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With the recent anniversary of Super Mario RPG, I figured that it would be a good time to give them game another playthrough. I remember the retail experience really well, so I wanted to play a romhack that would breathe some new life into the experience. After some simple Google searching for the best hacks, I noticed that Armageddon was near the top of a lot of lists, so I thought that I'd give it a shot.

As someone who's on the extreme end of photosensitivity and is prone to epileptic seizures, I was forced to quit playing within the first 30 minutes.

The hack authors added an additional timed button press to attacks, which I thought was interesting, until I saw that successfully triggering the second timed attack causes the screen to flash a harsh white. I immediately knew that this was going to be an issue, so I thought, well maybe I can enjoy the experience without the extra button press. Sure, I'd be doing less damage, but I wouldn't risk harming myself. The problem is, the game is entirely balanced around the insane extra damage attributed to that additional hit.

For some reason, the authors thought that inflating the values across the board in the game for bigger generic JRPG numbers was a good thing. The issue with that is you're essentially forced to use the additional timed hit (along with accompanying blinding flash) in order to stand a fair chance in battle, or spend the entire experience farming for coins to buy the consumables to survive because every single battle for the entire game would be artificially prolonged due to the extreme importance of that additional timed attack.

To make matters worse, the hack authors arbitrarily decided to change the text box color. If I had to wager a guess, this decision was made to further set the hack apart from the original game. The problem is, the text box is a dark blue, with black letters that have a navy border, which muddies text and strains the eyes. And one of the worst things that someone who is photosensitive can experience is having their eyes adjust to darkness which is hard to read, and then suddenly being blinded at the extreme opposite end by blazing white flashes during combat.

If you're photosensitive, prone to seizures, or suffer from chronic migraines, avoid this hack at all costs. This hack would suffer absolutely nothing by changing the text box back to the original color and by severely toning down or outright removing the added flash effects that weren't in the original game.

Edit: After the mine the game increased in difficulty significantly. After the mine and fighting Croco it becomes a tough challenge if you are not used to this hack, even if you have already played the previous versions. If you are a casual player, it will still be a good challenge for those who know how to enjoy it. I will not delete my previous review so that you can see the difference after several days of playing the game - the truth is that it is still as good as it has always been for more than 12 years.

I come from many years of playing this hack and it was always difficult, with the separation of difficulties, I don't know if the normal difficulty is just to see the game or it is unbalanced, It's getting even much easier for me than the normal version, to the point of defeating strong bosses in 5 turns, I go into the mine with Croco and I destroyed him in 4 or 5 turns, it did absolutely nothing to me and it was quite disappointing, bowyer It was also extremely easy, that's why I don't know if the normal difficulty is only for exploring or the difficult one for fighting, I still have a doubt, I'm going to the mine but I think I'll start The difficult version because I have played the hack many times but it has never been so easy for me

It should be noted that I didn't play version 9, so I don't know if there was any change from the previous ones.

Even so, it continues and will be my favorite hack ever, it makes me very nostalgic to play The DarkKefka and Doom hack.

This is objectively the best Mario RPG hack out there. (Except in the funny department - that will always belong to Mario is a Drug Addict!) I made an account just to sound like a raving lunatic for this hack. You clearly put in a jaw-dropping amount of effort, and that's not something that should go ignored. Hard work shows through. Having well over five-hundred hacks under my belt at this point (single life), I have to put this within my top 10, MAYBE even top 5. I have little to no criticisms, and any suggestions I have for improvement are likely not even possible in the first place. I fancy myself a bit of an INternet CELebrity (you catch that?) so that's saying something coming from me, normally I have nothing but smack to talk. Whoever seeks to top this hack will have a long, difficult road ahead of them. I had to rewrite this several times to avoid spoilers, but I know you wanted to hear someone say this so here goes: "It struck a note of terror in my heart when I saw Jynx punch a certain something out of the air" (You know what you did, you arse.) My only request is that you give us ONE more frame's worth of chance to block during the FINAL FINAL battle (not smithy, not jynx, you know who) Just ONE more frame. That's all we're asking, man. I've recently adopted a policy of not save-scumming but had to break that, of course on the final battle. I was almost proud of myself for once... ...Ok fine, I'll just get good. Keep it the way it is. **** no I'm not playing hard mode.

Where to begin? Super Mario RPG is a nostalgic, beloved game by many, and many AAA companies struggle to capture that charm with unlimited capabilities and a huge team. SMRPG Armageddon (SMRPGA) manages to stay true to the vision that SMRPG Classic developed through its story telling and beloved characters, while simultaneously updating the battle system to a much more modern feeling one.

Make no mistake, SMRPG Classic is far from a "hard" game, and is very generous in its entirety, with both items and difficulty. This is by no means a bad thing, but as people grow, so too do games. SMRPGA certainly caters to an audience that is familiar with the base game, but does everything to welcome newcomers to the series as well. The sheer number of inclusions (enemies, bosses, items, events, NPCS, text) is staggering, and none of it feels haphazardly thrown in. Every battle, every item, every strategy feels lovingly crafted. By virtue of this being version 10, you can already tell that an uncountable number of hours of testing, re-testing, and finalizing went into every inch of the game.

The difficulty curve, while steep, falls short of being the harsh wall that some modern games tout, such as Dark Souls, or any number of 4x games. That's part of the appeal of SMRPGA, and it wears that badge with pride. Starting from the beginning tutorial battle, SMRPGA lets you know that this is a more serious experience, but at the same time does not punish you for failing. Revivals are instantaneous, and you lose no progress, sans time. This is in no way, shape, or form a negative thing, either! It is through this process of foes and revivals that we get to the crux of SMRPGA's philosophy: experimentation.

To me, this is what SMRPGA is about. Items feel unique, and there are plenty of boons that come with drawbacks. Maybe you gain a ton of attack, but now you're weak to fire damage, encouraging you to learn a fight inside and out to eek out a win. Maybe you decide that you want a complete tank of a healer, fighting a war of attrition against an unstoppable foe. At the risk of revealing a slight spoiler, later in the game, you gain the ability to specialize characters however you desire. No character is locked into any one playstyle, and fans of SMRPG Classic will have a fun puzzle of breaking their preconceived notions of how a character should play (Magic based Bowser? Yes please!).

SMRPGA takes pride in itself in the form of its endgame. The original story feels tight, and complete, while being a breath of fresh air to the classic formula, and if it stopped at Smithy, I would still leave happy. Instead, you gain a plethora of challenges and fights that extend an already enjoyable experience even further. It allows you the freedom to face a boss, realize how they act, and adapt your own playstyle and strategies.

In the modern world, we tend to be spoiled by the sheer number of romhacks available for popular, older games (Super Mario World springs to mind). SMRPG doesn't have the widespread availability of an endless supply of hacks, but what it does have is SMRPGA. There can be no doubt of the love, time, and dedication poured into this deceptively good romhack.

tl;dr SMRPGA is a complete overhaul of an already enjoyable experience, and somehow brings its own flavor into an already existing world, seamlessly, while at the same time feeling fresh, new, and exciting.

Super mario rpg armageddon is in my opinion, the best way to play super mario RPG. Normal mode is a great time where you don't need to grind and can go with the flow and is the version you should play if it's your first time playing armageddon. They replaced some bosses, added and few and added a second timing but at the core the game is still the same. 2nd timing is when you basic attack instead of being 1 timing for the double attack there's 2 and the 2nd one does much more damage.

Comparing the beginning of the hack to the end is night and day. If you have a means of loading completed game data to enjoy all the custom bosses and challenges it has scattered around the world.

Initial stages including the intro can lead to many deaths requiring a start over since save points haven't been introduced yet. The early areas are very grind heavy, with exp rewards not matching the difficulty of battles. You'll find fighting goombas is the best way to progress initially.

New strategies involve using items given whenever you hit a wall. Back up saves recommended. gave you earlier on this boss'. Bandit's way wasn't much better. There's an announcement that power stars were removed from the game, to give you an idea of the grind ahead.

Play on PC, use save states, and fast forward to burst through to any new content. Bandit's way has elixir drops in the last area.

Armageddon is a massive hack that adds a ton of new content to one of the best RPGs ever made!

Do yourself a favor and play v10 normal mode for the best experience! (or hard mode if you've already played normal and/or if you hate yourself)

I can also recommend playing some of the older versions to see how the hack changed throughout its 10 years of development.

The quality level of this romhack is unrivaled. Not only does it make the base game more interesting (for your 100th playthrough) but adds a ton of new items and content into end game. I feel like I'm playing my favorite game again for the 1st time, cannot recommend this enough. Bravo to the creators.

This is a really good ROM Hack of a game that one of the creators wants to make a sequel to as his final game. Unfortunately, there's one complaint I have, and that's the fact that Luigi and Princess Daisy are NPCs instead of optional party members. Other than that, it's fun to play, especially on Normal difficulty.

The definitive version of SMRPG for me

This hack adds some challenge, tons of new bosses, and polish to a game that I loved way back when I was younger.

There is a Normal Mode and a Hard Mode. Normal is the difficulty I recommend for everyone unless you want an insane challenge right off the bat. It's harder than vanilla SMRPG but has a fantastic difficulty curve that never reaches a level I'd call "insane." Hard is more difficult is a variety of ways, the main ones being that enemies hit much harder (you need to block pretty well) and a lot of the more OP stuff in Normal is toned down to be more balanced, which forces you to really experiment and find ideal strategies.

The added content... there's so much of it. You'll be hunting more bosses from other classic franchises (mostly from 2 in particular) than you'll know what to do with. Most of them have their own unique music themes as well. The majority of them can only be fought after Smithy, so if you wanted more stuff to fight after the main baddie you'll find it here.

The timed attacks/blocks feel smooth. After revisiting vanilla SMRPG I immediately wanted to go back to the way fights feel in Armageddon. I find them much more to the point and enjoyable. You may occasionally come across attacks that you have trouble blocking, and my best advice is to experiment and look for potential sound or visual cues that may indicate when to block. There's also a fairly valuable item that helps with blocking that becomes available at some point.

Last thing I'll mention is the variety of playstyles available. You can still choose 1 of 3 stats to give a bonus to every time you level up, but the devs have also added new equipment which can lead to some interesting party setups. Did you by chance want to make Mallow the magic tank a bloodthirsty physical attacking monster? With certain equipment and stats (you can re-spec your stats also), you can! Is it the best option? Perhaps not, but it can be viable, and I appreciate the devs taking the effort to make a wide range of playstyles worth using.

In conclusion, I'm very glad this hack exists and I hope anyone who tries it enjoys it as much as I did. There's a discord for this game if you're ever stuck or want to chat. Enjoy!