He knows about timed hits! Let's play Super Mario RPG!

When last we left off at Let’s Play Super Mario RPG, we had made our way through the waterways to Tadpole Pond, and received our next task: To save Rose Town. Onwards, then…



To get to Rose Town, we have to pass through another of these short intermediary stages, Rose Way.



Most of Rose Way is a giant lake that can only be crossed via these yellow platforms. Mario hops on the first and begins making his way northwest.



Mario can’t move while the platforms are blue (not that he’d want to), but he can jump. The Starslaps in the lake will occasionally rise up an attack, but they can be avoided without much trouble.



At two points, we have to make detours through exits to the northwest and northeast. Although these rooms are a dead end and a loop, respectively, they’re required in order to proceed, as reentering the lake area from them remixes the directions the platforms move in, allowing forward progress.



It also allows us to briefly backtrack in order to pick up items, like this flower.

Shy Guys are the most common type of enemy in Rose Way. As awesome as Shy Guys are, they’re weak, and they give so little in terms of spoils that it’s not even worth the pain in my thumb it takes to kill them.

Come to think of it, Shy Guys haven’t had much of a role in the Mario RPGs, compared to other species. They had their own chapter in Paper Mario, of course, but they didn’t appear at all in Thousand-Year Door, and they’re only minor enemies here. The next Paper Mario game needs to feature a Shy Guy party member to rectify this egregious oversight.



Occasionally you’ll run across weirder enemy types as well, like Bandits, Starslaps, and spider-like Arachnes.



The second-to-last area in Rose Way contains five chests, one with a Mushroom, and four containing five coins each. These chests regenerate endlessly when you reenter, making this one of the easiest (if tedious) places to earn money in the early game. Towards the end we’ll have more money than we can possibly use, so this place loses what usefulness it has, but we’ll be going on a shopping spree in Rose Town, so we need to spend a bit of time here.

In the last area of Rose Way…



Yikes! It’s Bowser!

He’s not paying too much attention to us, though…

…He’s too busy marshalling his Koopa Troops for an assault on Smithy’s goons.

Seems unlikely they’ll be able to take back the Keep with fifteen guys, though.



That little sideshow taken care of, time to move on to Rose Town.



Rose Town has… a problem. Seems that arrows have been flying out of the forest, paralyzing whoever they happen to hit.

(You can actually get hit by the arrows yourself, although they’re programmed to avoid you. It doesn’t do anything, though.)



Well, gang, looks like we’ve got another mystery on our hands.

Over at the shop, we enter through the chimney in order to get at an out-of-reach chest inside.



Hidden treasure chest count: 05/39

Also in the shop is a hidden treasure chest. And to think, if these shopkeepers were as anal as the Mushroom Kingdom’s, we never would have gotten it!



The armor shop, in addition to offering armor upgrades in the form of the Thick line, is the first (and, for quite a while, only) place to sell the status effect prevention pins. For that reason, I like to grab a full set of each type before leaving. This costs a fair chunk of money (especially the Fearlesses), but you can always head back to Rose Way if you need a refill, and these Pins will be useful for almost the entire game. Most bosses only use status effects from a particular school, so we can completely cut them off with proper Pin selection.



I can’t even begin to discuss how nonsensical this plot is… This guy is stuck outside because he rigged his stairs to disappear at the flip of a switch. This seems like asking for it, in my opinion.

What we’re supposed to do is use the guy’s head as a stepping stone to get up to his house, then flip the switch to let him back in. We’re not going to, though, not yet. (I’ll leave you in suspense as to why.)



We are going to head up there, though, if only to ransack the guy’s treasure chests.

No, I think he’s gone because you turned off the stairs.



Hidden treasure chest count: 06/39

There’s also another hidden treasure chest floating over the bed…



There’s also another of these weird “behind house” guys up here.

No place else to go except the inn…



…Where, inside, a little kid is using his imagination. Unlike in real life, “Mario” is completely ineffectual, and “Bowser” gets away scot-free…



At least until Gaz (the kid) realizes he’s got a legend in his midst.

Gaz is quite skeptical at first, and Mario is forced to jump for the kid to establish his plumber credentials.

You can actually deny being Mario, and the story continues normally…



Gaz wastes no time in drafting Mario to participate in his little power trip, casting Mario as Bowser and whipping out his spiffy new Buzz Lightyear-esque action figure, Geno.



They tussle for a while…



And Gaz is forced to produce his secret weapon.



Hey, watch it, kid. You’ll put your eye out. Our somebody else’s…

Mario has survived bombs and walls of flame to this point, but a plastic fist is enough to render him bedridden.

That night…



A small, glowing star enters the inn and surveys the dolls. Realizing that all but one of them have already been signed on as PCs in this game, the spirit possesses the last remaining one – Geno – and grows to life size, ready to confront the evil in the woods.



…But, uh, not without a false start or two. Hey, if you were experiencing corporeality for the first time, you’d bang your head on low-hanging stairwells, too.



Seems Gaz somehow spotted the doll making off during the night. Mom doesn’t buy it, though, and takes her son aside to administer a savage beating. Mario steps outside, content that the cycle of domestic violence has been extended another generation.



After giving them a few minutes, we step back inside. The mother, perhaps hoping to keep us quiet, offers us free use of the inn for life. Never happened, lady.

If you stay at the inn before heading into the woods, Toad greets you with a Flower Tab.



Appears to be some conflicting reports on the whole “doll walking into the forest” story.



Still, we have no place else to go, so into the forest we go!



Despite its name, the Forest Maze is a fairly linear area, without much in the way of deviations from the main path. There are a few places where we have to go underground to continue, but even these are straight shots.



Hidden treasure chest count: 07/39

The first room also contains a hidden treasure chest containing a Kerokero Cola, the first of six sequestered somewhere in the forest.

Occasionally, you’ll find a Wiggler crawling out of the stumps. If you can bounce off one ten times in a row, you’ll snag a Frog Coin (shades of the old “infinite points” trick from Mario World), but this is pretty hard.



There are a bunch of Mushrooms just off the path in the Forest Maze. These are the same as regular Mushrooms, but some of them are actually Amanita enemies in disguise. Also, we’re just about to replace all our Mushroom with superior equivalents, so there’s not a lot of profit in collecting them at the moment.



Hidden treasure chest count: 08/39

Yup.



The Forest Maze is another place where I’m not fond of fighting. Status effects, fast enemies, enemies that take more than one hit to defeat… it’s the trifecta. Once we get three characters, we’ll begin fighting in earnest.



Hidden treasure chest count: 09/39
Hidden treasure chest count: 10/39
Hidden treasure chest count: 11/39

Once you encounter a field with seven stumps, explore each of them in turn. Inside, you’ll find three hidden treasure chests (one of which is empty), and a Wiggler which, when disturbed, will open a path to the north.

Hidden treasure chest count: 12/39

At the end of the long area with a Save Block, you can find a chest containing a Red Essence. The Red Essence, which can render one character completely invincible for the duration of three turns, is one of those items that would be much better if the item system was different. If items stacked, or if we had some kind of storage to hold things, the Essence might have a use. But they don’t, and we’re so far away from enemies that justify the Essence that we can’t see them with a telescope, so I can’t really feature wasting one of our precious item slots on it. This one will probably get sold.



Now for the actual maze part. The Forest Maze is your pretty typical “identical screen with four exits” maze, but the solution is pretty easy. You just have to watch for Geno, and follow him. In the only screen where he doesn’t appear, head right (bottom right), and you’ll make it to the end with no trouble.

First things first, though.



It took me forever to find this. I literally stumbled into it the first time, when looking for weird stuff in the forest. What happens is that the guy in the Rose Town with the stair problem will give us directions to it when we help him – but his directions blow chunks. They are completely unhelpful. I’ve heard that they’re intended to be read from Mario’s perspective, but that doesn’t work either, as I recall. Write it down: The path to the bonus room is up, left, down, down, left, and don’t let any stupid NPCs tell you different.



Onwards… After pushing through the brush (and equipping Wake Up Pins), Mario and Mallow happen upon a weird fellow who talks like Yoda…



Thank you, Captain Obvious.

The archer (named Bowyer) is having quite a good time, but Mario and Mallow want to crash his party.



When in doubt, Mario defaults back to reckless, indiscriminate violence. Before they can come up with an actual plan, events begin to move forward without them.



One of Bowyer’s Aeros enters bearing a Star Piece. Enter Geno!



Geno demands that Bowyer put his hands up and surrender the Star Piece, uh, peaceably, but Bowyer, being completely nuts, isn’t about to take this lying down.



Dialogue can be displayed only a single line at a time in battle screens, so this scene takes forever.

Bowyer grabs his Aeros and begins shooting wildly into the air. Yeah, that’ll show him.



Mario and Mallow, for their parts, have decided to join the fight at last on the side of the little blue guy. With arrows beginning to hit the dirt around them, they have no choice but to…



Charge!!!



Geno eventually gets fed up and fights back, but this only makes Bowyer mad. Things aren’t looking good…



…until you-know-who steps in.

We are quickly joined by Mallow. Gentlemen, I think we have… a party.



Bowyer, insulted at being ignored, finally begins the fight for real.



Geno brings with him a new type of Timed Hit: Charging. With his Geno Beam spell, the idea is to hold Y until three stars appear on the bottom-right of the screen, then release for massive damage.



Mallow also breaks out the Froggie Stick for the first time.



After a round, Bowyer bemoans the team for ganging up on him, and summons three buttons to even the odds.

Occasionally, Bowyer will shoot an arrow at one of the buttons, turning it “off”. This means that you can’t use any commands that require that button until Bowyer switches. I used to think that Bowyer always picked the button you’d used the most since the last time he changed the button, but the last several times I’ve played the game it’s been virtually random.

Obviously, you’ll want to attack with specials when he turns off A, and regular attacks when he turns off Y. If he turns off X (items)… you either need to use Mallow’s HP Rain for healing, or, if you’re out of FP, hope he switches it again in a hurry.



Mack was fire, but Bowyer is lightning. Bowyer’s most dangerous spell, by far, is this “Static E!” move. Geno comes with no armor or accessories, so “Static E!” wipes out more than half his HP.



Bowyer also has the single-target lightning spell, Bolt, and a single-target sleep spell called G’Night. Mario and Mallow are immune to the latter’s effects, but Geno again has no defense against it. (Fortunately, Bowyer didn’t use it against me this time around.)



Oops: Geno has bitten the dust. Thankfully we have a few Pick Me Ups lying around to revive him with.



Bowyer takes a lot of damage from Geno Beam and Super Jump, so as long as the Y button is free, you can pound on him. Mallow helps out with healing when necessary.

After a hard-fought battle, Bowyer finally goes down, and we pick up a ton of coins and a Flower Box – +5 to FP!



Mario also gets up to level 7 from the fight.



Now that things have finally calmed down, Geno has a chance to explain himself.



Mario and Mallow indicate that they don’t, which is odd, because Mario has been there before.

You know, this place.



Apparently the Star Road has other functions, besides letting Mario speedrun Super Mario World. It’s in charge of granting wishes.



Sadly, Smithy’s invasion has stopped the normal wish-granting operations – when Exor fell, it broke the Road into seven pieces. Things are starting to make sense.



The powers that be sent a celestial troubleshooter to chase down the broken pieces.



Now that the game’s subtitle has been explained, we know what we have to do. Two stars down, and five stars to go.

Whatever you say, chief.



Aren’t they pretty?



Geno joins the party permanently, as well.

You know how people in games usually have a specialty? Mario RPG has that too. Mallow is the caster. Bowser is the brute physical guy. The Princess is the healing person. And Geno…

Geno’s specialty is being better at everything than everybody. He is by far the fastest party member, almost always going first. He is by far the strongest offensive spellcaster, with the two most useful spells in the game. He has the only buff spell. His regular attacks are as good or better than Mario’s, second only to Bowser’s, until the very end of the game. His “weakness” is that he’s supposed to be a glass cannon, weaker on defense, but in practice he’s about as tough as Mario, who’s the definition of average. He has no weaknesses.

I love Geno. Yeah, he’s a shallow character, but so is everyone in this game, and his weapons and spells are supercool. If he’s not a playable character in the next Smash Bros. game I will be forced to begin crushing the skulls of babies. Kitten babies. Get on the horn, Sakurai. Yes I am one of those people leave me alone.



Once again, however, a flunky has eavesdropped on our conversations and is rushing back to Smithy to tattle. Maybe Mario’s total annihilation strategy has some merit.



Next time: From inside the earthen pipe

Absolutely fantastic update. You forgot to mention that if you were 11 when you first fought him, Bowyer is like the hardest boss ever, ever. until you get to Yaridovich

Meet our next Suikoden hero!

Speaking of Rosetown residents who "ask for it," they all have bullseyes on their "hats."

It always kind of bothered me when Mallow broke out the Bruce Lee line. Isn't Bruce Lee better known for his kicks and not his punches?

Now that's just racist. They can't help being from the "bullseye" ethnic group of the Mushroom Kingdom. I, for one, am impressed they have developed such a healthy community despite their long history of arrow-related oppression.

I think I need mushroom sensitivity training.

I think one of the best things about Geno is that his attacks come from the idea that he is a toy with spring loaded toy weapons. He shoots pellets from his fingers/elbow, or shoots his fists like we saw the toy do when the kid took out Mario.

It's like a soldier lugging around a giant, plastic missile-launcher and shooting an enemy soldier who's skull gets crushed by the giant, plastic, spring-loaded missile.

my mind is blown that there is more than one of these guys. I only ever knew about the Mushroom Kingdom guy!

What's weird is that one of the guys will pipe up as soon as you run into him, but the other you need to prompt like anyone else, making him harder to find.

I always figured the one in the Mushroom Kingdom was Luigi, since it would explain what he was doing before he decided to show up for the ending.

I haven't much to say about your latest update except:

a) Great work and

b) I love the Forest Maze Theme so much!

Also, this.

How do you pronounce that anyway? Heartotexclaquest?

I think Geno's real name is pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove", actually. And I'm pretty sure that nose is a fake polystyrene one.

That would have been far too silly to be on a game.

Now try the Japanese version.