The Switch remake is so close to the original SNES game that I’m going to count it as the same game. I’ve been meaning to play Super Mario RPG for decades. My elementary school friend was obsessed with it and I watched him play it a lot. My wife and I picked up the remake when it launched and wrapped it up recently. It was a very fun experience and I loved playing it with her. We’re hoping to play more games together like this in the future 😊

Right away, the music is fantastic. We found ourselves switching between the original SNES soundtrack and the newly orchestrated one pretty regularly. They’re both so very good and I think the SNES one might only win on nostalgia factor. The graphics are cute and charming, I’m so glad the Switch version kept the squashed character designs from the SNES version. I’m sure the original art style was born of limitation, as much was in the earlier eras, but they managed to fill it with such charm anyway that it would have been a crime if the remake had done anything different. Mario RPG also has a deeply unserious story. Characters, bosses, party members, story events, so much is just silly in a very Nintendo way. Frankly, this elevates the game and makes it increasingly memorable. In the Switch version, characters are still animated the way they were in the SNES: twirling, jumping, poses that are either still or have only a handful of animation frames – special shoutout to Mallow’s upward facing, mouth agape pose. Mario is silent, as always, but this time around instead of the narrative pretending he’s actually speaking and having his conversation partners summarize what he was supposed to have said, he mimes everything. He becomes incredibly active and animated when he puts on his one-man show reenactment of events. For example, when explaining the sword falling into Bowser’s Keep, he jumps up super high and falls down just as the sword did. Other times, he’ll spin around and don the costume of an enemy or NPC, then he’ll spin around and become himself again and position himself opposite where he was just standing in costume, moving back and forth between these two roles. These reenactments are a treat every single time. Everyone else in your party speaks, so they can just, explain things in dialogue. Having Mario act everything out is an amazing choice that adds so much characterization to Nintendo’s main everyman.

Speaking of the other characters, they’re all so unique and fun. Mallow thinks he’s a frog, and he’s so quick to cry which causes a localized weather event. He’s an adorable sweetheart who really comes into himself as the story progresses. Geno is your cool RPG hero who is always serious, but he’s never a wet blanket on the story or other characters. And then we get a couple of characters that rarely get to join Mario: Bowser and Peach/Toadstool! Anytime Bowser is not the main enemy in a Mario game is a treat. Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door uses him to great effect as a playable secondary antagonist, trying to capture Peach from the true main villain, but always a step or two behind the villain as well as Mario. Here in Mario RPG he is a main party member trying to recover his castle keep from the true villains of the game, The Smithy Gang. He realizes joining up with Mario is his only hope of returning home, but his ego won’t let him present it that way to anyone. He enlists the party as his “minions.” He often has asides with himself where he tries to figure out how to save his ego and move forward with the group. It’s cute and funny.

As for Peach, she joins up after you rescue her from a side-villain, because she’s tired of being cooped up either by captors or her own royal duties. She is, unfortunately, not nearly as characterized as any other character in this game. She doesn’t have many lines or interactions. She also fills the primary healer role once you get her (Mallow is a competent early-game healer). Her main weapons include gloves for slapping and her ultimate weapon is.. a frying pan. Sexism :/

The next thing you’ll notice is that it feels like you’re flying through the game. Probably because you are, especially if you play the Switch version. It’s a short game, with the SNES version averaging about 18 hours to complete the main game and 25 hours for 100% completionism. The Switch version is even shorter, at 12 hours and 20 hours respectively. One of the major changes to the latter is the inclusion of a new battle technique called Triple Moves. As you battle and get your timed hits, a gauge goes up. Once the gauge is full you can unleash a Triple Move using any three characters in your party. Many of them are attacking, a few are healing. They’re really cool and fun and pretty, but the game was not rebalanced with these in mind. Which is fine, the original game wasn’t hard either, but it is a little weird to add a new game altering mechanic and just not adjust anything for it. Hence the quicker completion times. Of course, triple moves are never forced on you and you don’t have to use them if you prefer not to. Remember: you control the buttons that you press.

The endgame is maybe the only hard part. You end up fighting a lot of bosses in Smithy’s Factory, and they actually get tough and require strategy for once. It was a welcome change, and it wasn’t overbearingly hard, but I would have appreciated more of a ramp up to this difficulty.

And then of course there’s Culex, the hidden Final Fantasy-esque boss fight in Monstro Town. He is proper hard, and it’s so much fun. You have to play like a more traditional RPG and winning against him felt so good. I also adore that the Remake used the original SNES version of the Final Fantasy 4 battle theme; they didn’t reorchestrate it at all. I love that battle theme. And he’s still a 2D sprite in the remake too. The remake features a harder fight with him later after he’s “gained the power of 3D,” which he suggests is the source of your power in the first fight. I haven’t unlocked his second fight yet, but I intend to.

Super Mario RPG in any form is worth playing. It’s a fun and memorable experience the whole way through and I found myself laughing a lot more than I have at any game in the past ten years. Sometimes the simple stuff just works, and the Switch remake knew not to change anything for the worse.