Antihero

Took me almost a week to wrap this one up, and goddamnit, I'm satisfied! Super Mario RPG deserves all the love it gets. A great timed combat system, great music and visuals, and an enjoyable story all help make this game stand out as a great title in the late SNES library. My only real gripes - two of which are fixed in the remake, are the inventory and coin limit being way too small - are that darn 3-D maze in the sunken ship and the at times terrible depth perception during platforming.

I'll try the remake soonish, but Super Mario RPG was definitely a hell of a way to spend my week in terms of games to pass the time while I take time after Sly 2's ending, almost ready to hop into 3.

Super Mario RPG is such a great game. Got to Moleville today and I'm genuinely impressed by its pace. What do ya mean this is a JRPG that's only about 20ish hours in length?!

What a coincidence I finally get around to it when it turns 30. Usually, SNES era games aren't in my wheelhouse, but at the request of a good friend, I decided I'd give it a shot. What awaited me was a game that rewarded patience and learning the rhythm of its 40 levels, akin to some of my favorite games like Oddworld or the Xbox Ninja Gaiden series. Paired with its lush visuals and earwormy score by David Wise, Donkey Kong Country stands up as a bonafide classic, despite its frustrating lives and spaced out save points. At times, I would go back to Millstone Mayhem and do that trick akin to the infamous koopa stair in Super Mario Bros to make sure I even had enough lives, spending a majority learning the stages til I got their pieces down pat.

The sequel's gonna sit on my backlog, as I've got to finish the Sly trilogy and Custom Robo first before descending deep into the Falcom void for the Legend of Heroes series. But knocking out a game I never got past the second world of around the time I started my Cohost back in January, it feels nice.

So, I toughed it out. But before I did, I learned of that neat little 99 lives trick, which helped me learn the levels a lot more and have fun with it. Sadly, the lives don't save when you exit the game! But world 4 was a gigantic gauntlet. Starting with an ice level, then a level teaching you about these two types of ropes, leading into another frustrating ice level, then an intense underwater level before giving you a breather with an animal buddy gimmick level. After enduring all that? I'm motivated to tackle those last two worlds!

Donkey Kong Country is a game I'm glad I've revisited after starting it, then stopping around world 2. It's a game that made me realize how much playing games like Ninja Gaiden Black, Celeste, the Souls series, etc. taught me about patience and how even the toughest looking levels can be figured out with enough time of taking it slow and testing the waters. Here's to finishing the game tomorrow, streaming it to a friend and us having a laugh as I go through Donkey Kong's banana gathering adventure has been genuinely lovely.