[Group Review] Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars
Authors: Austin, Jack, Laura
As many of you know, the podcast crew here at NintendoEverything has just wrapped up their first ever Book Club (for Video Games!), completing Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars in five weeks. This week, we unveil the final piece of this puzzle: The “Group Review”, where the three of us will write a brief summary of what we thought of the game, tied with a simple thumbs up or thumbs down.
Just a note: These aren’t necessarily meant to be totally objective, but rather a simple subjective summary of what we thought during our playthrough. Don’t hastily make a purchase based on them.
Hit the break for the reviews.
Austin’s thoughts:
Super Mario RPG feels like, to me, a game whose primary purpose was to take the paradigm that the Mario series had fallen into and turn it on its head. Characters who once played a passive role (Peach) or an antagonistic role (Bowser) in the franchise now became part of the “band of brothers” tasked with saving the world, and topics that might elude discussion in a Nintendo-developed Mario title (health, weaponry, and other “realistic” subjects) were strewn about liberally throughout this adventure. It’s a weird experience to see such things in a lighthearted Mario game, but one worth experiencing without a doubt.
The only problem I have with the game is the traditional RPG gameplay. It becomes a significant hindrance to the pacing (particularly in the latter half) and overall I can’t help but feel as though simply having fewer battles or giving enemies significantly less health would have helped deliver a better product.
Bottom Line: Thumbs Up
Jack’s thoughts:
I was asked by a randyman to sum up the Nintendo-themed Square “side-project” Mario RPG into a single paragraph-and-a-half, and for what purpose? How does one befall as dense, implicit, cutting-edge, and/yet esoteric a game into as uneven and small a literary structure? Of course, the audience that the game’s creators were appealing to, in all likelihood, have already played, mulled over, and conquered the game by now, but for the ignorant– for the fortunate youth– an additional twenty hours of the golden age of Square’s fancifulity is a prospect too enigmatic to miss.
Sure, it’s a molasses-tub of storytelling; sure, at face value, its combat system isn’t painstakingly meticulous enough to be meritable, and on top of that, gets tedious. However, nary a game developer this decade has come out to match the pure, Tolkien-esque escape Square was able to drum up time and time again in the mid-90’s.
Bottom Line: Thumbs Up
Laura’s thoughts:
As far as feelings go towards Super Mario RPG, mine are almost all negative. There are few moments memorable enough to give me some connection with the characters and story, but I would like to highlight those brief instances: Playing the Toadofsky mini game was the only time I really felt I was in a traditional Mario game, and it was lighthearted, having the same feel as some of the minigames in Mario Party or various 3D Mario games. Plus the little dance Toadofsky does after you have correctly played his song makes me smile every time. I also enjoyed figuring out the riddles in the Sunken Ship; I really do enjoy myself a good brain teaser, and those were pretty good ones.
Overall the the atmosphere of the entire game is what killed it for me. It felt like seeing those guys outside the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. They were dressed as known characters such as Spiderman or Elmo but inside you know its a random guy asking for money. It has a dirty (as in mud and dust) feel to it, and something feels off all of the time. Plus the combat was too tedious for my liking, and many parts were way too repetitive.
Bottom Line: Thumbs Down
We hope you enjoyed the very first book club, and we hope even more that you’re planning on participating in the next one, which kicks off later this weekend! Leave your thoughts on Mario RPG in the comments if you desire and we’ll be around to read them.
