This is going to be a quick one. It’s TTYD. It took 20 years to revisit what people frequently call out as the “best” Mario RPG, and it’s one of the lightest-touch re-releases Nintendo has done since they stopped selling ROMs directly. The diff between versions is incredibly restrained:

+ New Music
+ New Higher-Res Graphics (probably the original raw assets)
+ Minor Quality of Life changes (fast-swap is wonderful)
+ Minor (but important!) Script Improvements (Completely unambiguous representation)
- 30FPS (Game runs at 30, down from 60 on Gamecube)

They didn’t even bother calling it a “Remake” or a “Remaster” it’s basically just a port. I know there must have been more to it under the hood, but they didn’t bother putting a suffix on it.

So it’s literally just TTYD. Whatever you thought about TTYD, you will think about this.

Now… this is a safe space, right? Ok, well, I think TTYD might not actually be that good. Like, it’s good, but there’s a lot of really uncool filler. Chapter 3 is way too long, way too many fights, and it has mandatory failure which infuriates me. Like 90% of Chapter 6 is running back and forth on that train. Chapter 7 also prominently features a mandatory conversation quest where you have to speak to one specific NPC per world in order just to get the chapter started. This stuff all just feels like a chore, and it happens over and over and slows the game to a crawl.

The cast is too big and goes largely unused. You’re severely disincentivized to swap characters in combat, and the badge cost to remove that other cost is too high, so I just don’t do it most of the time. So like, Koops? Haven’t seen him since Chapter 1. Goombella? You’re here to tattle and that’s it.

Is it still somehow probably the best Paper Mario game? Uhhh… probably? But is it an objectively perfect game like SMRPG? No. Absolutely not. I’m not even sure it’s the second-best Mario RPG, that’s probably one of the Mario & Luigi games. Is it worth playing? Yeah, probably if you haven’t played it previously, or haven’t played it in 20 years or so.