Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (Game Boy Advance) review "Putting action into a role-playing game proves to be a really good idea."

While I wouldn't call it the best Super Nintendo RPG, I have to say that Super Mario RPG could be considered the most intriguing. Why? Simply because of what it was. In teaming with Square, Nintendo did a wonderful job of turning the stars of a bunch of games that were all about action into RPG characters, while never losing track of why Mario, Luigi, Bowser and others were famous.

While it possessed the essentials of role-playing games, such as gaining levels and purchasing equipment, it also integrated a fair amount of action-oriented stuff. In battle, you could input commands at the right moment during attacks to make your assault stronger, while also blunting the effects of enemy reprisals. While traveling the world, you could jump, which made dungeons feel like an amalgamation of Super Mario and Final Fantasy.

Apparently, Nintendo was really intrigued with this concept and really pleased with how Square's work paid off for them, as they've released a number of Mario-oriented RPGs over the years. In 2003 on the GameBoy Advance, the Mario & Luigi series began with Superstar Saga. While the graphics are more bright and cartoonish and Square wasn't involved, the similarities are there.

While traveling the world, Mario and Luigi will be able to jump around to both smack blocks with their heads, as well as progress through levels designed to provide light platforming challenges. In battle, the duo can time button taps to both enhance their attacks, as well as outright evade the moves of their foes. While a handful of enemies are most vulnerable to magical attacks, most of the duo's offensive comes from two attacks that should be familiar to fans of their action games — jumping and hammers. And sometimes both, as the two heroes will gain a few attacks relying on them teaming up to deliver a powerful blow.

Over the years, I've gone from a deep and unconditional love of JRPGs to feeling somewhat differently about them. Maybe my tastes have changed as time passes on, but I think a lot of this simply has to do with how so many of these games are so similar in structure, general plot and gameplay. After all, there's only so many times a person can control a team of idealistic young heroes as they take on an evil empire that likely has some of demonic presence secretly running the show from deep within the shadows before all those games start blending together. And there's only so many times one can pick up a game containing menu-based combat against various goblins and zombies without feeling like you've seen it all before.

Much like Super Mario RPG, Superstar Saga deftly avoids those pitfalls to feel like something different from the norm. Something that can grab the attention of a jaded long-time gamer who feels it all has been seen before. It's refreshing to play a game like this from time to time; if for no other reason than receive a reminder that not everyone blindly follows the leader.

The action is fun and high-stakes. If you don't take the time to learn enemy attacks and when to jump or use your hammer to avoid them, you'll be going through health-restoring mushrooms more quickly than you can earn the money to purchase them. However, develop enough skill at this and you'll be able to clear entire screens of foes without ever needing to access your inventory. Of course, some foes are more damaging than others and some possess attacks that are pretty tough to dodge consistently, so if you want to avoid damage, you'll need the same sort of knowledge and reflexes it takes to skillfully navigate a tough Super Mario platforming level unscathed.

The plot is far more whimsical than the average RPG. Mario and Luigi find themselves traveling from the Mushroom Kingdom to an adjoining land to battle the forces of the evil witch Cackletta and her second-in-command Fawful — a being whose level of competence is actually kind of shocking considering how utterly comical and bizarre he tends to act. That duo repeatedly attempts to kidnap Princess Peach in order to enact their evil plans for dominance, so you'll control the two plumbers across the many regions of the land in order to thwart those plans.

There's a really nice sense of progression in this game. Early on, you can only access a few places, but you'll gradually gain new abilities that unlock new areas to explore. You'll get a couple new jumps — one that allows you to jump higher and one that allows you to cover a lot of terrain at once. Your hammers smash rocks and also have differing effects when used on each brother that regularly come in useful in making progress through the game. Those magic spells also help you in this regard. One allows both brothers to move as one, while another causes them to dash very quickly.



This game is mostly fun and intuitive to play, with my main issues coming from stuff that happens towards the end. The game tends to feel perfectly balanced for a two-character team, which makes the penultimate dungeon kind of annoying due to how the brothers are separated for part of it. Especially since the enemies in that place create a notable difficulty spike from those you'd been fighting previously. The game then ends with a massive dungeon that's loaded with boss fights. It's not a horrible place, but everything there does kind of blend together. However, get through that stuff and you'll find the final boss provides a battle that's pure hell.

It provides back-to-back fights with the first one being fairly easy. The second starts with both brothers reduced to one hit point and, odds are, the boss getting first strike. Dodge that and you'll be able to heal and thrash it just like everything else, right? I'd laugh at the notion if I still wasn't somewhat traumatized. First off, you have to destroy three parts of its body to make the important one vulnerable for a few turns, during which time it auto-regenerates the destroyed parts and then heals them. Secondly, it possesses several attacks, most of which can hit multiple times, so your timing is going to have to be immaculate over three or four multi-hit attacks per round because they tend to be tough to consistently avoid. Thirdly, it either can buff itself or debuff you because there were times where one or both characters would take obscene amounts of damage if they got hit.

This led to me being stuck in a really long battle where I'd regularly have to avoid lots of attacks with virtually no margin for error because that whole buff-or-debuff thing made it so a character would collapse if hit more than two or three times. And, really, if he was hit even once, I'd have to waste a turn to heal him, so he could survive the next round. The game was a lot of fun, but this fight was all kinds of excruciating.

But it was a lot of fun getting to that point. Superstar Saga is the sort of JRPG that I could easily jump into and play for a little while on a daily basis without ever getting that "Is this thing ever going to end?" vibe. Sure, part of that might be because this isn't the longest game out there — taking me a bit over 20 hours to beat — but those feelings are more rooted in how fun it was to play. Adding action elements to battles, so you're doing more than simply scrolling through menus and passively watching your choices unfold, goes a long way towards making a game more interactive and rewarding to play. It might have ended on a bit of a down note for me, but the overall experience was well worth my time.

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (April 27, 2023) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.