Well I can't believe I finished Super Mario RPG so fast, but I did grind it fairly mercilessly in between my horrible, horrible shifts this week. The game does seem decently big for the system it came out for however. That and I don't think I'm entirely finished either. I have yet to find or be able to get into a few things the game has hinted about.

I found Mario to be a decent character. He filled the position of hard hitting damage soaking guy, except his actual hp was a bit on the low side, so his hp would plummet if an enemy did manage to piece his defenses. His specials were ok, but often didn't outperform just slamming enemies with his basic attacks. The way you could spam fireballs and jumps was kind of fun though.

Mallow I have mixed feeling about. On one hand he was my party's healer for the entire game. His one and only heal only heals a single target and generally for enough to fill their hp all the way up. Toward the end I was occasionally having to juggle in a max mushroom, and there were points the party heals of froggie colas were needed, but overall the game didn't feel too heal intensive. Part of this might be that I became somewhat good at timing my defensive reactions as attacks were landing. Mallow was also by far the best character for effecting area damage. Lightning was doing more than the high cost final specials of other characters most of the time, for only two flower points. His later specials really lacked enough bang for their buck...unfortunately.

Geno was fairly useful to me for the whole game. His main importance is that he has Geno Boost, which was already making Mario hit even more absurdly hard than he already was, but it was then also going on both himself and Mallow, and towards the end of the game they were both as a result able to hit rather hard as well! I don't really like any of Geno's other specials. They're expensive and don't really do much damage. There were times I used them to maximize the damage I dealt to enemies in an area as fast as possible, but it only saw use in those forced situations.

Bowser got no use from me after a brief stint in Booster Tower. His specials then sucked and he basically only slapped things hard. But the thing is he didn't offer heavy aoe and healing like Mallow, or the overpowered Geno Boost from Geno. In short, whatever pluses he might offer are ruined because of what you'd have to lose. Now if only you could remove Mario from the active party Bowser might have had a use...

Toadstool never saw a single battle at all. By the time she joined my party I already had my pattern down so well I didn't even want to interrupt it to use her. Having her in the party would have required me to sacrifice a ton of damage by that point because the current configuration allowed me to just hammer it out and beat the hell out of bosses before they could really cause too much trouble. I made the later parts of the game fairly more difficult than they needed to be since I often was unable to cure afflictions(damn you mushroom!) or revive people during fights with heavy instant death abuse. The lack of a party heal was also very harsh, but I was able to outskill it just barely.

I think the majority of the game was too easy to be honest. I really never took any damage until bosses, and even then many of them got blown over too. I was able to keep charging forward for basically the entire game slamming through things with my max damage setup. We're talking having Mario hitting the final boss in the 500s and Geno hitting it in the 400s, and Mallow hitting in the 2-300s the very rare times he wasn't healing someone. I only got 2 game overs in the entire game, and both were on some clock boss in the final dungeon you needed to kill specific parts first on, as well as have a fair bit of luck. It happened to be an abuser of instant death and one of the failed attempts its 2/3 turns that could use the death move did use it. But my damage was again so high that the attempt I won I took it down without my healer even alive for half the fight!

The game got a bit trivialized once I had the frog coins to buy the double exp accessory. I threw it on Mario until he was lv 29, then swapped it to Geno to make him level up faster with his lower level up totals. So I figured out the level cap was 30 a while later when Mario leveled. My final party for Smithy was Mario at level 30, Mallow at level 25, and Geno at level 26. I have to say it was one of the hardest fights I have ever won in a game. The only things that have outclassed it are some of the fights against secret summons in Golden Sun 2, and perhaps some fights in FFXII. Part of what made it hard for me was the fact I had at best 1 magical heal a turn, only 3 party status clear items, only 2 revive items, and only so many max mushrooms to get me out of tight spots. It was a miracle nobody died during that fight but it got really close over and over the entire fight. Even with my max damage setup this guy took an eternity of pounding with all of his stages and diversionary targets.

I fear to think how bad fighting Jinx a 3rd time is going to be with my inability to deal with instant death effects after everything I dealt with in the Factory. There's also still a temple key I got in Monstertown I don't know what to do with, as well as a sealed door in Monstertown I don't know how to enter. I know there's a casino of sorts in Booster Tower to check out, and I haven't really figured out how the Yoshi racing works yet. I have yet to really try to figure out what the melody bay is for but at least one area of the game definitely played me a tune that I expect I am supposed to replicate there for toadofsky.

There are some things I feel should be complained about too. I think the game's music selection was a bit small. It got a little old hearing the same battle music the entire game pretty much. I really think the Axem Rangers should have gotten more spotlight than they did too. They deserved a more epic party in the storyline and should have been much harder to defeat. At the least you could have gotten to battle through the entirety of their ship. Something that was very sorely needed was in in battle ability to party swap. Or failing that, the ability to swap out Mario for someone more useful for smashing enemies into a pulp(Bowser). A thing that annoyed me the whole game was the coin limit. You very early realize the max is 999, and it sometimes doesn't leave you enough excess to work with as you'd like to. The inventory at shops needed a way to see the stats of the weapons and armors, if there is a way to do it I never did see what it was, and there were a few times I wasted gold on unneeded armor and weapons.

One thing really different abut this game was all of the various events that take place throughout the game, many requiring thinking or quick reflexes to come out of top. You don't see a lot of that in this sort of game these days and it was refreshing.

I rather enjoyed all the references I encountered throughout the game. I rested in one inn and found Link in the bed next to mine the next morning. In Booster Tower I went behind a curtain and came out turned into 8 bit Mario for a while. One of the game's enemies is a 'kong' and there are octorock referencing enemies as well. Inside the volcano's shop I saw some F-Zero racers on top of some boxes, and the 3rd item was either another racer or actually an Arwing. There were probably more references as well that I have forgotten.

Super Mario RPG is definitely a game worth playing if you haven't yet, it has given me pause to consider if I should perhaps have not overlooked many of the others Mario games that have come out(with the exception of Mario Party, that can stay far, far away from me).