Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga

[Dracos]

And you open the door, and you step inside.  Where inside you find... a mushroom.  A red mushroom.  You eat it.  Why do you eat it?  You don't ask that.  You just know it's a mushroom.  And as you eat it and are tripping out and hopping around like a plumber on electrotherepy... you remember to thank the hells for the mushroom.  Because you know, it's was a damned good mushroom.

And you know what?  That's what Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga is.  A damned good mushroom where one never expected to find one.  It's been noted that I've been less than impressed with the last few games that I've reviewed here.  Well, out of nowhere, Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga comes to fix that.  This game has left me quite satisfied and is easily the best semi-traditional console action RPG I've played in a long time.  Made by AlphaDream and published by Nintendo, it's a breath of fresh air to play.  Now, before you get the idea I think the game is perfect and go out and buy it, let me clear that up: It's not.  It's not perfect at all.  But what it is, is a very well put together game that's highly interactive, fun to play, and hints at the potential for a lot of great stuff out of that studio.  It's definitely the sign that whatever they produce next will likely also be really great.  Now, with that out of the way, it's time for me to wax fanboyish for a bit.

I'll start with what the game really shines on.  It's battle system.  The guys who put this together really had their heads screwed on straight.  It's just well done.  You have two real 'buttons'.  A and B.  A does actions with Mario.  B with Luigi.  These actions range from about four special moves and three melee attacks (jump, hammer, and hand).  Sounds too simple to be engaging?  Well, that'd be sadly mistaken.  They really go out of their way to make it interactive.  Special moves require timed button pressing and have alternate forms based on how you do.  Dodging and blocks are all controlled by the player.  Attacks are as well, complete with the timed attack mechanism of the Mario RPG series.  All in all it makes almost no battles trivial and boring, instead producing usually fun and increasingly complex battles.  This will give a little trouble to those with coordination problems, but shouldn't be that frustrating as they generally did it pretty well.  Before I move on...I do have to mention the last boss of this game, because it was truly something special.  It's almost been tradition for years that the last boss would not be the most interesting or difficult fight in the game.  That it would be sort of winding down.  A dramatic post-script upon the game.  Not so here.  The last boss was the a last great hurrah!  It was easily the most challenging fight in the game and a great deal of fun.  A stellar finish to see.

Next area of nicety: the puzzles.  This game was built on puzzle design and it really shows.  There was a lot of effort put in here and it really helped to keep the game from getting monotonous with every dungeon having numerous quirks and quips.  Though this obviously lead to some trouble later on in the game as they started to run out of ideas for puzzles, repeating several of the old ones.  Again, a small portion of these puzzles can be really hard for the coordination hindered folks so this could be a source of a lot of frustration if you have trouble with that kind of thing (like I do).

The music well... never really came out to me.  I noticed the last boss music and the boss music and that was about it.  Whether it was good or not, it didn't leave any real impression on me during the course of the game.  I was never particularly tempted to just turn up the volume and hear it play nor turn it down and get the damned noise out of the way.  It might be because I was so enamoured of the gameplay that I didn't really notice, but I think it was just that the music really wasn't that memorable.  But, this really doesn't detract and if you are playing a GBA game for it's music I have to wonder what the fuck is wrong with you anyway.

The graphics are done to theme.  They are cartoonish and childish and that's the whole damn point.  The story is in the same vein.  The game is clearly meant for kids and I have to hand it to the guys who made it for still providing something of interest to a more experienced gamer such as myself.  The childishness may annoy many a player but if you can deal with it you can see a really well done homage to the series.  I particularly have to give note to the return of the bowser kids for the first time since Super Mario Brothers 3 and the Super Mario Brothers 1 mini-game levels, complete with classic off the top of the screen secret areas.

In addition to the actual rpg, they included a graphically updated remake of the original Mario Brothers.  Good clean fun there, just as it was way back when and just a nice addition to what was a great game by itself.

I must also note that the game is intensely quotable: I HAVE FURY!