A very solid game that has been overrated just a tad by the Gen X crowd. Personally love all the visual and audio enhancements in this remake (the SNES version is actually pretty fugly, imo and has not held up as well as other games from that era) and at its core this is just a pleasant adventure with good vibes and great pacing. Packed with a ton of great little secrets as well.

The story is really bog standard and doesn't do much of anything, to be honest. Mallow is great but Geno for as hyped as he is by fans doesn't end up very interesting. There are a few cute moments but it doesn't build into much and I find the Smithy gang to be throwaway antagonists.

The action command system is the weakest of maybe any Mario RPG here, it feels like the timing to press the button for better attacks is really unclear and not intuitive on a ton of the different moves. I suppose some people would like that more as it makes it harder to get better at it, but it feels like it's just hard because it's not intuitive which I'm not a fan of, and the feedback on what you need to change timing wise when you get it wrong is not as clear as later Mario RPGs either.

So basically it's a good time but it's no Thousand Year Door. But hey, what is.

...what is...