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This hack is like SMRPG Armageddon with less emphasis on getting your timing perfectly right every time. It's substantially harder than the original, with lots of new areas to explore and new bosses to fight, particularly in the end. There are some super end game items that will break the game for you, but you're free to not use them if you want a challenge.

There are a ton of music and sprite changes, and some actual choices to make when selecting gear. You can choose to gear Bowser as a magic user, for example, and you have gear choices to grant resistances. Spells have been moved around between characters and levels to put larger, more impactful spells later, and to make them better fit the character's theme.

As an aside, I would recommend ignoring reviews from beta testers that clearly have an agenda or talk about people being unable to take a joke. One can probably assume there is drama there unrelated to the hack itself. Suffice to say if someone posts numerous videos trying to speed run a game, they probably enjoyed it.

I've played through this game start to finish more times than any other ROM hack. It has transformed enough since earlier revisions that it's been at least two entirely different games in its existence, always fun and always improving.

Playable character palettes have been tastefully changed or touched up. Characters are given new or changed abilities accompanied by icons indicating the type of elemental damage dealt which are well explained and simple enough for even a child to understand.

Players will also acquire loads of brand new, powerful equipment and items. Use it to defeat a wide variety of postgame bosses (and boss rushes) or challenge yourself by not using any of it at all. The choice is yours.

For full context, a recent negative review was left by a dedicated speed runner who criticized the elemental icons. The creator responded to him by offering to have him submit his own designs for him to consider, and provided a list of specifications and limitations to consider. The critic then accused the author of overreacting to "a joke," to which other community members correctly commented that his criticisms sounded nothing like a joke. The critic then attacked the other community members, accusing them of having no sense of humor. Perhaps coincidentally, he left a negative review of this hack two days later, after dedicating over a year to routing the game, speed-running it and posting many public videos of his gameplay. So take from that what you will.

If you enjoy playing Super Mario RPG and you're curious, you definitely should play this game. I would imagine most people who start this game would play it to completion, and they would be satisfied. With many fun surprises, additions and cameos at or near the end and along the way, Super Luigi RPG Star Powered is definitely worth your time. So much that when I questioned whether I should play through it a fourth time from start to finish, another user razzed me about not giving "a great game" another playthrough. And in this case he was right, which made it more odd to see him leave a negative review.

When V6 comes out it will have a normal mode and a hard mode a la Armageddon. Well... hard isn't hard. Its pretty easy. Did the whole thing while beta testing without armor or accessories. The only thing that can't be beat without armor or accessories is the boss rush. Was kind of a bummer seeing how easy it was which is a bad thing in my books. Maybe if hard mode actually becomes hard, I can recommend it but that is unlikely to happen with absent beta testers now.

Its a nice hack with some questionable design choices that were completely unneeded/worse from previous versions.

Also don't joke about anything about the hack. Someone doesn't know what a very obvious joke is and will take it the wrong way.

Thank you for creating this hack. I can tell it was a labor of love, and I am glad that creating it got you through tough times.

I loved the new abilities for each character, as well as the way the elemental system was revamped. The post-game had loads of interesting bosses and equipment that I had fun searching for. It feels like each character has unique items and moves that allow them to shine in different fights.

I think the color palette changes were hit or miss, but I appreciate them all the same. You even changed dialogue to fit some of the new characters or events.

Overall, I thought it was a solid hack. Nice job!

TLDR: Very accessible with loads of new content. Definitely recommend to all types of SMRPG fans!

Pros:

• Plenty of new content (spells, enemies, bosses, items, weapons, balancing, etc...)
• Good quality new sprites and music
• Accessible difficulty level for most/all SMRPG fans (not including post-game content)
• Newly balanced stats, characters, etc...
• More engaging combat with emphasis on elements and buffs/debuffs
• Several QoL changes (detailed in ReadMe/hack description)
• Excellent post-game content that can be done in any order (mostly)

Cons:

• Had a few bugs/game freezes during the post-game; there may be a few more
• Text/background color choice hurt my eyes (light blue on dark blue)
• Some annoying flashing/sfx during some spells/animations

If the aesthetic cons I listed bother you, they are pretty easy to fix using the LazyShell editor. I had no experience with it prior and was able to figure it out.

Was not expecting it to come to this point. Many versions have been released. Been following this hack for a while and wow, it has truly progressed. It's really come into being its own project at this point and I honestly see it as a must have version of this game right up their with Super Mario RPG Armageddon and Super Mario RPG Plus. The hard work shows. Lots of new content here for RPG and Mario fans to dig into. Might need to make an easy mode for it. I'm halfway in and will update when I finish.

I played this game once more on this newest version, and a few things have changed. The HP stat now sits between 400 and 500 at level 30, with the endgame fights adjusted accordingly. There are a few more new enemies and yet more guests from Final Fantasy since 2.0. The party's spells have more elemental variety than ever (a tiny bit too much, even: Geno really doesn't need Power Star) and notably Bowser and especially Mallow have been buffed considerably both in their spell list and stat-wise: for those who don't like to play with Peach because Group Hug is broken as usual, I can certainly recommend Mallow in some of the postgame fights, and Bowser is even more solid than usual. Yes, there are postgame fights, after you beat Smithy the game tells you where to find everything and boots you into Toad Town instead of playing the credits.

I had 2 major issues with 2.0: The second combat room, now christened Superboss Rush, and the inefficacy of most spells in the face of superior physical power.

For the first one, it is now being kept separate from the rest, and it is accessed from Kamek's room after you beat him (there's a side room on the right); on the other hand, no one tells you what that new shiny room to the right is when you first get there, so it's bound to cause a reset to the last savepoint if you're entering at any level that isn't 30. The tiny bird is still there as the first thing you fight and it still attacks you with Ultima on turn 1, causing an immediate wipe. Also the quiz rooms don't exist anymore and the remaining 3 rooms have been crammed together in some sort of mini-gauntlet. The final gear, weapons included, is now simply buyable in Croco's Shop after you clear this gauntlet.

For the second one, I made sure to play with a good mix of physical and magical damage in this version, on account of Luigi's massively buffed spells (they all ignore defense, I'll come back to that), and actually had a ton of fun. Bowser is now an elemental and status master, and even has a defense piercing attack of his own that scales well and does very good damage for a fairly steep cost.

So, steps were taken to address these issues, and it made for a better experience overall. Of course, not everything is perfect yet.

The greatest new issue this time around is that the author has decided to experiment with giving the player defense piercing attacks. This hack occasionally inflates the HP pools of bosses, and piercing defense is a solution, but not a perfect one.

The problem lies in Luigi's thunder-based attacks. They do massive damage to thunder-weak enemies, and still very high damage against neutral enemies. In a few occasions the boss would only get off one or two attacks before dying. The worst offender is the final spell he learns, Hyper Thunder: you know how I praised Bowser's final spell earlier? It's like that, but with 200 magic power behind the spell, Luigi hits for twice the damage Bowser does for 31 FP against anything that isn't immune to thunder.

Very few things in the endgame aren't weak to Thunder and that makes it worse. Jinx 3 is weak to Thunder. You know, that one fight where he has 4000 HP and splits into 6 clones after a while? Super Thunder was doing 800 damage per turn because for some reason his final form is weak to that (not the author's fault here, this is vanilla), and I won at level 15 with a couple of Red Essences on Luigi. Had I grinded to level 30 for him like in the previous versions, it would have taken 3 turns instead of 6, and one less Red Essence. Hyper Thunder does, and I'm not kidding, 2000+ damage when you hit the right target with it and have Attack Up, easily invalidating any other attack.

Other than this, there are a couple of problematic spells in the early to midgame that do very high damage: Electro Orb and Iceberg, with magic power alone, can almost KO a party member that doesn't resist the element. My advice here is to try and fight enemies somewhat often, and learn Geno Light before entering Land's End, and I think you'll be fine.

Every other issue I can think of is minor and has already been brought to the author's attention along with everything I said here, and should be addressed in the next version. What I said in my previous review still stands: the difficulty is overall slightly higher than vanilla but if you're good enough at the game you shouldn't have much trouble. And despite everything I said, I reiterate, it was a better experience than 2.0: I used everything in my arsenal (and not a lot of Daisy until the end of the game) and had a lot of fun so I'm still going to recommend this hack.

This hack is one heck of a mess. And that's mostly due to its poorly-balanced difficulty from beggining to end.

It's either laughably easy with enemy attacks that barely does damage, or full of d*ck moves with those many MANY one-hit kill spells from regular enemies. Yes, you read that right : Some of the REGULAR enemies have broken spells that can wipe out your entire team in one hit. Unfair difficulty at its finest.

If you really want to play this : Use savestates. Game Overs can (and mostly will) happen. Anywhere. ANYTIME.

The Good:

• The additional boss fights scattered through the main adventure are neat, and difficulty is tuned well to the areas you find them in.
• Enemy changes are fun, and nothing felt extremely busted
• Mario/Luigi starting with Psychopath (now renamed 'Check') is good, as it means you always have it in the party
• Frog Coin farming has been made obsolete, as an NPC that gives you a frog coin in the original game now maxes out your Frog Coins to 999 instead.
• New super bosses have been added to the game, and are pretty neat concepts!

The Bad:

• There are new pieces of equipment that the hack tells you nothing about what they do. I opened the game up in Lazy Shell after completing it and was shocked to find out what some equipment like the Doll did.
• Fire Drive (replacement for the old 'Hammer' weapon) describes itself as a Fire Element weapon. It is not. It has no element. I'm not sure why the effort was made to edit it like this, if it wasn't going to get the elemental change.
• I'm really not sure why the final levels give such absurd stat boosts. The game and its' difficulty up to that point were fine, but the level 27-30 boosts just make the final bosses all a joke. Besides a couple super bosses spamming defense-ignoring moves that require 500+ health (and let's be fair, those spells could just get reduced power), nothing really warrants getting maxed out defenses or 800+ HP on the entire party.
• Game balance is even more wonky than the original. All the broken equipment is as broken as ever, and available in the same spots (Looking at you Safety Ring). Heck some items are even more broken, like Troopa Pin! The Super Suit (now renamed Ultra Suit) is also available to purchase as soon as you reach Seaside Town, and it removes any difficulty in the game the same as always.

The Middling:

• The recolors are just kinda of bizarre. Not even bad, I just don't care for them.
• A new armor, available in Seaside Town, causes your magic defense value to display a weird symbol in the hundreds slot. I'm assuming this is an overflow issue due to being reduced below zero, but I didn't test it out to see if my magic defense was actually massive.
• All the super bosses have WAY too much HP. Besides the fact that Check fails to properly display enemy HP above 9999, none of these bosses have gimmicks that really make fighting them for the extra 50 turns worthwhile.
• A lot of player spells have gotten changes to their elements, and they are not communicated to the player at all. Telling the player that Star Jump is now a Jump-elemental attack is extremely important for helping them understand why the boss is immune to it.

Overall: I really liked this hack. I know I put a lot of less-than-positive things up there but I really enjoyed this game from start to finish. Any hack that manages to keep Mallow a relevant and contributing party member is a winner in my book, and he managed to be my primary damage dealer for the majority of the game. Definitely worth giving the game a shot if you're looking to a moderate changeup to the original game, it's very much a fresh coat of paint for a game that was already fantastic.