The Super Mario RPG remake doesn’t stray too far from its SNES roots, but what it does change helps keep it welcoming without making things too easy.
After fans awaited new content for the wonderful world of Super Mario RPG, finally, the game is now available as a faithful remake for Nintendo Switch. Players can once again navigate the forest maze, crash Booster’s wedding, explore Star Hill, and more with wonderful 3D graphics without sacrificing any of the original SNES game’s charm. After how much the Mario franchise has changed since the original title came out, having such a shot-for-shot remake of Super Mario RPG seemed impossible. Yet, that’s exactly what the fans who waited for so long got, and with some quality-of-life features to go along with it, almost like a nice little bow on top.
However, when it comes to any remake adding new features, there’s always a concern that the game will be made much easier afterward. While Super Mario RPG has plenty of unique things about it to draw fans in, as the SNES classic comes from the days of things being classified as “Nintendo Hard,” many players were concerned that the game would lose what difficulty it has to be more accessible. Now that the game is out, it’s clear that Super Mario RPG isn’t too different from the original while remaining perfectly welcoming for new players.
Super Mario RPG Makes Things Easy, But Doesn’t Sleep On Difficulty
While SMRPG is certainly deserving of its status among the SNES greats, it is still, at the end of the day, a rather simple RPG. Even being rather simplistic does not exactly make it a breeze of a game, though, as audio cues and muscle memory are critical to the game’s damage-dealing mechanics. Just one late button press can make a difference between dealing one point of damage and dealing a hundred points, and the same can be said for whether players have any hope of surviving the enemy’s attacks. This method of using Action Commands naturally still exists in the Switch version.
Super Mario RPG Adapts To More Recent Action Command Mechanics
The way the Action Commands can be performed has changed significantly since SMRPG‘s first outing, though. The developers couldn’t extend the time between attacks to make things more telegraphed or give players more time without being counterproductive to its aim of remaining faithful to the original. There’s been a happy medium that has been found, and it comes in the form of adding a simple exclamation point next to the party members of Super Mario RPG just at the right moment to either boost or dodge attacks.
The Action Gauge and Triple Moves Make Super Mario RPG’s Action Commands More Important Than Ever
Alongside giving players a specific cue to look out for in terms of timing their hits, there are also entirely new dynamics added to battles. Perfect hits potentially damaging all enemies, multiple well-timed Action Commands building into “chain” bonuses, and the number of timed hits adding into an “Action Gauge” that helps players build up to new team-based special tactics. This was one of the first new features confirmed for Super Mario RPG, and it served as one of the other pieces of the remake that made fans question if the game would be made too easy compared to the original.
Now that the game is out and fans can experience these new features for themselves, these dynamics only help open up players’ options further rather than make SMRPG any easier. A carefully timed hammer attack from Mario may hurt all enemies on screen, but it only offers a small bit of assistance and enemies will still need to be handled individually to some degree.
Triple Moves also don’t come around as often as fans would likely assume, which means that all the strategy found in the game still comes from how players use the tactics in Super Mario RPG wisely. While there is an easy mode to help those who just wish to have fun, the normal mode still offers the same turn-based tactics that have kept the game fresh in players’ minds for decades, even with the new features.
