The fact that we’ve had to wait over 30 years for the remake of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is absolutely bizarre, but it’s amazing that it’s finally here.
Despite the Nintendo fan that I am, the game is a highlight of the blind spot in my Nintendo fandom. Raised with the NES as my first console, I defected to the Genesis as I matured before sort of permanently making my way back to Nintendo with the Nintendo 64. Still, I had nostalgia for Super Mario RPG as I played it through rather unsavory means, but because of that, I never got the full experience, nor did I have a real opportunity to finish the game. Now thanks to this remake, I have, and I’m glad I finally did.
Much in the vain of the Switch remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, while Super Mario RPG represents quite the visual facelift, it’s essentially unchanged. The dialog has some rewrites here and there, but the game is really a 1:1 identical representation of the Super NES classic, with some quality of life improvements made for both gameplay and pacing thrown in for good measure.
It’s not often that I review a game that’s a remake of a game I never finished, so while I understand that changes can very much result in an eye roll, I do believe Nintendo made them for the better.
One of the biggest modern improvements to Super Mario RPG is the addition of Auto-Save, and with it, Nintendo showing us that they can still be funny and leave regular save blocks lying around.
Now that the game is on the Switch, all the fuzziness from the original game is gone, and we’ve been treated to a reorchestrated soundtrack that you now have the ability to switch to the original composition on the fly. While I don’t believe such a feature was necessary, this is a good way to quiet criticisms about the game “doing too much”. It is worth noting, though, that the game’s new cutscenes only feature the modernized score.
The changes go beyond the aesthetic by shortening battles. Super Mario RPG sort of revolutionized the genre by adding timing to its turn-based mechanics that allowed players to have more agency and a sense of control in each fight to make them not seem as long and drawn out. The remake throws in powerful “triple moves” that can be activated when players fill max out a gauge that is filled out with every successful action in battle. These triple moves are essentially Final Fantasy‘s “limit break” type moves which also come with their own cinematic to add more visual flair to everything.
Here we are, unapologetically fighting a slaved Donkey Kong that isn’t even a boss.
Beyond that, the only other significant change is in the post-game, which I won’t go over.
While it’s hard to speak for whether these changes are enough for big fans of the original game to warrant $60 for, I’ll say that for someone like me, it was worth the time and money despite its blemishes which are really due to the game staying true to the original.
One thing that really set apart Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars from other RPGs was the fact that it was also first game in which Mario was playable in a sort of a 3D setting. Every Mario game prior to this one was a sidescroller, and using him to make diagonal jumps was a whole new thing. In addition to this, Mario RPG featured a whole bunch of minigames to get coins and things of that sort which honestly aren’t a whole lot of fun today. There’s this minigame where you have to fall down a waterfall and collect coins, another one where you use a minecart, and another where you have to jump from platform to platform with ideal timing–these might have been interesting in the 90’s, but today, they’re largely unchanged and represent nothing more than a way to kill time.
The “platforming” in Super Mario RPG still sucks.
This brings us to the game’s rather questionable pacing and gameplay loop. Don’t get me wrong, Super Mario RPG is short — heck, the quality of life changes made the game significantly shorter than the original. HowLongToBeat.com says it takes 12 hours to roll credits, while the original takes close to 20, and that’s absolutely accurate. In fact, it’s really fun and doable to beat this game in just a few sittings, assuming that you’re totally devoted to it. If you were to come back to Super Mario RPG at any point before you beat it after taking a considerably long break–it’s easy to forget what you did, and the game doesn’t have a log that tracked what you did during your last session. It’s also one of those games that requires you to talk to specific people in order to move forward, and while that’s still a mainstay in the genre, RPGs these days are a lot more streamlined in their approach, making who you have to talk to more obvious.
To put it plainly, while Nintendo and ArtePiazza did a lot of great work to make Super Mario RPG more approachable, more work could’ve been done to really make the game feel like a 2023 game outside of its visuals. Would that ruin things for older fans of the game? That’s very possible, so that’s why it’s difficult to really determine if the changes made warrant the price for those who played it already.
Either way you look at it, while it’s aged in some spots, Super Mario RPG is an exquisite look at one of the weirdest yet most memorable experiences in Mario history. Super Mario RPG really gave characters like Princess Peach and Bowser some much needed depth, and we’ve seen it carry on in various games for generations, so if you haven’t experienced it yet — Super Mario RPG is definitely worth your time especially as we get closer to the highly anticipated remake of Thousand Year Door.
The fact that we’ve had to wait over 30 years for the remake of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is absolutely bizarre, but it’s amazing that it’s finally here.
Despite the Nintendo fan that I am, the game is a highlight of the blind spot in my Nintendo fandom. Raised with the NES as my first console, I defected to the Genesis as I matured before sort of permanently making my way back to Nintendo with the Nintendo 64. Still, I had nostalgia for Super Mario RPG as I played it through rather unsavory means, but because of that, I never got the full experience, nor did I have a real opportunity to finish the game. Now thanks to this remake, I have, and I’m glad I finally did.
Much in the vain of the Switch remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, while Super Mario RPG represents quite the visual facelift, it’s essentially unchanged. The dialog has some rewrites here and there, but the game is really a 1:1 identical representation of the Super NES classic, with some quality of life improvements made for both gameplay and pacing thrown in for good measure.
It’s not often that I review a game that’s a remake of a game I never finished, so while I understand that changes can very much result in an eye roll, I do believe Nintendo made them for the better.
One of the biggest modern improvements to Super Mario RPG is the addition of Auto-Save, and with it, Nintendo showing us that they can still be funny and leave regular save blocks lying around.
Now that the game is on the Switch, all the fuzziness from the original game is gone, and we’ve been treated to a reorchestrated soundtrack that you now have the ability to switch to the original composition on the fly. While I don’t believe such a feature was necessary, this is a good way to quiet criticisms about the game “doing too much”. It is worth noting, though, that the game’s new cutscenes only feature the modernized score.
The changes go beyond the aesthetic by shortening battles. Super Mario RPG sort of revolutionized the genre by adding timing to its turn-based mechanics that allowed players to have more agency and a sense of control in each fight to make them not seem as long and drawn out. The remake throws in powerful “triple moves” that can be activated when players fill max out a gauge that is filled out with every successful action in battle. These triple moves are essentially Final Fantasy‘s “limit break” type moves which also come with their own cinematic to add more visual flair to everything.
Here we are, unapologetically fighting a slaved Donkey Kong that isn’t even a boss.
Beyond that, the only other significant change is in the post-game, which I won’t go over.
While it’s hard to speak for whether these changes are enough for big fans of the original game to warrant $60 for, I’ll say that for someone like me, it was worth the time and money despite its blemishes which are really due to the game staying true to the original.
One thing that really set apart Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars from other RPGs was the fact that it was also first game in which Mario was playable in a sort of a 3D setting. Every Mario game prior to this one was a sidescroller, and using him to make diagonal jumps was a whole new thing. In addition to this, Mario RPG featured a whole bunch of minigames to get coins and things of that sort which honestly aren’t a whole lot of fun today. There’s this minigame where you have to fall down a waterfall and collect coins, another one where you use a minecart, and another where you have to jump from platform to platform with ideal timing–these might have been interesting in the 90’s, but today, they’re largely unchanged and represent nothing more than a way to kill time.
The “platforming” in Super Mario RPG still sucks.
This brings us to the game’s rather questionable pacing and gameplay loop. Don’t get me wrong, Super Mario RPG is short — heck, the quality of life changes made the game significantly shorter than the original. HowLongToBeat.com says it takes 12 hours to roll credits, while the original takes close to 20, and that’s absolutely accurate. In fact, it’s really fun and doable to beat this game in just a few sittings, assuming that you’re totally devoted to it. If you were to come back to Super Mario RPG at any point before you beat it after taking a considerably long break–it’s easy to forget what you did, and the game doesn’t have a log that tracked what you did during your last session. It’s also one of those games that requires you to talk to specific people in order to move forward, and while that’s still a mainstay in the genre, RPGs these days are a lot more streamlined in their approach, making who you have to talk to more obvious.
To put it plainly, while Nintendo and ArtePiazza did a lot of great work to make Super Mario RPG more approachable, more work could’ve been done to really make the game feel like a 2023 game outside of its visuals. Would that ruin things for older fans of the game? That’s very possible, so that’s why it’s difficult to really determine if the changes made warrant the price for those who played it already.
Either way you look at it, while it’s aged in some spots, Super Mario RPG is an exquisite look at one of the weirdest yet most memorable experiences in Mario history. Super Mario RPG really gave characters like Princess Peach and Bowser some much needed depth, and we’ve seen it carry on in various games for generations, so if you haven’t experienced it yet — Super Mario RPG is definitely worth your time especially as we get closer to the highly anticipated remake of Thousand Year Door.
by Danreb Victorio
