Your video game hot take(s) thread
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Super Mario RPG walked, so Paper Mario and Superstar Saga could run far and fly high respectively. SMRPG is basically a glorified prototype in hindsight, and was always baby's first RPG. I didn't know what a RPG was, until I saw a commercial for the game back when I was 6 years old.
I guess that's fair, but I'd still argue it's not really worth playing today when those other, better Mario RPGs exist, other than as a historical landmark. Like playing any Final Fantasy before (depending on who you ask) 5, 6 or 7.
I actually think that the very first Final Fantasy still holds up really well, but that's nowhere near the heat ballpark of skewering SMRPG.
Funny how people can hold such completely wrong opinions.
Good as Paper Mario is, Mario RPG definitely still comes out ahead and Superstar Saga is two full lengths behind. A big flaw with Paper Mario is that most of your partners have decent introductions and then fall into the background, where as Mario RPG, while having a smaller cast, each character has a much bigger involvement in the plot and actual character development through the game. Even Goombario who has the most dialogue in the game if you tattle on everything, is not an especially vibrant character. His descriptions are rather dry and clinical, especially compared to Goombella from the sequel.
I would also say that combat is a little more interesting in Mario RPG. It's a bit more complicated and challenging, where Paper Mario is a little too simple and far too easy.
The characters having a greater involvement in the plot doesn't mean much when those characters themselves aren't that good. Mallow's just kinda boring and Geno has never deserved a spot in Smash. That, and neither of them really fits in the wider Mario world, between a... whatever Mallow is, and a doll that's self-proclaimed so much better than Mario or Bowser. With a couple of exceptions (mainly in TTYD), Paper Mario's cast do have a place in the setting already, and Luigi needs no introduction I hope - especially since he's never been a background character in the games he got to be playable in.
As for combat, what Paper Mario and M&L do that SMRPG doesn't is turn things that Mario already does into combat mechanics. In both games, the jump and hammer as basic attacks give you a variety of options which are expanded upon by Badges and Bros Attacks respectively, and as I said those options are based on the character's history. SMRPG playing more like a traditional RPG, making the jump into a special attack and the hammer into a weapon that operates the same as punching, only a bit stronger, is a flavor fail.
Considering all their better-written and mechanically-deeper contemporaries from every other RPG franchise on their respective systems (okay, maybe not the Nintendo 64, but certainly the SNES in particular), flavor is the draw of the Mario RPGs. That's why Super Mario RPG's successors leave it in the dust, with its unfitting original characters and its 'basic' combat mechanics.
tl;dr: Paper Mario and Superstar Saga are Mario RPGs. Super Mario RPG is an RPG that has Mario in it.
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Hahahaha... This is EA we're talking about. Unless it breaks the game or negatively effects Ultimate Teams they don't fix shit.
I disagree, and you didn't even mention my best boy, Bowser.
See Mario RPG was made in that wonderful experimental phase of Mario's existence where developers could try something new and didn't have to rigidly stick to well worn characters and settings. I bet you must love the new Paper Mario games like Sticker Star, don't have to worry about not fitting into the wider Mario world when it's nothing but Toads.
Anyway, I'd like to write up a big long post detailing why Mario RPG is a fantastic game and definitely worthy to stand among Paper Mario and TTYD, but I'm coming down with a cold after switching from nightshift and I don't think I can do the game justice right now. Maybe some time in the future.
Don't have to. Everyone loves Bowser.
Don't put words in my mouth that didn't come out of it.
There's a space between rigidly adhering to established tradition and throwing shit out the window, and Paper Mario 64 lands directly in that sweet spot. As for the later Paper Mario games, I'm not gonna say they're great or anything, but they (well, other than Sticker Star, that game's a piece of shit) still tried to do something with their writing. Even if they weren't pushing boundaries in interesting ways (and as I've said, I disagree that SMRPG succeeded at that to begin with), they were at least intentionally funny more often than not (IMO, YMMV). I still wouldn't ultimately rate them highly.
As for Thousand-Year Door, Vivian's great, the X-Nauts are great, the Shadow Queen's got a solid visual design even if her story presence is kinda lacking. Sure, they 'don't fit in the wider world', but they're good characters within the self-contained one. And it's not like most of the cast of Superstar Saga have much canon connection. I don't dislike non-canon-species characters on principle; I just don't like the ones from SMRPG much, for more reasons than just their visual designs. I may have put it badly in the first place, but that doesn't justify the Sticker Star line; that's a strawman argument.
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I feel like a lot of BS has built up around this entire line, and it's mostly my fault, so I'm going to try and cut through it to the heart of what I'm saying.
The good Mario RPGs have charming writing, fun side characters, and simple combat mechanics that are still detailed enough to be worth learning in detail. But there's a lot of other RPGs out there that are better than they are at those things. Deep storytelling? Pick a Final Fantasy starting from 6. Likable, three-dimensional characters? Tales. Deep, engaging battles? Shin Megami Tensei. All those things? Chrono Trigger. Just to give one example for each of the criteria that JRPGs are usually judged on, none of the Mario RPGs, even whichever one's counted as the best of the lot by any individual (for me it's Paper Mario 64), I'd say don't truly live up to the all-time greats of the genre - at least, not on their terms.
The appeal of the Mario RPGs is Mario, in every aspect. Not just his character and the strange and wonderful beings that he jumps on in the main games, or the world he inhabits, or the jumping, all of those things. And the best Mario RPGs lean into that, use all those aspects to their advantage. Super Mario RPG fundamentally doesn't achieve this to the degree that the later games do, and the biggest stumbling block is the implementation of the game's combat. He spends most turns throwing out punches and karate chops, and only saves jumping for special occasions; the iconic hammer from Donkey Kong is a regular weapon that effectively doesn't do much different, other than a bigger number, compared to those Bruce Lee moves or other weapons he picks up for their bigger numbers. They're there, but the way I see it, they're treated in a 'hey, this is a thing Mario does, right?' kind of way rather than made the core of his identity in battle.
That's where Paper Mario and TTYD succeed, that's where the Mario and Luigi games succeed, and that's where Super Mario RPG doesn't live up to its own title. So if it's not as good as other 'mainstream' RPGs, and it's not as Mario as other Mario RPGs, what's even left?
Ultimately, this is all just my stupid opinion, but I at least hope you can see where I'm coming from with this.
The good Mario RPGs have charming writing, fun side characters, and simple combat mechanics that are still detailed enough to be worth learning in detail. But there's a lot of other RPGs out there that are better than they are at those things. Deep storytelling? Pick a Final Fantasy starting from 6. Likable, three-dimensional characters? Tales. Deep, engaging battles? Shin Megami Tensei. All those things? Chrono Trigger. Just to give one example for each of the criteria that JRPGs are usually judged on, none of the Mario RPGs, even whichever one's counted as the best of the lot by any individual (for me it's Paper Mario 64), I'd say don't truly live up to the all-time greats of the genre - at least, not on their terms.
The appeal of the Mario RPGs is Mario, in every aspect. Not just his character and the strange and wonderful beings that he jumps on in the main games, or the world he inhabits, or the jumping, all of those things. And the best Mario RPGs lean into that, use all those aspects to their advantage. Super Mario RPG fundamentally doesn't achieve this to the degree that the later games do, and the biggest stumbling block is the implementation of the game's combat. He spends most turns throwing out punches and karate chops, and only saves jumping for special occasions; the iconic hammer from Donkey Kong is a regular weapon that effectively doesn't do much different, other than a bigger number, compared to those Bruce Lee moves or other weapons he picks up for their bigger numbers. They're there, but the way I see it, they're treated in a 'hey, this is a thing Mario does, right?' kind of way rather than made the core of his identity in battle.
That's where Paper Mario and TTYD succeed, that's where the Mario and Luigi games succeed, and that's where Super Mario RPG doesn't live up to its own title. So if it's not as good as other 'mainstream' RPGs, and it's not as Mario as other Mario RPGs, what's even left?
Ultimately, this is all just my stupid opinion, but I at least hope you can see where I'm coming from with this.
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This is an extension/corollary of previously made points about games where we're told they get good after a certain amount of hours...
Well, lately I've heard about games that get good after you beat the game.
Yes, Starfield being the big one now. But also Final Fantasy 16, about how the combat doesn't really get interesting until you unlock all your powers- which is end of the freaking game- and/or do NG+ which is the only way to get the hardest mode forcing you to use all the systems. So I gotta beat the game to enjoy it? Wtf?
Armored Core 6 needs you to beat the game three times if you wanna see all the missions. Yeah there's three endings and I don't have a problem with different endings (i.e., Bloodborne also has three endings), but that is different than blocking off who missions without going into NG+.
If a game is not a rogueli*e, you shouldn't have to finish it in order to start it... I mean.. right... no? Am I crazy or what happened to logic in some of our games lol
Well, lately I've heard about games that get good after you beat the game.
Yes, Starfield being the big one now. But also Final Fantasy 16, about how the combat doesn't really get interesting until you unlock all your powers- which is end of the freaking game- and/or do NG+ which is the only way to get the hardest mode forcing you to use all the systems. So I gotta beat the game to enjoy it? Wtf?
Armored Core 6 needs you to beat the game three times if you wanna see all the missions. Yeah there's three endings and I don't have a problem with different endings (i.e., Bloodborne also has three endings), but that is different than blocking off who missions without going into NG+.
If a game is not a rogueli*e, you shouldn't have to finish it in order to start it... I mean.. right... no? Am I crazy or what happened to logic in some of our games lol
With 6 to 10 hour action games, this usually isn't a problem, but I wish most of these games would have the hard mode or hardest difficulty unlocked from the start. I get they want to ease new players in, but there are better ways to do this. Double Dragon Gaiden let you go for the hardest difficulty at the start, and that game only has five stages. Metal Gear Rising got around this by letting you put in the cheat code to go for the hardest difficulty, if you wanted.
At least Armored Core 6 gives and adds content to keep playing. Not to mention there are plenty of other unlockables that become available before you even beat the main game. You have the training and arena modes. So it's to keep players playing even more so after they completed the game, with more incentive to stick around and play extra modes, if they choose to. Which a good amount of them will.
This is nothing new. Games have been doing New Game Plus like this since the late 16-bit days. Though most didn't start doing this type of New Game Plus until the PS1 and PS2 era. Look up games like the Drakengard franchise and both Nier titles. Those games depend heavily on unlocking the first ending, and then unlocking each alternate or true ending on subsequent playthroughs. The Bouncer had an extended ending and boss fight that could only be unlocked, by beating the game several times, and having a lease two out of your three characters leveled up to a high enough level to fight his true form. Then again, that game can be beaten in 2 hours.
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Yeah, NG+ of unwaveringly linear games has always struck me as weird.
Mostly it seems to thrive off of "well, we thought up cool stuff, but it was too powerful to balance around so uh, we'll give it to you at the end where you probably won't use it much at all because you already learned the other stuff"
Crono Trigger may be on my top all times, but I've never felt compelled ot NG+ it out to try out all the hidden triple techs or view the 16 endings (which aren't that different). Souls? If I already beat the base game with my trusty starting longsword, there is literally nothing that engaging about trying to rerun it with the tornado scimitar from the Nameless Kin, if anything it'd be becoming easier because I already know all the attack windows.
NG+ works fine on most (short or medium) linear games, but becomes an issue when said game is, at minimum, 25-30+ hours.
@NerfedFalcon, I actually prefer Shredder's Revenge's Survival Mode over SOR4's Survival Mode. SR has permanent buffs, upgrades, and allows you to gain lives, if you get far enough. Plus, there is an end game, if you choose to go home after beating the final boss. Otherwise, it loops over again with harder parameters. You get more color palette rewards too.
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Largely accurate, except for Dark Souls 2, where the new game plus changes some of the boss fights and adds new enemies in a lot of areas, making things significantly more challenging. This is mostly to prevent people from just sprinting past everything in New Game+, which tends to be pretty easy in the other souls games because by the end of the game you know the positioning of every enemy. Not that you can't still just sprint past everything, but having additional enemies in your path at least forces you not to autopilot through the game, and entices you to fight them at least a couple of times (and gives the potential for new drops).
Honestly, I'm not skilled enough to do much with either game's survival mode, which actually makes me prefer the one in SOR4 that doesn't put the first permanent upgrade so deep into the mode that I'm totally unable to reach it at all. Skill issue, I know. It's why I'm trying to do the Story mode on Gnarly difficulty, to try and force myself to git that gud.
Snake repeating what someone just said isn't stupid. It's a basic aspect of conversation to say a word someone else said to indicate you want to know more about that.
In Japanese, it's a common thing. In English, just saying the word on its own doesn't have the same immediate connotation of 'tell me more about this aspect'. But due to the timing of the cutscenes, Snake can't go for a long-form question in a lot of cases, so he has to just repeat with a question mark and get laughed at by English-speaking players.