A difficulty hack that also adds dozens of post-game bosses and some new areas.

• New specials for every character, along with most items and accessories being reworked.
• The damage formula is brand new and has much bigger numbers.
• New status effects and elements with a much bigger focus on elemental weaknesses.
• Dozens and dozens of new boss battles borrowing from Final Fantasy and Pokemon primarily.
• Comes in a normal and hard mode version.
• Attacks come with two timed hits with hitting both often required to do sufficient damage.

There are very few SMRPG ROM hacks out there, and this is one of the few big ones and does a lot to the game in terms of areas, difficulty, and battle system. It comes in two difficulty editions, Normal and Hard. I played through on Normal and while it is very hard at some point, I feel that most of the difficulty is not knowing exactly when to do the post-game bosses. Difficulty was mostly around not having quite strong enough equipment yet, which was solved by going in a different direction. In the main game path, I did not ever feel the need to grind as clever playing got through all of the standard bosses without issue.

The base game plays somewhat similarly through the main story, with some new NPCs such as Luigi and Daisy peppered throughout. I did like the gimmick of individual members of the Axem Rangers challenging you at various points earlier in the story as well. Some of the writing for these feels a bit off, but overall its integrated fairly well. Some areas are excised entirely (pipe vault and yo'ster isle replaced with post-game areas), and others are truncated, removing entire rooms and sections in order to free up their space and use their designs or other post-game content.

Gameplay-wise, the first thing you deal with is double timed hits where you have to hit the action button twice at different points for standard attacks in order to do significant damage. This can be hard to figure it out at first, and the game forces you in its initial tutorial to get enough of these in a row to finish a battle. This can be a sticking point though, I had to attempt the battle 6 or 7 times before I was able to beat it, this tutorial I found harder than much of the earlier game, which is a credit to it making sure I could perform the timings.

Bosses are altered, often by having changes to their phases or different minions than they do in the original and enemies have a wider variety of magical spells to attack with. Properly hitting weaknesses is a huge help in boss battles, but there is no Psychopath equivalent meaning you will have to use trial and error or a reference to the game's wiki to see for sure which elements you'll need to best take them on.

The damage formulas are rewritten so that all numbers are much higher, which I don't love as I always enjoyed the Mario RPG's focus on lower numbers, but with the higher level cap (50), and sheer number of high powered superbosses I see why the developer chose to do this. While the game is known for its difficulty,

One thing I really do not understand is the change to the textbox color, the blue textboxes are incredibly hard on the eyes and difficult to read. I grew used to it, but I wish there was a way to revert this to the original color or another one had been chosen.

Once you beat Smithy, instead of seeing the credits, you are taken to the post game where you have dozens of superbosses, godbosses, pokemon, and other challenges that make up the bulk of the actual game. Luigi and Frogfucius give you hints as to where to go next, but I found myself needing to reference the wiki, particularly when it came to understanding if I'm trying to bite off more than I could chew. Luigi's advice does cover most of the earlier steps but towards the end of each “phase” of the endgame I found myself a bit confused about where to put my focus.

These bosses are tricky, often having immunity gimmicks, high damage outputs, and other tricks that put your knowledge of the new mechanics to the test. As you beat them you get new equipment and items you'll need to keep playing the game. Since you'll have hit the level cap at this point, leveling up is now mostly a matter of gaining access to new tiers of powerful equipment with you having your party immune to all status effects, quartering elemental damage, getting two turns, and autoreviving once per battle by the end of it.

Final Fantasy bosses make up the bulk of the post-game along with capturing legendary pokemon using pokeball items, with guest appearances from other franchises such as Magus from Chrono Trigger and the final secret boss being a Kingdom Hearts character. I enjoyed the variety of bosses, but once I realized the correct order to face them in, it was not nearly as hard as it first seemed due to the prevalence of powerful items, equipment, and spells. I could use a very similar party setup and strategy for most of them. Even the final secret super godboss that negates some of the shortcut defensive items I was able to beat on my first attempt.

I did still have a great time with the postgame and enjoyed seeing all the new twists on one of my favorite games. If you want a new Super Mario RPG experience, this is a good choice and definitely worth your time. I did play this on a flashcart on a CRT though, which went much better than my prior emulator attempts at this game, I don't know if that's psychological or if it actually made the timings easier. I will probably play this again some day on hard mode to just see what that is like.

Score: 5/7 Stars