Given that Nintendo’s first attempt at a roleplaying game featuring their goomba and koopa-stomping plumber, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, released in the twilight years of the Super NES, most critics and audiences warmly received, one could consider unsurprising the company’s further attempts at RPGs featuring the iconic Mario. One such attempt would be the AlphaDream-developed Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, which would see a remaster having significant added content entitled Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions, which, while it doesn’t wholly capture the spirit of Mario’s first RPG, definitely has one of its own.
Like the original, the remaster opens with ambassadors from the Beanbean Kingdom visiting Princess Peach’s castle in the Mushroom Kingdom, although said emissaries turn out to be villains Cackletta and Fawful, who steal her voice, replacing it with explosives in her speech bubbles, in order to harness the power of an artifact known as the Beanstar, Mario and Luigi tasked to get the princess’s speech back to normal. Subgame Minion Quest: The Search for Bowser, unlocked a ways into the main quest, follows Captain Goomba’s quest to reunite the draconic antagonist’s minions across the in-game world.
The remaster generally weaves both parallel tales well, with each having general lighthearted and humorous dispositions, some of the jesting genuinely funny, alongside the decent addition to the overall Mario mythos with the inhabitants of the Beanbean Kingdom, although there is some product placement in the form of Nintendo’s systems serving as communication devices, and maybe poor direction a few times that will leave some players searching the internet for answers. However, the translation definitely helps the story, with Fawful for instance having an interesting speech dialect, there aren’t any spelling or grammar errors, and the dialogue is as one would expect from a Mario game, with only some minor nitpicks such as Mario and Luigi calling their map abilities outside battle whenever the player toggles among them.
Luckily, solid gameplay backs the narrative experience, with enemy sprites visible in dungeons and on the fields connecting them indicative of encounters, Mario or Luigi able to jump upon or strike them with a hammer to get the initiative whilst dealing damage (and when powerful enough able to kill all adversaries instantly), although foes can do the same in return. When Mario and Luigi take their respective turns (and 99.99% of the time turn order is a no-brainer as the brothers take their orders consecutively before enemies execute theirs), they have a number of options available to them, among them being the typical Japanese RPG staples of using recovery items or escaping, although defending to reduce damage is oddly absent.
Mario and Luigi can attack enemies by jumping upon them, striking them with hammers, or firing magic from their gloves (in Mario’s case, fire, and in Luigi’s, lightning, which may heal instead of damage certain foes). Throughout the game, sometimes from the rare Secret Scroll obtained from certain minigames, the siblings receive several BP-consuming Bros. Attacks that require more complex button timing than the three standard offensive commands, but luckily, in-game diagrams indicate their sequence, and players can practice if desired. After a certain number of successes, Mario or Luigi may learn “Super” versions of these special commands.
Victory nets the plumber brothers items, money, and experience for occasional increased levels and consequential stat increases, the player able to choose one stat and execute a slot machine-type sequence where they can further increase the stat, and usually, the higher the potential bonus, the more players need to work on building the target statistic. Another method of increasing stats involves using special beans found from digging spots marked with X by using one of Luigi’s ultimately-acquired map abilities and question boxes to brew coffee at Beanbean Castle Town’s barista, which, when brewing a certain kind for the first time, triggers a cutscene that may net the player some useful rewards. The coffee itself can permanently increase one of the Mario brothers’ stats.
Minion Quest features vastly-different mechanics from the plumber siblings’ primary adventure, beginning with Captain Goomba leading a squad of Bowser’s monstrous allies that, including the captain himself, comprises eight units, and can include melee, ranged, and winged companions, a rock-paper-scissors formula existing in the subgame’s respective combat where melee beats ranged, ranged beats flying, and flying beats melee. The player can organize their offensive party’s formation outside battles, which consist of a fixed number of rounds with different enemy sets, players luckily able to view which monsters formulate the adversarial parties they’ll face.
Comprising the player’s party a certain way can grant bonuses to all units in the squadron, and back to the strength/weakness triangle, some units can transcend it, being effective against specific opponent monsters regardless of type, giving further consideration to composing parties. Other captains will come into play as the player advances the narrative of Minion Quest, players able to assign up to four orders that consume a certain number of Captain Points, prime among them being that which can prevent an enemy unit from executing its special attack, CP increased occasionally from leveling, which may sometimes grant new captain abilities.
Once the player is content with a squadron, they can select one of several dots connected by lines indicative of battles, and after a story scene proceed to combat proper, where the player’s squadron starts on the left side of the gameplay screen and the enemy on the right. Both sides automatically attack one another until the units on either side are gone; if the player wins, they move to the next round in the battle (and if all their units have survived, they receive an experience bonus applied at the end of the battle), but otherwise, they go back to the stage selection screen with no experience retained, the process continuing until all sub-battles go in the player’s favor.
Victory in all of a skirmish’s respective battles nets all units in the player’s squadron experience for leveling and consequential stat increases, with units defeated in the fight sometimes recruited, and the player may acquire special beans that provide fixed increases to the experience of melee, ranged, and aerial soldiers, somewhat aiding in building weaker characters. Sometimes, winning battles that feature “boss” units may recruit said antagonistic unit into the player’s party, although there may be a few times throughout Minion Quest where the player will briefly lose use of said characters. The subgame is generally grindy, but may appeal to strategy RPG aficionados.
The gameplay of the main quest shines brighter, evolving the spirit of prior Mario RPGs, given the core feature of timed button presses, and that the player’s party of just both (or maybe in a handful of instances one, should they separate) Mario brothers combats the typical JRPG problem of choosing which characters to grind. Battles contain agile pacing, and the difficulty for the most part is more than fair, with an option to include assist targets that indicate when to press one of the sibling’s respective buttons and whomever the enemy targets with their attacks so the player can defend and counterattack as desired. Generally, the developers did an excellent job assembling the core mechanics.
Control fares just as well, with the first Mario & Luigi RPG being far more playable on the 3DS than the Game Boy Advance, given the addition of buttons that can allow for things such as having the eponymous siblings simultaneously jump (absent from the original version), and there are some good quality-of-life features such as being able to put markers on the bottom screen’s minimap, which can really help with tracking down bean digging sites and other areas the player can access once acquiring a new ability for the plumber brothers. Granted, there are maybe a handful of instances where the game gives players poor direction on how to advance the central plot, even with an in-game narrative synopsis, and not all will take kindly to the frequent minigames, though these are somewhat bearable without the use of guides, and the remaster generally interacts well with players.
Yoko Shimomura, under the guidance of original Mario composer Koji Kondo, provides the soundtrack, which consists both of remixes of Kondo’s signature themes for the plumber brothers’ franchise and plentiful original tracks that largely excel, from the energetic battle themes to field themes from the Beanbean Borderland music to the main sound of Beanbean proper and its tropical outskirts. The sound effects are as one would expect from a Mario game, and there are frequent vocals from the titular siblings, including coherent English clips to Italian-esque gibberish during cutscenes when they do speak without dialogue bubbles. Aside from the unoriginality of the signature Mario themes, the aurals are one of the remaster’s high points.
Despite the lack of 3D capability, the visuals shine as well, with excellent upscaling from the bright colors and spritework of the original version to a semi-realistic style (though certainly not as much as Super Mario RPG, with the character sprites showing vast spectra of emotions, lips moving during “voiced” scenes, along with fluid animation, a noticeable absence of slowdown, and general excellent art direction. The battle graphics are also great in spite of many reskins among Bowser’s minions the Mario brothers face, with nice ability effects, and in the end, the remaster is definitely a sight to behold.
Finally, both the main quest and Minion Quest account for a total playtime of somewhere under forty-eight hours, with plentiful lasting appeal in the form of percentage completions and achievements in the subgame such as recruiting certain types of minions that can undoubtedly pad the player’s experience.
In summation, the 3DS version of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, together with the addition of Bowser’s Minions, is very much an ideal remaster, given improvements in just about every aspect, especially control, along with satisfying combat that never grows dull, the lighthearted narrative, superb audiovisual presentation, and excellent lasting appeal. There are only a few areas where the game truly struggles such as the somewhat-grindy nature of Minion Quest and the poor direction at times on how to advance the main quest that may drive players to use the internet, but otherwise, those who haven’t experienced the remaster very much haven’t experienced Mario RPGs in general.
This review is based on playthroughs of the main quest and Minion Quest in a digital copy of the game downloaded to the reviewer’s Nintendo 3DS.
Score Breakdown:
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Mechanics: 8.5/10
Controls: 8.0/10
Story: 7.5/10
Localization: 9.5/10
Music/Sound: 9.5/10
Graphics: 9.0/10
Lasting Appeal: 10/10
Difficulty: Moderate
Playing Time: 24-48 Hours