Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)

Back before Paper Mario, back before Mario & Luigi, the portly platforming plumber known as Mario took his first foray into the world of role-playing games with Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. At a time when he was only just getting started spreading his brand to spin-offs like Dr. Mario and Super Mario Kart, one of the first new genres he stuck his mustachioed nose into was a huge departure from the simplicity of jumping over Goombas to get to the right side of a stage. A long story, plenty of reading, stat numbers to consider, and a huge variety of enemies would all be required to make this excursion a full-fledged RPG, but Nintendo had perhaps the perfect partner for this venture: Square, the creators of the monumental Final Fantasy series. The stage was set for an ambitious company crossover, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Mario slipped into this new genre as cleanly as he does most every other he’s dipped his toe in, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars providing plenty from both sides of its DNA to enjoy.

Despite Mario exploring virgin territory in his first RPG, the opening of the game seems all too familiar. The monstrous turtle Bowser has once again snatched up Princess Toadstool, so Mario heads off to Bowser’s castle to get her back. He gets there surprisingly quickly and with little issue this time around, and after soundly defeating the Koopa King, the princess is saved, the hero is victorious, and a giant sword named Exor plunges down from the sky and scatters all three of those characters across the land. Exor is just one member of a new group of villains known as the Smithy Gang, each major member some sort of living weapon. The Smithy Gang spreads out across the world, their goal really just seeming to be general domination and making the world one filled with weapons, but in their conquest they managed to destroy the Star Road as well, Star Road being a magical place where the wishes of the world are granted. For this reason, Mario sets out to gather the seven stars that make up Star Road so wishes can be made again, but also to prevent anyone from abusing that power should they collect those stars first.

On his adventure, Mario ends up making some unlikely allies, the plumber eventually joined by his long time rival Bowser as the Koopa King has the same need to kick Smithy’s forces out, and even the Princess eventually tags along to help once she’s been saved from the latest peril she’s found herself in. Two new characters join Mario’s crew, with Mallow perhaps being the one with the most depth. Mallow is a little cloud person raised by frogs who believed himself to be a tadpole, but once he meets up with Mario, he begins to not only realize he’s got a real family of cloud people out there somewhere, but he learns that he must be brave to be a hero. The crying cloud spends the rest of the game trying to overcome his timidity, but there’s not a whole lot done in terms of character development in this title or really examining personalities on any layer but the surface level. Mario is a silent protagonist who only communicates through occasional jumping and some hilariously elaborate pantomiming, and it is amusing to watch Bowser try to repeatedly justify why he’s aiding his archrival in a way that absolves him of wanting to do good for a change, but the animated doll who joins your party is a rather shallow addition to the team. When a star spirit inhabits a wooden doll named Geno, it becomes the mouthpiece for Star Road’s plight, but he seems almost entirely focused on this mission without much of a personality beyond that to latch onto.

Plenty of the enemies you encounter along the way have interesting concepts, personalities, or design to make up for it at least. Perhaps the highlight of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is your trip to Booster Tower, the building already leading strong with wonderful music in a game already teeming with excellent tracks thanks to Yoko Shimomura’s brilliance in composing new catchy tunes and reworking classic Mario music in new ways. Booster himself is the star of the show during this portion though, the strange bearded man at first seeming sketchy for his insistence on marrying Princess Toadstool until you start to learn that he doesn’t even really understand what a marriage is. He almost views it more as a form of play and doesn’t seem to grasp the importance of the ceremony at all, and since he can’t even remember that crying is the proper reaction to being sad when you upset him, it’s not hard to imagine the Princess’s objections puzzled him instead of Booster being malicious in his intentions. This quirky character isn’t even part of Smithy’s Gang either, but his whole segment adds a whimsical and quirky excursion to the adventure that is delightful to experience.

Other antagonists like the pirate Johnathan Jones stand out for being an honorable shark despite at first standing against you, and the colorful Axem Rangers team, despite being flat personality wise, are a fun way of bridging the player into the final dungeon with their wide variety of attacks. Some of these boss fights are more memorable for their gimmicks like the manic bow Bowyer who fires arrows at the buttons on your controller to limit your skill options, and foes like the buxom diva Valentina have a minion separate a single member of your team for a one on one fight in what is sort of artificial difficulty but still one of the most effective battle tactics the game whips out. The truth is many of the boss battles are somewhat straightforward, the player needing to dish out damage and be able to heal enough of what they’re taking to survive. Sometimes the boss might have multiple points to target and taking out things like a large squid’s arms will limit its attack options, but most major fights are really just regular turn-based battles where you don’t often need to deviate from dishing out attacks and healing up damage.

These boss fights are still enjoyable despite many being rather straightforward, and that’s mainly because Super Mario RPG finds a strong way to keep the player involved in even the simplest fights. When you are dealing damage or taking it, if you can time your button presses correctly, you can gain extra effects. For the most part this manifests as your regular attacks dealing more damage or a button press allowing you to defend from some of the damage an incoming attack would deal, but this can also allow moves like Geno Boost to buff a character’s attack and defense instead of just upping their attack power. This means rather than just selecting which attack you want and sitting back to watch it be executed, you’re constantly pushing to squeeze out extra oomph from every ability use, and when the enemy is moving in to hit you, you watch them carefully and try to figure out the right window for defending against their attack. Even the plainest battles against weak foes are more engaging because it’s a more active battle system, and the game seems willing to give regular enemies some more dangerous moves because of not only your ability to counteract them well, but the game generally not being as difficult as you expect.

Pretty much up until the Axem Rangers fight and the big showdown with Smithy’s Gang in Bowser’s Castle, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars doesn’t really push the player too hard. Healing items are given out liberally, and the coins used to purchase more items aren’t too hard to earn just by playing normally. Inventory space is limited, and while this means you’ll often be tossing perfectly good items, this is perhaps the only way to ensure the player isn’t stocked up to an absurd degree on the game’s highly effective healing items. Mallow is given a pretty strong healing power early in the game, and while it does draw from Flower Points, the team’s communal resource for using their special abilities, a mix of items and healing magic isn’t hard to manage on top of using your higher damage Flower Point attacks with the main attackers. Once the Princess joins you though, any fight of difficulty can usually be handled by having her devoted to using her powerful Group Hug ability that heals the whole party considerably and also cures some otherwise dangerous statuses like your characters turning into scarecrows that can barely fight or mushrooms that can’t do anything at all. She’ll likely need the right equipment to make sure she isn’t transformed herself, but any equipment you need, be it new attacking items with their own animations and timed button press requirements or defensive armor and accessories that can alter stats or give unique boons, your coin income is likely enough to make sure you’re walking around with about the best gear you can carry at the time.

Enemies do walk around in the open in Super Mario RPG, meaning the player can try to avoid fights and potentially become underleveled as they miss out on the chance to gain experience and stat increases, but even just fighting a reasonable amount of regular foes will keep you pretty much topped off in regards to strength, cash, and inventory. Despite being pretty easy until the late game though, fights aren’t ever truly boring because they are active fights where you’re earning that extra damage through constant participation, and it’s likely the generally low difficulty is so younger players or players with slow reflexes can still remain competitive against the tougher foes. The important factor is the fights ask you to take them seriously because you could lose if you slip up, but it’s fairly easy to remain on the ball and avoid unfortunate deaths.

The turn-based battles aren’t the only gameplay element in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. To mix in gameplay familiar to fans of Super Mario, the way you explore the overworld actually incorporates platforming elements and some exploration. Traveling around in areas like the ocean floor, forest maze, or in dungeons involves moving in an isometric view that can be a little disorienting at times when the game wants diagonal jumps, but mostly you’ll be solving small puzzles, hitting blocks, navigating small jumping challenges, or engaging with a gimmick like cannons that launch you across the area and climbable vines you need to leap between. The vines are a little unwieldy due to the perspective, and some jumping puzzles like the poorly conceived 3-Dimensional Maze where you can’t even see it are low moments in world navigation, but for the most part the area exploration adds an enjoyable interactive element to getting from place to place. There are plenty of secrets for going off the beaten path, rewards for overcoming platforming perils, and ways to work around enemies you might not wish to battle, and while the navigation is often not all that challenging, it is certainly a better way of exploring the world than just walking around a static environment.

The minigame diversions are also an interesting choice, as you’ll often find yourself playing in a completely different way to get to new places, overcome some strange danger, or compete for extra goodies. Jumping on Goombas in a manner similar to Whack-a-Mole, riding a barrel down a river, guiding a minecart along its tracks safely, and racing atop the dinosaur Yoshi add small shifts to how you play, meaning you’ll never really know how a new area will challenge you. It might be filled with enemies you might want to avoid, it might put challenges down that require good jumping or an understanding of a gimmick to navigate around, or it might throw you into an entirely new type of play briefly. There are even a few sidequests to pursue where you can gain new weapons for your party or face off with special foes, so Super Mario RPG at least has a strong breadth of content even if certain areas of its design could have been explored more deeply.

THE VERDICT: Amazing music, delightful moments, and a battle system that keeps the player actively involved are all Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Star’s biggest strengths, and it gets a lot of mileage out of mixing together moments of overworld platforming, turn-based battles, and minigame diversions. The story and combat are enjoyable even if they could do with veering away from their mostly simplistic designs, but being mostly rather easy doesn’t drag Super Mario RPG down. It is still an excellent first attempt at the genre for Mario, with an appealing and colorful game world coupled with an interesting sense of humor to still give the adventure some personality and flavor that drives you to keep pushing forward in your quest to stop the Smithy Gang.

And so, I give Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars for Super Nintendo…

A GREAT rating. A role-playing game was the perfect chance to dive deeper into the still underdeveloped world of the Super Mario games, and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars takes it to strange and interesting new places that deliver on unusual characters and new ways to play in equal measure. Booster’s Tower alone is such a strange and memorable excursion, and encountering both familiar enemies like Goombas and Shy Guys in addition to strange new creatures like warriors riding big-eared hippos, artichoke monsters, and fork carrying orb men with smaller orb men inside their mouths mean even the basic enemies have one foot in both sides of this company crossover. The combat asks you to figure out how this new or familiar creature will try to hurt you and respond with timed button presses, and while it could be more interesting to require more direct counters such as when you can mute a foe’s magic or take out body parts, the fights still remain engaging enough because they involve constant participation despite their generally low difficulty. Changing up how you play frequently helps keep the game flow moving despite it being just as long as other role-playing games, the adventure feeling brisk because it never settles into one area or play style for too long. Even just adding some more character to Geno or crafting more fights to really test you would do a lot for cementing this as one of Mario’s best RPG outings, but the platforming plumber certainly came out swinging with an imaginitive adventure that’s appealing enough to still win over players who might have wanted something deeper out of the experience.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars isn’t the best RPG Mario has found himself in, but that’s not a bad thing at all. Super Mario RPG is a strong base future titles could build from, and the lingering presence of things like Flower Points and timed button presses in later Mario RPGs shows that Square figured out some smart systems for an RPG that mixes together the action focus of the plumber’s usual adventures with the turn-based pace of typical role playing games of the time. Mario is able to keep his series identity while also having his world fleshed out in a unique and interesting manner here, this memorable adventure with its quirky characters, wonderful music, and shifting styles still a well crafted classic because of the thought put into making this more than merely just Mario putting in an appearance in a role-playing game.