Be Excellent To Each Other

(Man, what a terrible game title that was, eh? And still is.)

It's on the Virtual Console. Here. Which is oddly the first time it has had a European release. I was rather disappointed when it didn't first time round, as the game looked quite appealing in all those screenshots that Super Play printed at the time. So, might give this one a shot, BUT I need to know from whether it involves too much of that leveling up business, or worse, any kind of 'grinding'. Because that's what lead me to give up the otherwise excellent Paper Mario games 2/3rds of the way through each time, sadly...

So, err, does it?

It does, kinda. Some battles (later on) need you to be a tad higher spec. than you would be just defeating the enemies that you'd come across readily.

When I started playing it for the first time on an emulator on the Xbox a few years back I recall hugely enjoying the first two-thirds of the game then it did definitely start to get a bit bogged down with selecting party member tactics and building individual skills up and such like.

Awww. I'll give it a miss then. Sworn off playing any games with 'leveling up' unless like say some of the modern Castlevania games it's not really noticeable. Life's too short for all that.

if you take out the leveling up stuff, what is left for you then? Story? in a mario game?

Gameplay somewhere? The Legend of Zelda series are RPGs and manage to be playable without archaic 'leveling up' nonsense... Do you really believe that there's nothing worthwhile in RPGs beyond repetitive hours 'leveling up'? I don't mind turn-based battle or anything, I like Advance Wars enough, but having to spend hours doing the same battles over and over, well, that can get stuffed. I'm quite relieved that platform games don't make you practice your character's jumping ability for hours on end in order to increase their leaps by a fraction of a pixel every half an hour...

The stories in the Paper Mario series (and Mario & Luigi on the GBA) have been pretty good and amusing stories. Super Paper Mario overdid it at times though. Still, would like to see the end of it someday.

Legend of Zelda aren't RPGs, they're action adventures. CAUSE I SAY SO.

But then, once you're a high level, the game becomes your playground.

Which, really, it should. Unlike Oblivion, where every fight is a fight for your life, and common thieves on the roads have enchanted glass armour.

You wish it was enchanted, cheap bastards.