a good partner to develop an RPG with Mario and friends. It appeared that one of the main ideas with using Mario would be that the game would appeal to a broad audience of non RPG players and as such Super Mario RPG was designed as a sort of entry point for the genre. This is true for myself as it was the very first one I really played. The game carries a lot of the tropes and systems of the genre, especially as it existed at the time but it was shorter, easier and less grindy than others. It was also just a pretty unique project. The entire game uses SGI generated sprites, the type used in Donkey Kong Country, but on a 3/4 view instead of a flat top-down plain. This in turn made it one of the more impressive looking SNES games because there was not a lot like it and the 3D-ness was fairly convincing. Also unlike RPGs of the time the game was also very active. In the overworld Mario jumps and platforms, it's not always the most intuitive to do so at those angles but it did work well enough and RPGs with jump buttons were a rarity. This also carried over into the battles. A timing mechanic was added so that pressing the button right before performing an attack or before receiving attack you'd get additional bonus damage or the ability to neutralize some or most of the damage respectively. This was quite a unique feature that the later expanded universe of Mario RPGs built on and remains a core essence of what it means to be a Mario RPG.
The Switch remake is pretty beat-for-beat accurate. The game retains the same visual style but with actual 3d models and texturing SGI developers could have only dreamed of. To me this was a tad disappointing because while Super Mario RPG had a very distinct visual style, not just because it was "3D" on a 2D console but also the sort of "grit" that you would get from the SGI rendered sprites. There's definitely something lost in translation. I think I would have rather it tried to match that more exactly. But in general everything feels and animates the same. Only small embellishments are added like when an enemy is defeated they'll fall over instead of disappear instantly and bosses appear with short cutscenes. Important story beats also get pre-rendered cutscenes. These try to retain the general smooshed look to the characters but also feel a bit lazy. A remake like this doesn't need pre-rendered anything and the general quality of these is acceptable but not amazing. The recorded music on the other hand is wonderful. Especially the jazzy big band for the boss theme, exactly like I wanted.
But aside from retaining the general visuals, the game, while almost the same, did get several upgrades. There are quality of life things like fast-travel and auto run (although this bothered me because it broke the muscle memory I have for the original, you can turn it off) but also actual gameplay enhancements. Several types of attacks that used to be unblockable (magic attacks) are now blockable to be more consistent. So anything that hits a single party member can be blocked. This helps sort our some confusion in the original. The game also gives an "!" indicator for the timing which is also helpful. Now getting the timing perfect on an attack will damage all enemies on the screen and as you repeatedly nail your timing you get a combo gauge which gives small boosts and fills up to eventually allow a party attack which is perhaps the largest change of all. The party attacks are based on your current party members and either do a lot of damage or have a special effect. These play out as pre-rendered cutscenes which can be pretty jarring because they don't account for setting. You might be fighting inside a castle and the cutscene has Mario, Bowser and Peach in a desert. It feels a bit lazy. Party members can also be switched during battle. This is a great feature because it lets you experiment more with some of the other characters, something I rarely did in the original. Since these feature do make the game even easier the balance has been adjusted to be a little more punishing. Still, it's an easy game, I would have like to see a hard mode for veterans.
Aside from the small gameplay changes they also added some post-game content. This is nicely integrated, you basically wake up right before the end game with a new scene. From here you can participate in several boss rematches. These are interesting because they all involve a sort of gimmick and are very difficult, demanding accurate timing or you get wiped out. It adds that bit that I felt I needed having played the original so many times. While it's not exactly a hard mode it certain makes the remake more worthwhile.
One of the most striking things upon replaying it was how brisk the game is. It's a short RPG, taking maybe 12 hours if you know what you are doing and want to get secrets. This is quite a change coming from Octopath 2 which took closer to 90. I knew it was short as I would have to beat it during a blockbuster rental period as a kid, but the pacing is very quick and very dense and honestly I was happy for something like it as an adult. The other is just how wild the game is. It's important to remember that the time when this game came out Nintendo had not standardized Mario to the extent that it is now. Super Mario RPG shares more in common to Mario 2, a fever dream of a game that feels like something Mario got slapped into. Characters do not look like standard Mario characters. In the original the names too were also bizarre but many of them got cleaned up in the remake. The boss "Mack" now has an appropriate weapon pun as "Claymorton," the partially translated "Yaritovitch" is now "Speartovitch" and the completely mistranslated part of Exor "Neosquid" is just "Mouth." So while some of the charm literally does get lost in translation, it adds new clarity to things I just accepted. It's just an oddball of a game, one I'm not sure we'll see from Mario again but one I'd really love to see a sequel to.
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