Given that this is the Japan-exclusive game Alpha Dream made for Nintendo before they made the first Mario & Luigi game, I went into this game expecting it to be an okay sort of proto-M&L experience. While to a certain degree that is absolutely true, I was nevertheless routinely surprised at how mechanically interesting and narratively clever this game was. It's not super long at only 15-ish hours, but it was still absolutely worth the time and the 700 yen I paid for it on the Wii U Virtual Console.
The story of Tomato Adventure is about Demiru, a little rabbit-like boy in a vegetable/food land of the Tomato Kingdom. While on a search for his girlfriend Pasaran's robot, she's kidnapped by the evil King Abira, who plans to use her energy to turn the kingdom from food into toys. Fighting through his 6 Super Kids one at a time, you aim to save your girlfriend with the help of some wacky friends you meet along the way. The story is fairly self-aware, irreverent, and silly, with a tone that struck me as something between an early 2000's gag anime and a Loony Toons cartoon. It's got a tone more irreverent and less serious than Superstar Saga, for example, and that combined with the relatively short length keep it from getting stale. Being a 2002 JRPG aimed at kids, it doesn't have any sort of serious message to get across, but its protagonists and antagonists were fun and silly enough that it kept the story interesting for me regardless. The presentation is a bit of a mixed bag. I didn't have as much of a problem with this playing it on a wide-screen TV on my Wii U, but this game must've been a nightmare to play on the original GBA in 2002. Demiru is quite small on the screen, and the environments themselves tend to be very colorful and loud in their presentation. That on top of relatively small text made me routinely thankful to not be playing this on an unlit 3" GBA screen XD . The music is also really nothing to write home about. The boss themes are pretty nice, but there's only one or two, a standard battle theme, and then the final boss has not one but TWO unique tracks. Each area you go to has one or two themes for its main areas and dungeon parts respectively, but nothing really memeorable. The music and sound design sounds much closer to something like Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire than Superstar Saga in terms of quality and style (at least to my ears). Very much Early GBA Chic. The gameplay is where the ideas that would go onto make Mario & Luigi start to really shine through though. There is no jumping or platforming the way the M&L games have in the overworld, and first strikes on enemies aren't a thing, but there are still environmental puzzles galore and no random encounters (enemies walk around and you touch them to initiate combat). This game has tons of puzzle and action mini-game segments that, while some are pretty pants, all tend to be very different and you'll rarely see something similar more than once. There are some that are so frustrating the game definitely would've benefited from an option to just skip them and move on after you'd failed a bunch, but that's difficult to reasonably expect from a game from 2002. The combat, like M&L, revolves around fulfilling action commands around the "Gimmick" (literally what they're called) devices you find throughout the game. Demiru meets 3 party members over the course of his journey, and while only one of them can be active at a time (Demiru must always be in your party), each of them has their own gimmicks only they can use, with Demiru having the most as to give him more variety. The gimmicks themselves are subject to power creep pretty badly (really no reason not to at least try out new ones as you get them as they tend to be reasonably more powerful than your old ones), but none of their timed mini-games are the same. Some are quite similar, but no two are exactly alike, even between characters, although the instructions on how to perform their mini-games are sometimes quite annoyingly vaguely explained. The game rolls out the gimmicks pretty slow at the start as well as their related mechanics, and the game has a pretty dang slow and easy start in general, but you'll have dozens of gimmicks by the end of the game and the final boss or two really don't mess around. Very similar to how Superstar Saga has difficulties for Bro Moves that you can increase to use less BP and deal more damage, you can change the difficulty of gimmick's action commands between battles to deal more damage at the risk of failing the command. It creates a neat risk/reward system that incentives getting really good at the newest gimmicks to do more damage. Additionally, very similar to what would be used for Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story's Bro Badge mechanics, you have "Incredible" points that you can build up by successfully completing gimmick action commands, and you build them up far faster by completing higher difficulty gimmick commands. You only unlock this feature once you get your first party member, but each of the 3 party members has two possible Incredible Actions they can do (one at 3/4ths Incredible bar, one at full bar) for different effects ranging from a full-party heal to massive AOE damage to your enemies. To balance this, each gimmick has a certain number of times you can use it before you need to use other of your 4 equipped gimmicks (you must have as many as you can equipped up to a maximum of 4), which balances out the risk/reward by encouraging you to use gimmicks you can complete reliably, and not just ones that do a lot of damage. However, this is where that mechanic stumbles a bit. If you fail an action command JUST one time, your entire stock of Incredible points drops to 0, meaning you are punished pretty hard for not succeeding at an action command. There's also no way to practice action commands outside of real combat, meaning there's no way to tell for sure what a new gimmick's action command will be, let alone exactly how upping the difficulty of a certain gimmick will affect the possibility of its completion. One or two gimmicks (including Demiru's 4th acquired one) are entirely down to luck, which can make building up Incredible points super irritating if you lose your entire bar because you guessed wrong. Some have higher difficulties that are absurdly difficult and bordering on impossible to complete on purpose, and there were many I found I had no chance to complete even by accident on power levels past 4 (each has 7 levels of difficulty). This is further complicated by the strange way this game decides to do character leveling. Leveling your actual character through combat only ups their speed and maximum health. Your defense is tied to the armor you're wearing, and you'll rarely find new armor outside of buying it at the new town's shop (although money is basically never an issue if you just fight everything you see like I did). And your attack power is tied entirely to the gimmick you're using, and gimmick power level is decided by 3 things: the specific gimmick (some are simply more powerful than others as their base power rating), the 1-7 action command difficulty you've chosen for that gimmick, and finally how much you've increased that gimmick's power through batteries. There are 4 types of gimmicks and their action commands revolve around the theme of their type: Timing, Renda (button mashing), Speed (do commands within a time limit), and Dokidoki (basically an "Other" category, usually revolving around memorization and/or abject luck). You can find in chests and from enemy drops (and in the much later game, outright buy for large sums of money) batteries that will increase the power level of a gimmick. It can't be done infinitely, but it's a good way to make a gimmick you like continue its usefulness even when other newer gimmicks have higher base power levels. This also smartly incentivizes spreading out the types of gimmicks across the characters you use, as while you may be able to very reliably do the action commands for most button mashing gimmicks and speed ones, that means you'll have a ton of unused timing and dokidoki batteries and relatively underpowered overall gimmick strength. Ultimately, all this means that while you can't necessarily grind levels for more power, you can grind money to power up your favorite gimmicks for the end-game (and the final boss is a proper blighter, so you'll need them at max power, lemme tell ya). It also fortunately means that you aren't really punished that much for avoiding combat, since levels don't affect your overall power level that significantly (compared to traditional JRPGs at least). Verdict: Highly Recommended. I was very pleasantly and regularly surprised by the quality of this game. The slow and very easy start had me a bit worried it'd be pretty boring, but I hit a stride around the first boss of the game that really had me hooked. While the last two dungeons go on for a bit too long, the game otherwise has really nice signposting and good overall pacing, and a nice difficulty curve to boot (although the highest spots of it are a bit weirdly high for a game that says its geared towards kids). This is now one of my favorite games Alpha Dream has done, and one of the Japan-exclusive games I've most enjoyed playing. It's absolutely worth your time with a fan translation or to help practice your Japanese ^w^
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And so wraps up my adventures through the 3DS Mario & Luigi games. To start as I mean to go on, I'll admit that Bowser's Inside Story has always been my least favorite Mario & Luigi game, and I never actually intended to play this remake. the only reason I did is because, while buying the first game's remake on Amazon, I saw this one was half the price I've seen if for anywhere ever, so I figured I may as well snag a deal as an excuse to try this out and give this game another chance for the first time in 7+ years. It took me 43 hours to play through the Japanese version, and I beat both the main Mario & Luigi adventure as well as the both the main and post-game content of the Bowser Jr's Journey side game. The game doesn't keep hard time stats for each mode (confusingly enough, as the first remake did), but I'd wager that the main game took me about 30 hours, and Bowser Jr's Journey took me about 13.
I've long held that the original GBA Superstar Saga is the undesputed champ and best game among the Mario & Luigi series. Bros moves were always better than Bros items, the dungeon design was good, boss fights were tough but not super duper spongy, and the power creep of your abilities was never too overwhelming. The approach of the 3DS remake is that if it ain't broke, fix everything that was. The addition of a ton of quality of life and accessibility features as well as the Bower's Minions mode makes this a definitive upgrade over the GBA original and easily the new best Mario & Luigi game. It took me around 30 hours to complete both the main game and the Minions mode, and I played the Japanese version.
The first most obvious change is the presentation, as what was a GBA game on a single screen is now a 3DS game across two screens, and it really shows. While it's clear this is modeled off of the engine that Paper Jam used, it's definitely been modified, because Paper Jam was nowhere near as damn beautiful as this game. The game has a really rock solid framerate and all of the art is beautiful. Not all of the remixed music tracks are total winners, but they're otherwise nearly all fine conversions if not outright upgrades. The extra buttons and screen of the 3DS allow for those excellent QoL features as well. First off, an obvious addition taken from the other games is the introduction of a mini-map on the bottom screen just like all the other games have. You can even pin places of interest on the map (not unlike a Metroidvania game sometimes lets you do), and it makes getting around a lot easier. The other use of the touch screen is a selection screen for all your exploratory Bros moves like the high jump, spin jump, hammer moves, and hand moves. The old system where R and L switch between which Bro's power is active depending on their position is totally gone. In its place, you can either pick what you want from the touch screen, or cycle through the list with R and L, and the Bros will switch positions and powers accordingly, meaning you can explore far faster and don't need to remember which combos are which. The icing on the cake of that is that X is a dedicated simultaneous jump button for both Bros no matter what Bros moves they have selected. Now you can have a hand or hammer power selected for A or B AND still be able to walk around and explore normally. It's such a game changer and makes just getting around so much easier and convenient. And then for accessibility, the game also takes ideas whole-cloth from Paper Jam in the form of skippable tutorials, an R button hold speeding up cutscenes, an easy mode that makes you stronger and enemies weaker, the ability to hold X for a simple guard instead of an outright dodge during battles, the ability to practice Bros moves for free even mid-battle for no cost, and an in-game guidebook to reference any aspect of playing you don't remember at the time. The game plays so much more smoothly and swiftly that it's kinda incredible, and almost entirely removes any reservations I could've possibly had about recommending the original to anyone. I can't comment on if or how any dialogue was changed from the original, as I'm familiar with the American GBA release, and this is the Japanese 3DS release (although I can confirm that Fawful's speech style is far more boring and nowhere near as unique in Japanese as it is in English). What I can comment on is the combat balancing, which has been drastically shifted to be more like Paper Jam and to a lesser extent Dream Team. The bosses in the original weren't nearly as spongy as Partners In Time's bosses were, but this cranks down their health a LOT. However, it also cranks down the Bros ability to tank hits as well, meaning there is a much higher emphasis on maximizing the damage you deal as well as successfully dodging enemy attacks. If you mess up dodges on normal mode too many times, you're gonna be looking at a world of hurt before long (it made the final boss way way harder than I remember it, that's for sure). This, combined with a change in exactly how Bros moves timings and visuals work, makes for an experience that is both familiar as well as challenging in a new way that makes this an easy recommendation for even people who really know the original well. Finally, an addition that was added for the Japanese release of the original (which came out a fair bit after the American release, oddly enough) makes the game a bit easier as well in the form of Paper Mario-style healing blocks. There were only 3 or 4 in the Japanese original as a way to top up before particularly hard fights, but they're basically put before every major fight now. Just one more thing that makes the game flow easier and a bit more fun. You can also even save just about anywhere now via a menu option, and svae blocks in-game are largely a formality. Other than that, the game is largely the same save for some minor changes on item drop rarities (green beans are a lot rarer than they used to be, for example). I'll finish this review off by talking about the Bowser's Minions mode, which I expected to be kinda throw-away, but ended up being one of my favorite parts of the game. Now, compared to later Mario-focused RPGs, Mario & Luigi 1 isn't nearly as focused on being funny. It's' certainly quirky, there's no doubt about that, but it definitely isn't as concerned with being outright silly or funny in the way a game like Paper Mario Color Splash is. The main Bros adventure retains that, but the Minions mode is dripping with that new sillier writing and I adored it. It's Goomba's adventure to gather together an army of Bowser's displaced minions to save their beloved king, and it kinda turns into a somewhat irreverent shonen anime in how it's written (at least in Japanese). Goomba has two main counterparts in the form of Shy Guy and Boo, and the dynamic they have between each other will likely be immediately familiar to anyone who has watched mainstream anime for any length of time. I really adored the story of the Minions mode, as it balances being silly for the sake of it with being genuinely sweet. It's a not at all unique story about growing up and needing to take on more responsibility when duty calls, but presented through Super Mario villains, it's done in a very charming style that nonetheless really clicked with me. The mechanics of the Minions mode I also enjoyed, but they're something totally different from the main game. The Minions mode gameplay is almost like something out of a mobile game, as it don't even really use the two-screen that much. You put together a series of troops before going into a battle, and they automatically fight it out based on a priority of whomever is next in line that doesn't have someone targeting them yet. There's a rock-paper-scissors dynamic between three types of troops (ground, throwers, and flyers) and you build an army to fight how you think best for the types present in the army you're about to fight. The only interactions you do are timed A-button presses for when special moves are activated, and presses on the D-pad to activate captain abilities that can also be swapped out as you unlock them as your captains level up. Units will level up as they're present for battles you win, but there isn't even a positioning element: grounds are first, then fliers, then throwers, then your captain. All you really need to do is take out the enemy captain to win, but it can be hard to focus on that outside of a couple captain abilities because the control is so limited. It can also definitely get frustrating at times, as you only know the units the enemy is using (usually), and not in what numbers or what roles, so they may have 4 throw types and 1 flier, but the ground army you made to wipe the floor with those throwers will be crap against a whole unit of flyers, or a particularly tough flyer captain will be able to take out 3 or 4 grounds because evasion against type advantage is so high. It's a very casual strategy experience and the difficulty curve can at times be annoying, but it was right up my alley and I enjoyed it a lot. The length is no paltry offering either. It took me probably 7 or 8 hours just in this mode between just how many levels there are and the occasional grinding I had to do for harder stages. Just know that it's nothing to really really sink your teeth into for deeper strategy game fans. Finally, the game's amiibo support is largely found in the Minions mode (which makes sense, as the Koopa and Goomba amiibo were released specifically for this game). Anapan graciously donated to me a Goomba amiibo so I could test this out, so credit for my first-hand experience of this stuff goes to him ^w^. In the Bros mode, all amiibos get you (you can scan any Mario-series one) is first a fairly nice badge that can otherwise still be found elsewhere in the game, and after that just 3 beans of a random type. They also unlock your stamp album, which you only need one amiibo to unlock, but has most of its features after that tied to just playing the Minions mode. One amiibo type will get you that character's stamp, but there are 20 more stamps that are only tied to units you happen to have in your army. Have 3 Goombas over level 10? There's a stamp for that. Have all kinds of Magikoopa? There's a stamp for that. Each of those stamps will unlock a simple Minions mode mission, with no story attached, involving those characters. Additionally, having the Goomba, Koopa Troopa, or Boo amiibo scanned will get you a more powerful golden version of that character to use as a captain. It's all suuuuuper minor stuff, and not really worth the price of entry (not like some games lock away massive amounts of content via amiibos, for sure), but it's something fun to do if you have the amiibos to use with it already. Verdict: Highly Recommended. I've played not that many games this year that haven't been repeats, but this has been a damn great one. Up there with Color Splash as a game I thought I'd enjoy but ended up absolutely loving. A definitive upgrade to the original in such a fashion that it feels more like Mario & Luigi 6 that just happens to have the dressings of a remake of Superstar Saga. In any case, easily the new best entry in the series, and a must-own for RPG fans on the 3DS. This is a game I've had bad blood with for a looong time, and I've made no secret about it on this site before. I was so excited to hear about getting another turn-based Paper Mario game after Super Paper Mario was more of an action game, that I was probably never going to like this when I played it 7 years ago. It is not at all trying to be a revival of the gameplay style of the first two Paper Mario games, and is doing something else entirely. What spurred my desire to give it another try, in fact, was when I was researching online after playing Paper Mario Color Splash. I was reading the Wikipedia page for this game and saw that the game's director, when asked if it was an RPG before the game was out, denied that it was and insisted it was an action/adventure game. The game had positive reviews at the time, and I know that even some people on this site have spoken positively about it before (I think it was Sarge?), so I knew there was definitely some enjoyment that could be found here. I already knew that it was a bad RPG, so this time I went in looking for a good action/adventure game, and that's pleasantly what I found. I looked as much as I could for hidden stuff, but I didn't do all 8 super flags. It took me a little over 21 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game.
First of all, I will address my chief complaint with the game my last time through it: The game is a bad RPG. Very specifically, battles are a complete waste of time, because there is no reward for doing them other than money, and money isn't that important. Like Color Splash would kinda continue, you have a limited supply of battle stickers, and those stickers are your ability to fight. Getting into battles just drains your sticker supply and means you have less to use in boss encounters. It's a pretty terrible set up for an RPG, but a fairly typical one for an action/adventure game. Having to deal with avoiding enemies to conserve resources and not expecting rewards greater than what you put in is nothing out of the ordinary for an action/adventure game, and approaching the game that way genuinely changed my mind about what I'd previously seen as its biggest flaw. While on the topic of the battle system, I'll continue on it here. So like Color Splash would continue to do, you can find all sorts of stickers with varying effects. You can find different kinds of jump and hammer moves as well as special ones like a raccoon tail or a frog suit that let you dodge attacks in a specific way. In addition, you also have Things (non-paper objects, like a vacuum or a pair of scissors) that you can find in the world and have turned into more powerful stickers that can easily win you a normal encounter or also serve as solutions to environmental puzzles or boss weaknesses. Color Splash generally improves on this system, but does actually have some steps back in terms of design. Where Color Splash just has every battle card you find be part of a larger deck of cards, Sticker Star has a sticker album. More powerful stickers, particularly Thing stickers, are physically larger in the sticker album, so you need to consider just how much you'd rather have a more powerful arsenal or one that will last longer. In addition to that, having 2-8 pages of stickers to sort through is simply faster to sort through than shuffling back and forth between a deck of 50 battle cards. Lastly, where Color Splash has a requirement to use a boss' weakness to defeat them (they're invulnerable unless the proper thing is used on them at the correct time), Sticker Star doesn't have this stipulation most of the time. There are some boss fights that are effectively impossible without the boss' weakness being exploited (and some that require a counter move like the raccoon tail to even hurt them at all), but a surprising amount of them can just be brute-forced through with enough healing and proper use of action commands. It's not necessarily a better design, per se, but it's nice to have the option. The main reason it isn't outright a better design relates to how Sticker Star is, at the end of the day, an all-around inferior game to Color Splash. The main reason that not being forced to use a boss' weakness to beat them is nice is because you only have environmental hints as to what a boss' weakness is in the first place, where Color Splash has a character who will give you big hints as to which Things you should have prepared for the next area you'll go to so you don't hit a road block. I surprisingly never had to look up which Thing I needed to solve a certain puzzle, but part of that is down to dumb luck and part of it is also down to just remembering the solution from my first attempt through this game (where I got like 3/4ths of the way through the game, apparently). However, I did still run into places where I needed to totally backtrack out of a level in order to go back and get a smattering of Thing stickers that were likely solutions to the puzzle I'd come across. This all wraps up into a larger problem of the game generally not respecting your time, as the battles still feel like wastes of time because they can take so long (longer than just a Super Mario-esque Goomba-stomp takes, at least) and have very little reward. Something that does shine quite well is the presentation. Particularly the music, which isn't quite as overall great as Color Splash, but is still a damn fine selection of tunes. The paper-craft design of the world is also leaned into a bit, particularly with characters picking up objects and crumpling them up like paper, but it (once again) isn't leaned into as an aesthetic quite as hard as Color Splash would do it. The only real issue that I had was because of not playing in 3D (I only have a 2DS XL to play Japanese games on), there were two or three spots where not having 3D depth made a jump more awkward to make than it should've been. Finally you have the writing, which is not as bad as I remember, but still comes off as a pale imitation of Color Splash after that game's writing is so good. The game has a lot of larger plot elements that go on to be reused and refined in Color Splash. You have a single new partner who is your constant companion throughout the game and they teach you to do the game's key mechanics, you'll occasionally lose your companion and have to deal with how to fight without them, and even the final battle has a very similar set-up to how your partner will help you fight. The more linear, stage-based world design is even started in this game and continued in the next (even though this game is far more linear in its approach to things). But overall, Kirsti just comes off as a less funny and endearing Huey, as she doesn't have nearly as much dialogue, and just as much of it is about giving you instructions as it is about making humorous commentary on the current situation. The pacing of the dialogue is much more in line with a typical Mario & Luigi game (fairly large spans of no dialogue interspersed with NPCs who talk a decent bit) rather than the almost VN-esque text frequencies of Color Splash. The dialogue is funny, but there just isn't enough of it. Heck, Bowser is in this game and literally doesn't have a single spoken line of dialogue. A somewhat common complaint I've seen about this game online is that the overall story is lacking, but I honestly believe that that barely matters. Paper Mario has never been a series that benefited significantly from a story that tried significantly to talk about larger points of the human condition. Super Paper Mario arguably has one of the more serious overall themes of grappling with one's own existential mortality, but no one holds that up as the shining pinnacle of the series. The most memorable parts of it have related to the humor and the character found throughout the world, and this game does a good job of continuing that, as does Color Splash in improving upon it further. This game having a fairly fluffy and silly approach to its storytelling is a valid observation, but I don't believe it's a complaint any more meaningful than complaining that the Mario platformer games don't have enough social commentary in them. Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Approached the right way, there is a decent amount of fun to be had with this game. Playing it after Color Splash certainly made its shortcomings stand out all the more, but none of its flaws make the experience totally worthless. I still believe it's the worst Paper Mario game, but it's not by nearly as much of a margin as I believed previously, and it is far from a bad game. If you can find it for $10 like I did, then it is a fine game to hop in and out of at your own pace. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
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