Currently a point higher than the OG release on GCN. I see it maintaining or slightly expanding the lead.
I'm going to check a couple local stores tomorrow for physical copies. If not, I might cave and get it from the eShop.

My feeling when playing Mario RPG on Switch was that it was still a really fun game, but I would have been about as happy just replaying the original. Kind of getting the same vibe from this one.

A bit odd that they had two remakes of Mario RPG titles so close to one another. Maybe Switch 2 will have a new Mario RPG/Classic Paper Mario title at launch?

It's funny to me that the Mario RPG most due and most likely for a remake (Paper Mario) hasn't gotten one.

Super Mario RPG was a pipe dream because of Square Enix and Nintendo needing to work together and that it's a standalone game. But it has already happened. 

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door now has a remake instead of a mere remaster like we expected.

Even though you can play the original on NSO Expansion Pack, I'm sure Nintendo is eagerly watching TTYD sales to gauge if they want to remake the original. 

A remake of the OG in the next 2-3 years seems like good business. It would surely be in the same graphical and gameplay engine as the TTYD Remake as a remake of the original would almost surely be similar in appearance and HUD to TTYD.

And a remake of the original would score very well in reception, as it is a beloved game and Nintendo can't screw it up. 

I'm eager to play TTYD's remake and it will almost surely be a 10/10 to me just like I remember on the 'Cube. 

I think the original doesn't hold up quite as well as TTYD and would probably require a bit more extensive rejiggering. So, probably made more sense to work on TTYD first, then they could build on that foundation. 

Mispost 

What's baffling about this 2024 version is that they adopted the screentext display of the non-RPG Paper Mario games. Now you can neither make the whole text appear with a button press nor activate fast-forward with a different button like in the 2004 version. You are forced to wait until the whole text is displayed. This is the same bullshit that we've seen in the Zelda series where Twilight Princess finally abolished the "you have to wait" nonsense, only to see Skyward Sword go back to this rubbish.

It's great that the 2024 version fixes the biggest flaw of the original version: The item management. You can now carry 15 instead of only 10 items, and more importantly, the storage room now moves quickly instead of having to slowly handle one item at a time. But the screentext... gosh. The bothersome item system of the original occured only every now and then, but screentext is something that's omnipresent. This is so bad that the 2024 version does not constitute a net gain over the 2004 version; all the things that have seen slight improvements are offset by this screentext problem. The longer reading sections now take several minutes instead of a couple minutes; add this up over the course of the game and it's undeniable that this just sucks. What makes this so frustrating is that this is something so basic that developers have to make the deliberate choice to make it suck; this could have been avoided so easily.

Graphics are sharp and clean, great art style. Gameplay is great. The 30 fps sucks a bit and distracts from the beauty, but far from a huge problem. I'm about 2 hours in and I'm quite pleased.

The game has a swappable skill system in the form of badges that you can equip and unequip anytime outside of battle, and a badge you should get relatively early on is one that increases the timing window for button prompts (they're pretty much Quick-Time Events). I always used it myself.

There are QTEs for both attack and defending, and you'll get used to the timing for all eventually. Attacking QTEs are pretty varied; not all are reliant on timing. A good chunk of them are about fast-tapping a button, rotating the analog stick, holding the analog stick or button down for a few seconds until told to release, or getting a cursor line up on a certain spot. In my experience with the original game, those tend to be easier than timing QTEs.

There are two defense QTEs; a pretty forgiving window to shield Mario to reduce damage, and a tougher one to counter and take no damage at all. The former can get you through the game just fine, but you'll be subjected to status effects more often.

Edited original post, see bolded word

All kinds of interesting tidbits. Both from the pages but also how they work and vary. Thanks for all the information.

The journal system is excellent and I don't recall it being in the original.  The journal marks areas where shards and sprites are still undiscovered.