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After watching a streamer play through Super Mario RPG, I decided that I'd give it another play. Even though I hadn't played it since it's United States release, though... I didn't just want to play through the original game. I wanted to play something a little different. Then, I saw this ROM hack. "Changed enemies?" "New items?" "Level cap raised to 50?!" That all sounded exciting and new, so I jumped on it with both feet! As I started playing the game, though, I quickly began to realize something...

I wasn't having fun. Like, at all.

To say that I was very disappointed with the "revitalized" battles it putting it lightly. Right away, I noticed that those promised changes to enemies... really weren't for the best. For starters, several enemies were given much higher defense, but considerably lower health... while some enemies were given significantly lower defense and noticeably higher health! There was just something aesthetically displeasing about doing 40 damage to one enemy and 400 damage to another, both in the same enemy formation, even if they both die in roughly the same amount of hits. On top of that, I was never able to finish a battle, and frequently failed to even kill a single enemy, within a round. I'm not saying that enemies should be pushovers, but I kind of expect my party to start cleaning house after they've fought every encounter in an area at least once. There were a lot of enemies that had their evasion cranked up to three or found times what it once was, too, which meant a lot of frustrating encounters full of missed attacks. Again, the occasional miss is fine, but when a party misses an enemy five times in a row, even though it can be hit... well, that doesn't seem very balanced, to me.

Early areas were rocky and annoying to push through, but the later battles were automatic, mostly. Just like in Vanilla, I ended up using Bowser for attacking and Peach for healing, chugging Energizers and sleepwalking through the latter-half of the game, despite the jump in difficulty somewhere between Seaside Town and Barrel Volcano. A prime example of this would be the Axem Rangers. Not only did they get a lot of buffs in the form more more strength and additional health, but the Axem Ranger mech, Blade, joined the fight and couldn't be targeted until Phase 2! In fact, active enemies that couldn't be targeted seemed like a recurring trend, in the later areas... Combine that with damage-sponge enemies, overpowered attacks that the player can't defend against or death-counters, and enemies with mismatched levels and stats, and you have one very annoying and confusing experience.

On that note, I could rarely get my head around the weird animations and changed timing of a lot of attacks. It was pretty bad and seemed lazily implemented, a lot of the time. For example, a lot of enemies would go through their full attack animation, then suddenly chuck a rock, or spit a slime bubble, which really made it hard to gauge when to do a Timed Block – which is a big necessity, what with all the oodles of damage enemies do! It also seemed like a vast majority of enemies either got additional attacks per-turn, counter-attacks, or sometimes both! The counter-attacks didn't make a lot of sense, either, as enemies would often just attack anyone, rather than the character that attacked them. I also found it a little disconcerting that some enemies would just randomly attack themselves for seemingly no reason and without any explanation. Are they confused? It'd be nice to know, even if it were just in the Psychopath enemy thought messages.

Speaking of which, every enemy's Psychopath message has been changed. Some enemies tell the player their weaknesses while others give hints on what one shouldn't use on them. While that's kind of clever, it also means that Mallow is going to be a permanent fixture of the party throughout the game. Granted, nothing's stopping players from just figuring things out for themselves. Most enemies can even be defeated by just attacking. However, there were several instances – including one boss – that could have used some context clues, since Mallow was never in my party past a certain point.

As far as equipment goes, I guess everything is done alright. I really have a problem with the new descriptions, though. They are really-really dry! In the base game, part of the fun of getting new equipment was reading the flavor text and trying to make sense of some of the weird descriptions. Here? Raw numbers. Numbers that aren't even necessary, I might add. The main numbers are already there, just like they were in the base game, so why put them in the item descriptions? Yeah, it's nice to know when something affects one's speed, since that's never listed in the Equip screen, but still... Everything is just boring, this way.

Also... I want to mention that with all the changes made, it feels like the Lazy Shell armor – which is supposed to make any party member nigh-invincible at the cost of attack and speed – got the short end of the stick. When I put it on Peach, it didn't seem to make any difference, compared to the armor I gave her from Nimbus Land, aside from the fact her physical attack hit rock-bottom. Maybe, I was just using it wrong...?

There are a couple of moments where things glitch, such as when the Magikoopa uses its magic in Rose Way. There's also more-than-a-few naming inconsistencies, such as renamed enemies and characters keeping their Vanilla names in cutscenes ("Shy Away" instead of "Beezo," "Toadstool" instead of "Peach," etc.), and even some items being misnamed ("Huge Shell," "Crazy Shell," "Lazy Shell..."). It's really unprofessional and confusing, especially after five major revisions of this thing being produced. I was quite disappointed.

The author claims this mod was balanced, but I'm really not sure about that. These promised changes mostly made my experience with the game frustrating and I really didn't find anything worth playing for. Some of the new items are kind of neat, but beyond that? This feels like either an extensive tech demo, or a "hard mode" hack that went a tad bit overboard – especially with the super-powered optional bosses, whom I didn't try to fight more than one time at maximum level only to get handily spanked by both of them.

I do not recommend this because I feel the hack is just too "hard" and really doesn't bring anything terribly interesting to the game. But, I compliment the creator for going to all the effort to bring something new to the table.

Not a bad hack. It's very challenging for the most part, but a lot of things seem very out of line and very cheap; For example the constantly changing battle animations and the "white ball of one shot" on almost every boss.

I like that this hack makes you think about timing more so than anything, but a lot of the attacks on your party will just go through due to the opponent having like 10 turns in a row before you can go. If you don't have an inventory half-full of pick-me-ups then you can not progress most likely(unless you mastered perfect guarding on some things).

Oh... And MegaSmilax is bugged and requires a code to get passed him. To break it down. This is okay, just really cheap in a lot of areas. Own all.

I've played this game so many times, but it was always pretty easy-probably because it was made back in the day when I was a kid and not very good at RPGs (or games in general). Over the years, I've gained a better appreciated for the game content, but the gameplay has gotten so much easier for me to breeze through.

This hack fixes that. Stat-wise, leveling up and enemy progression are pretty well balanced (although the secret and late-game bosses are a bit ridiculous), and the equipment changes gave even a SMRPG vet like myself some surprises to look forward to. I don't think I ever bothered to learn how to time my defenses before, but it is pretty much required to survive most of this hack, especially some of the bosses.

I'd recommend playing through SMRPG once without the hack, but if you've played it before but want more of a challenge, definitely try this hack out.

This is a fairly good hack, it gave me something to play for a while. It is good but still, you spend your time playing a better hack.