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Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by thatguyif »

So, it's at this point in the game where the 3DS remake introduces the side story of Bowser's Minions, aka Minion Quest: The Search for Bowser. You can access it at any time through the Pause Menu.

It plays...interestingly? If you guys ever played Gratuitous Space Battles, it functions kind of like that, like some pseudo-form of RTS. You have a group of Minions led by a Captain, and they duke it out with you having very little control for the most part. The only things you can control are Minions occasionally committing special attacks (which appear as a red reticle on screen, from which you do a certain button press(es) to execute a special move that does extra damage) and the Captain executing Captain Commands, which you have a certain number of points to use and give your team help. Each victory raises EXP, which helps boost your team's strength. You can create multiple team formations based on different minions before each fight, who have different strengths and weaknesses based on the Power Triangle of Melee->Ranged->Flying.

The plot of Minion Quest runs in parallel to Superstar Saga, with an idiotic Goomba recovering and rallying Bowser's minions to save their lordship from Fawful. Several plot elements related to Superstar Saga are revealed throughout this parallel game. For example, the destruction of Beanbean Town, the aftermath of which we saw at the end of today's video, is actually shown in Minion Quest.

Other points worth mentioning that are remake changes:
  • Hammer is actually its own separate menu command in the remake, as opposed to a menu item in the Solo Command.
  • Hammer swing plays like the later M&L games. You have to time the wind-up of the hammer strike to get a max-power hit. When the hammer flashes, that's when you get an excellent state. You can fail this though.
  • With that said, there's no fail Hammer defense state like the one shown. You can actually hold down the hammer button for as long as possible. This is a later feature because making hammer defense require timing was considered a bit noxious.
  • The mine cart mini-game can be skipped after one go (I think) in the remake. After you say no, the old man will ask you if you just want to walk through the tunnel on your own. Say yes, and walk one screen to the right...to get to the end of the mine cart stage. Yeeeeeep
Also, can we stop with the GQ navel-gazing in this thread? It seems like it happens at every opportunity...
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Ashan »

Blivsey wrote: 4 years ago Hammers are seriously annoying to use in this game. Yes, even for someone who's been playing this for years. I still don't have the timing down. The remakes changed the timing for the better, so you don't have to worry about waiting too long on the defense swing.
Oh I completely disagree. This game is the only one that did hammers correctly as far as I'm concerned. The fact that they break if you wait too long is a very purposeful timing challenge, and without it you can just hold the button forever and you only have to time the release which might as well just be timing a button press.

They definitely have a learning curve, so raocow's initial struggles don't surprise me, but I think he'll get used to it shortly.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Grounder »

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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by FrozenQuills »

yeah the enemies outside of beanbean castle are hard on your first visit especially since you're learning how to defend with the hammer, and if you don't beeline straight for the castle you'll be taking a beating. I remember having the same issues as raocow.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by General_Urist »

In this episode: raocow ruins several hammers and gets temporarily lost on the journey to the not-a-power-plant

Man Kudos to raocow for figuring out how to stun enemies with hammer attacks on the overworld.

I do think hammer timing is finicky, especially on the defense. It can be gotten used to though. And yeah it is confusing how the same button both counters with jumping OR the hammer depending on context. IIRC Partners in Time would simplify this by having a and b do jump-counter, while (at least when the babies and adults were together) x and y did hammer-counter.

Just how do those aerial beanies hit harder than truck-kun when their ground cousins are so weaksauce?
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Reecer7 »

hey, out of all the places in the outskirts you can wander underlevelled, raocow didn't go anywhere half bad.

i picked up the game a week ago and spent it all blasting ahead of raocow, and i still have a hard time with the timing of those sharpeas specifically. it's way too precise for the first enemy you encounter with a hammer!
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Sebby19 »

It's a good thing raocow didn't go exploring the area north of the castle. The enemies up there are 3 times tougher than the upcoming boss battle.

I've never really had trouble with the hammer on defense, you only need to hold the button for 1 second, then release. But I will admit that future games are much easier, letting you hold the hammer for as long as you want, so you only need to worry about the release.

Hammers on the attack is the only thing in this game that has a damage range. So today the Bros. were doing 7, 8, or 9 damage, on average. Timing doesn't matter
Here's the base damage (or attack constant), for the bros. regular attacks:
-Mario Jump: x1.3 (Lucky = x2.3)
-Luigi Jump: x1 (Lucky = x2)
-Mario Hammer: x0.9/x1/x1.1 (Lucky = x2.1)
-Luigi Hammer: x1/x1.15/x1.3 (Lucky = x2.5)
As you can see, Mario is a slightly stronger jumper, but Luigi is a slightly stronger hammeror.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by thatguyif »

Soooo...now I've watched through more of the video...I feel like the issue early on was you deployed your hammers too late in defense. For most of the early enemies, you won't run into fail-hammer state if you deploy it too early.

More remake notes:
  • Beanbean International Airport is actually blocked further back in the remake. There'll be guards (like the ones you saw at the beginning of Hoohoo Mountain) who will block you near the first sign that directs you to the airport, saying an "incident" has occurred. I suspect part of this was to prevent you from going too far and hitting harder enemies (I think there's a speedrunning skip there too?)
  • I forgot to mention this at Hoohoo Mountain, but an addition to the remake was Heart Blocks, which you find in later M&L games. They function essentially like a free inn/Tent: Instant full heal of both HP and BP. There are Heart Blocks at Hoohoo Mountain (both in the town and at the summit next to the boss fight) and Beanbean Castle Town (Upper right corner).
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by ano0maly »

thatguyif wrote: 4 years ago

Also, can we stop with the GQ navel-gazing in this thread? It seems like it happens at every opportunity...

??

Anyway the good thing about the remake allowing you to hold the hammer indefinitely is that

the Starbeans Cafe item that gives you that benefit is replaced by an item that allows you to see the invisible bean blocks. Those are hard to find.

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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Shard1697 »

every time I play this game right after getting the hammers I psyche myself out thinking that I should hold the button when attacking with hammers, when instead you just tap at a certain (fairly early)time.

I don't know why you hold the button to 'charge' only when defending, it's a strange system.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by maou shoujo »

At this point, we've gotten as far I got when I played this. I remember getting to the mine carts, but not doing anything past it. Probably I got distracted by mini game obsession. I'm enjoying learning this game by watching! As someone who is very experienced with RPGs, I'm finding it interesting to see one from the eyes of someone who has barely played any ever.

To me it feels like raocow's biggest struggle is feeling insecure due to being in new territory. Today's video has a panicky tone of voice for most of it. I can see that we're already making progress with the learning curve though, both with pacing and with combat! Today's video was low-key in progress, mostly exploring the fields, but there's definitely progress with landing the hammer strikes by the end. I'd rather have low-key episodes like that or minigames than ones that push you too far and burn you out.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Sebby19 »

thatguyif wrote: 4 years agoBeanbean International Airport is actually blocked further back in the remake. There'll be guards (like the ones you saw at the beginning of Hoohoo Mountain) who will block you near the first sign that directs you to the airport, saying an "incident" has occurred. I suspect part of this was to prevent you from going too far and hitting harder enemies (I think there's a speedrunning skip there too?)
Those guards also block the area north of the castle, so you don't fight enemies like 12 levels higher than you are.

You know, I can't remember the last time raocow succeeded with Bounce Bros..
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by thatguyif »

ano0maly wrote: 4 years ago??
Best not to dwell on it too much.
Anyway the good thing about the remake allowing you to hold the hammer indefinitely is that

the Starbeans Cafe item that gives you that benefit is replaced by an item that allows you to see the invisible bean blocks. Those are hard to find.

That is a nice benefit. Those are a pain to get.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Quadro »

Don't worry rao, a lot of people have trouble with the hammer. It's not you. The timing is some kinda garbage sometimes.

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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Arctangent »

the real m&l starts now



also i find it funny how rao just sort of had a moment of psychic intuition on how the hammer usually works in a mario rpg
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Alice »

How in the world does someone so consistently mix up two buttons?
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Ditocoaf »

raocow, did you ever remap the A/B buttons? The game leans heavily on having the upper button always be the upper character, designed to push you in that direction. If your controller is the reverse of that, basically everything this game does will be "backwards". The game's actively trying to 'help' you do the reverse of what a standard SNES setup actually wants.

It's to the point where they have Mario standing above and to the right of Luigi in combat, to be even more physically like the GBA buttons.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Bean »

Alice wrote: 4 years agoHow in the world does someone so consistently mix up two buttons?
I'd say playing three games a day would be a key in doing that. Also doesn't help when you feel like the buttons should be somewhere different. See Mega Man 9's start and select buttons being reversed for proof of that.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Rixithechao »

raocow, if you can remap your inputs for just this LP (like, in the VBA settings or something) so the buttons on the gamepad match up with the corresponding GBA layout, please seriously consider doing so as soon as possible. It'd be better to make the change now and readjust over the course of the next few videos than hold off until later when the dodging gets more challenging.

Like, apologies for pushing this issue, but it's one thing to not want gameplay spoilers and another to stick to an unintuitive reversed control scheme that's clearly keeping you from learning the battle system and detracting from your enjoyment of the game :c

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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Ashan »

Does he have A/B mapped to the Nintendo B/Y respectively or something? Because yeah that would be really confusing
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by warpio »

Ashan wrote: 4 years ago
Blivsey wrote: 4 years ago Hammers are seriously annoying to use in this game. Yes, even for someone who's been playing this for years. I still don't have the timing down. The remakes changed the timing for the better, so you don't have to worry about waiting too long on the defense swing.
Oh I completely disagree. This game is the only one that did hammers correctly as far as I'm concerned. The fact that they break if you wait too long is a very purposeful timing challenge, and without it you can just hold the button forever and you only have to time the release which might as well just be timing a button press.
I started playing the remake myself and yeah, I agree that for THIS game at least, the extra difficulty with timing your hammer windup and swing is a good feature that should've been kept in the remake. The later games had much more complex enemy attacks so making the hammer move much simpler to pull off in those games made sense. But for Superstar Saga, the enemies were designed around having to carefully time your hammer swings, and without that element it feels a little too on the easy side.

I still prefer the remake overall for the various quality of life changes like the battle UI and everything just being much better, the terrain being much easier to make out where you're going, etc. And I personally have no nostalgia for the sprites of the GBA game like some people do, and I honestly think the graphics in the remake look really neat and that hammer thing is my only real complaint with it.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Ditocoaf »

Ashan wrote: 4 years ago Does he have A/B mapped to the Nintendo B/Y respectively or something? Because yeah that would be really confusing
I'd somehow picked up the idea that the SNES controller's A and B are in the reverse position from the GBA's A and B. As someone who's never owned a SNES, that seemed reasonable to me maybe.

I just looked it up, that's not the case, they're the same. So, idk where I got this idea and feel quite the fool.
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Arctangent »

oh yeah something i just remembered i wanted to say several days ago:

the control problems rao's having reminds me of how the pc port of skyrim made primary attack lmb and secondary attack rmb ... despite your character being unchangeably right-handed. it was extra annoying because a. dual wielding in that game has your secondary weapon do an attack that you would realistically expect from someone swinging with their off-hand ( i.e. a slower and less fluid one ) and b. if you could change it, it also involved inverting the menu controls, so pick your poison

because of that, anytime i even think about trying to mod or implement or whatever a dual wield system in a first person game, i always try to make it with the ability to toggle an option that'll swap which hand is assigned to the primary fire button. i mean honestly being able to choose your character's handedness is a really nice feature regardless, but you never realize how jarring it is use lmb to attack with a weapon in your right hand until you do so while holding another weapon in your left hand
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Re: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - Kouhai

Post by Chirei »

If it actually is the case that raocow jumbled the controls, then it MUST be changed now if he plans to play the sequel.

At that point, it will use ALL the face buttons, and the game will be near-unplayable if you map them to what they're not supposed to be.
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