I played through the remake, it was pretty cool! Honestly I never expected to see this game, not only because of the whole licensing thing, but also because Mario RPG is just a strange one compared to every other mario game, and it always felt like it'd be like, nah they're not ever gonna go back to that. When I woke up that day and saw it on nintendo's youtube, I was just like "NO WAY! NO WAY! NOOOOOOOOOO WAYY"
There's a lot of interesting design changes they made, like how Mario tips his hat instead of making a peace sign. That's the one that really stands out to me, but there's other, smaller stuff too. However, I do quite like the improvements they've made to the battle system, and stuff like being able to swap to your inactive party members in case one of your guys takes a bad status effect or otherwise falls in battle is really cool, as is the triple move mechanic. It's also interesting how many things they changed in the localization/translation, but also how many things stayed the same. I did find it strange though with the cutscenes, closeups on the characters speaking, but yet they do not actually speak. I always find this kind of thing weird in games, and I've been seeing it more and more, especially in Nintendo games.
I think the only place the game really falls short is the performance. I assumed it was just my launch model switch, but there's apparently quite a few places in which the game just gets really choppy for no reason. I say "quite a few" but honestly, it's not that much. You just really, really feel it when it happens.
The post game stuff was pretty cool. I was initially disappointed by Culex's battle just using the sprite from the SNES, but the whole thing later on was quite satisfying. Granted, I still need to go back and beat that battle as well as do any other post game stuff (I've done a lot of the battles already, but some of them I had to look up strategies for because I just was getting creamed and didn't feel like figuring it out.)
The difficulty curve of the game is kinda weird too, though maybe it's because I played the game so much that the regular content is just something I know how to handle already, but I'd be interested to play through the original though to see if I could get through it as easily. However, I do feel like they made the game a bit easier, if not from modifying stats, then maybe the addition of the combo move and hitting nearby enemies with a powerful hit makes it easier too. I could see that change alone changing the flow of battle significantly to be in favor of the player, while the post game stuff is more designed around the new mechanics, so is a fair bit more challenging. Overall though, I don't think Mario RPG was ever intended to be a difficult game, but I'm glad to see it get more super bosses.
Overall the game was quite good. It doesn't totally replace the original in the way that, say, Metroid Prime Remaster does. However, I think it does a good job at what it sets out to do. I'll definitely be checking it out again sometime, but I can't say I wont ever go back to the original
