Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars on SNES was a monumental game in my life. It was the first RPG I ever played, and I absolutely loved it. It sent me on a path to playing just about any SNES RPG I could emulat…find. I can say with confidence that Super Mario RPG stands as one of the best RPGs of that era.
But it has been close to 30 years since the original release of the game, and times have changed. RPGs have learned from each other. Some of these newer games even learned from Super Mario RPG itself. And while ArtePiazza makes a few minor adjustments to the original to help bring it into the future, I think a bigger overhaul was necessary.
Combat Is Mostly Stuck In The Past
The biggest draw with the original Super Mario RPG combat was the button timing on attacks. Surprisingly, there still aren’t a lot of turn based systems with this kind of active element, and that feels relatively fresh here. Using action commands to maximize damage keeps you engaged with a very simple battle system otherwise, and with weapons changing throughout the game, you continue to have to learn new button timings, which keep this element of the combat somewhat fun throughout.
However, that is about the only thing that felt particularly enjoyable with the combat. First off, it is insanely easy. I was able to consistently one-shot random foes with standard attacks for the vast majority of the game. The game also has a shared “flower points (mana)” pool between all the characters in the party, so there was rarely any incentive to do anything but standard attacks when outside of a boss fight. There is a new special/combo attack gauge that builds as you fight, but it takes long enough to charge where once again, I found myself saving these attacks exclusively for boss battles. This was a pretty common practice back in the SNES days, but modern turn based RPGs have done a much better job at finding ways to keep you strategically engaged even during non-boss fights, and this remake is left far behind here.
Boss fights up the difficulty a bit, but not enough for me to find them particularly engaging. I was shocked that I was able to take on most of the bosses without even using a healing character. One or two healing items was usually enough to get me through even the harder fights, though some of the later game bosses do finally pick up a bit.
One of the elements of the game that was quite rare back when it was made is the lack of random encounters. This makes a return here, and it does help the experience from getting too tiresome. Usually I’m a guy that likes to clear every enemy on the screen, but Super Mario RPG throws A LOT of enemies at you, so it was nice in several sections to just skip them, since I really didn’t need to level up much more. Saying that a strength of a game is that I could skip a lot of the main gameplay segments feels like a backhanded compliment though.
The game also throws several random mini-games and platforming segments at you to mix things up. Unfortunately, these are rarely fun. The platforming segments in particular can get very annoying with the isometric view making it difficult to gauge depth in spots.
The Nintendo Charm Is Still There
Outside of combat, I do think the game holds up quite well. The graphics are updated perfectly, with nicely enhanced character models and environments. The new 3D cutscenes are especially high level and really shine during the aforementioned combo attacks.
The story isn’t a traditionally strong RPG story, but it is consistently quirky and cute. There is a lot of fun dialogue that plays into Mario not talking, and Bowser in particular has some pretty funny bits, as he continues to pretend that Mario and crew are now his “minions”. Mallow and Geno, the characters made specifically for this game, have been remembered for decades now and with good reason, as they are both very likeable. None of this was enough to make me feel more engaged with the game as a whole, but the story is at the very least breezy and pleasant.
Still The Best First Timers RPG
Nostalgia wasn’t enough for me to enjoy my time with Super Mario RPG all that much, but I’m still excited for my future with this game. All the reasons I loved this as my first ever RPG are still there. The active button prompts make the game much more entertaining for a non-RPG player, Mario is a familiar character to ease a new timer in with, and it’s a snappy 12 hour game. When my daughter gets to the age I was when I first played this game, this will be the first RPG I give her to try. For those of us experienced in the genre though, I think time has passed this one by.
Score: 6/10
Big Nerd Gaming 
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