A brief detour to Super Mario RPG
May. 1st, 2014 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigozealI'd been playing through Super Mario RPG as a distraction while I finished up Silent Hill 3 writing. I actually had a bit of a bizarre grudge against it around the time of its release, the reasons for which I can't exactly remember - something about Mario moving from dominance in the action genre to try to define what RPGs were, too, I think.
Playing it now, I'm struck by how forward-thinking it was. It embraces several innovations that would become widespread in the genre in the 32-bit era: breaking up traditional RPG gameplay by adding action sections that rely on dexterity; having enemies visible on the map (still relatively new in 1996); giving all characters, not just the ones in the active party, experience from battles; controlling character actions directly with button presses instead of just with menus; being piss-easy. There're also some unique systems that I think have big potential, such as everyone sharing a pool of MP instead of having their own reserves, and being able to customize your characters to some extent upon level ups by choosing to give a bonus to one of three stats, and getting a damage boost to your spells and attacks if you add another button press at just the right time in the action animation, though you have to intuit for yourself when that should be.
As an overall experience, though...well, for me, it was only OK. I think it clarifies for what I'm looking in RPGs, which is to meet neat-o characters and explore fantastic worlds. Being a Mario game, y'know, everything is friendly cartoonishness, both storywise and visually - RPG versions of concepts you've seen in the franchise before. That's all right - I mean, this is a beginner's RPG meant to be kid-friendly - but I wasn't that attached to what was happening, and even though the game is relatively short, it had worn out its welcome for me by the end.
I did enjoy the game's really witty lampshade-hanging of the "silent protagonist" RPG trope, with characters asking Mario why he's giving them the silent treatment and Mario having to pantomime his way through conversations (which gets pretty funny). Though the writers correctly skewer Mario's inability to speak as a big limitation, they still manage to give him a pretty strong personality: a quick thinker, sarcastic in spots, and actually really, deeply kind. I also liked Mario's two new allies, sweet anthropomorphic cloud Mallow (who attacks using weather-based spells) and child's-puppet-possessed-by-extraterresrial-being-of-light Geno, and I think it's a pity they can't appear in any future Mario games due to copyright issues with Square. Bowser is great as pathetic comic relief throughout - and great to play as - and there's a sort of childish ur-human proto-Wario who's charming in his utter skancewise bizarreness.
The problematic character is the Princess, who's not the vegetable-tossing hero from 2 or the politician & friend who sends you items and sit reports from 3 or the hostage who struggles free to throw Mario power-ups from World but...well, a self-impressed coward who hides behind others, has them do her bidding, and won't lift a finger to help herself or anyone else, her joining the party notwithstanding. And when she does join, she can do only 1 damage and is completely useless for anything outside healing - an interesting choice strategywise (do you want cheap healing? Then you have to give up a character slot), but, well. Peach has always been 100% pink 24-7, but she's also always been friendly and eager to help out her chums - baking them cakes, giving them items, etc. Combined with her use of tee-hee weapons like slaps and parasols and frying pans and her narcissistic fretting about how "it's HARD to be pretty!", her "helpless, useless, demanding coward" characterization is off-putting and more than a little bit sexist. I would've been way more tolerant of her wet-paper-baggishness in battle if she acted more like the sweet, proactive Peach from previous games and the whole thing didn't seem like part of a concerted effort to make her an aggregate of negative female stereotypes.
Most of the conversations about the rendered graphics revolve around whether or not they're dated. They looked fine to me technically, but what turned me off a bit was how the environments are very samey. If I visit a Rose Town, I want the buildings and walls overgrown with roses. Here, though, they just get the same two or three piddling azalea bushes you can find in any other town. The cloud-based kingdom of Nimbus Land, though, primarily its classical hanging-garden palace, looks rather neat, as does the beanstalk "dungeon" you climb to reach it - the predominance of bright greens and blues in the game's overall palette is very welcome. (The requisite RPG volcano dungeon also looks pretty cool here with the rendering.)
The music is ehh, though.
Frustrating combat bit: offensive magic is worthless, usually doing significantly less than a good timed hit and sometimes inexplicably even doing zero damage. If you're emulating, I also can't recommend playing without some sort of controller attachment; there are some jumping sections that, while not impossible, are aggravating with the keyboard controls. (The game's isometric perspective truly does not help in this regard.) The final dungeon reallllly dragged for me; the game's touchier reflex-based minigames, while meant to inject a bit of action into a traditional RPG, do get very wearying in a QTE way.
It's neat, though, to see the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom go about their daily lives throughout the game, and there's a sweet subplot where you follow a mushroom couple through their wedding and honeymoon. I also liked the Star Hill, a spacey dreamland of fallen star-wishes from the citizens of Mario's world which had the visual and conceptual charm of the best parts of Earthbound.
Bonus: The ending parade is very sweet.
.
Playing it now, I'm struck by how forward-thinking it was. It embraces several innovations that would become widespread in the genre in the 32-bit era: breaking up traditional RPG gameplay by adding action sections that rely on dexterity; having enemies visible on the map (still relatively new in 1996); giving all characters, not just the ones in the active party, experience from battles; controlling character actions directly with button presses instead of just with menus; being piss-easy. There're also some unique systems that I think have big potential, such as everyone sharing a pool of MP instead of having their own reserves, and being able to customize your characters to some extent upon level ups by choosing to give a bonus to one of three stats, and getting a damage boost to your spells and attacks if you add another button press at just the right time in the action animation, though you have to intuit for yourself when that should be.
As an overall experience, though...well, for me, it was only OK. I think it clarifies for what I'm looking in RPGs, which is to meet neat-o characters and explore fantastic worlds. Being a Mario game, y'know, everything is friendly cartoonishness, both storywise and visually - RPG versions of concepts you've seen in the franchise before. That's all right - I mean, this is a beginner's RPG meant to be kid-friendly - but I wasn't that attached to what was happening, and even though the game is relatively short, it had worn out its welcome for me by the end.
I did enjoy the game's really witty lampshade-hanging of the "silent protagonist" RPG trope, with characters asking Mario why he's giving them the silent treatment and Mario having to pantomime his way through conversations (which gets pretty funny). Though the writers correctly skewer Mario's inability to speak as a big limitation, they still manage to give him a pretty strong personality: a quick thinker, sarcastic in spots, and actually really, deeply kind. I also liked Mario's two new allies, sweet anthropomorphic cloud Mallow (who attacks using weather-based spells) and child's-puppet-possessed-by-extraterresrial-being-of-light Geno, and I think it's a pity they can't appear in any future Mario games due to copyright issues with Square. Bowser is great as pathetic comic relief throughout - and great to play as - and there's a sort of childish ur-human proto-Wario who's charming in his utter skancewise bizarreness.
The problematic character is the Princess, who's not the vegetable-tossing hero from 2 or the politician & friend who sends you items and sit reports from 3 or the hostage who struggles free to throw Mario power-ups from World but...well, a self-impressed coward who hides behind others, has them do her bidding, and won't lift a finger to help herself or anyone else, her joining the party notwithstanding. And when she does join, she can do only 1 damage and is completely useless for anything outside healing - an interesting choice strategywise (do you want cheap healing? Then you have to give up a character slot), but, well. Peach has always been 100% pink 24-7, but she's also always been friendly and eager to help out her chums - baking them cakes, giving them items, etc. Combined with her use of tee-hee weapons like slaps and parasols and frying pans and her narcissistic fretting about how "it's HARD to be pretty!", her "helpless, useless, demanding coward" characterization is off-putting and more than a little bit sexist. I would've been way more tolerant of her wet-paper-baggishness in battle if she acted more like the sweet, proactive Peach from previous games and the whole thing didn't seem like part of a concerted effort to make her an aggregate of negative female stereotypes.
Most of the conversations about the rendered graphics revolve around whether or not they're dated. They looked fine to me technically, but what turned me off a bit was how the environments are very samey. If I visit a Rose Town, I want the buildings and walls overgrown with roses. Here, though, they just get the same two or three piddling azalea bushes you can find in any other town. The cloud-based kingdom of Nimbus Land, though, primarily its classical hanging-garden palace, looks rather neat, as does the beanstalk "dungeon" you climb to reach it - the predominance of bright greens and blues in the game's overall palette is very welcome. (The requisite RPG volcano dungeon also looks pretty cool here with the rendering.)
The music is ehh, though.
Frustrating combat bit: offensive magic is worthless, usually doing significantly less than a good timed hit and sometimes inexplicably even doing zero damage. If you're emulating, I also can't recommend playing without some sort of controller attachment; there are some jumping sections that, while not impossible, are aggravating with the keyboard controls. (The game's isometric perspective truly does not help in this regard.) The final dungeon reallllly dragged for me; the game's touchier reflex-based minigames, while meant to inject a bit of action into a traditional RPG, do get very wearying in a QTE way.
It's neat, though, to see the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom go about their daily lives throughout the game, and there's a sweet subplot where you follow a mushroom couple through their wedding and honeymoon. I also liked the Star Hill, a spacey dreamland of fallen star-wishes from the citizens of Mario's world which had the visual and conceptual charm of the best parts of Earthbound.
Bonus: The ending parade is very sweet.
.
