I started Saturday Morning RPG a few weeks ago and I played through the first two of five episodes somewhat quickly. Scratch that. I played through the first episode quickly, and the second a bit slower only because there were so many god damn battles and I had to replay a couple because I was killed.
As the title of the game states, Saturday Morning RPG is a role-playing game using Saturday morning cartoons thematically as the basis for the overall story in the game and how the story unfolds in each of the episodes. As stated above, as of this writing I have completed the first two of five episodes and briefly started the third episode playing only a few minutes in. By all accounts, I should love this game. It is primarily referencing a time in my own childhood that I would look forward to starting every Sunday morning when I was told we were going to church. The game is full of 80s and 90s pop culture references (the main character's name is Marty for one), a lot of which I immediately recognize either by the name of an object or the art used to depict another object (although there are plenty that I have not bothered to look up). Thankfully the game is not so chock-full of references that it comes across as Ready Player One the Video Game because that is something that would not want to play; just wanted to throw that out there.
The game does do a great job of blending 16-bit SNES/Genesis era graphics with semi-slick environmental backgrounds; as opposed to the atrocious Final Fantasy mobile remakes that have smooth character sprites over a pixelated background. The writing is about on par with what I would expect out of a game that is playing hard on the nostalgia for the type of story that revolves around a high school kid fighting a supervillain terrorist with a magic binder (Trapper Keeper?) full of stickers that modify battles and full of abilities you can swap in and out to customize your battle style.
When the battle starts, you have to scratch the sticker to activate that particular buff, but you only have a few seconds (five?) to scratch off as many stickers as possible before the battle starts. Depending on the benefits of the sticker determine how difficult it is to stretch that specific sticker and how long it can take. Stickers like Grapes that give a -5% Health to Enemies can be scratched pretty easily, but Stinky Socks which offers Immunity to Poison (which is super annoying because it seems to last for a long time when Marty is poisoned) has a difficulty scratch factor of 5 Stars and I have never managed to scratch it successfully before the battle starts. Now the game engine will randomly select the order the stickers come in, so if you end up with a difficult sticker to start, you may only end up with one buff for the battle, or you could luck out and have all five (which I only managed using all one-star stickers).
The mechanics for scratching the stickers is where my annoyance comes in. Because the game was developed for mobile devices, rubbing your finger across the screen like you are scratching a scratch'n sniff sticker is a pretty nifty mechanic and it works well enough on the Switch when you are playing in handheld mode. If you are playing in docked mode (or even in handheld mode and you do not want to rub your Cheeto-dusted finger across the screen), you have to use the left joystick by either moving it back-and-forth or spinning it in a circle. If you knew either myself or Dr. Potts back in 2000, there is a decent chance you would have witnessed our apartment playing Trick Attack in 1080 Snowboarding and a host of N64 controllers on the ground, most of which had wobbly joysticks due to us just palming the things and rotating our hands as fast as humanly possible and button-mashing the hell out of ALL THE BUTTONS trying to beat each others' score. I estimate that we went through at least three controllers that year (one of which being the gold Nintendo Power 100th Issue controller). Now, I could just scratch the stickers using the touch screen, but using the joysticks offers a significant advantage, and the times I used the joystick were the only times I was able to scratch all five stickers.
Another annoyance I have has nothing to do with the mechanics at all and is purely vain. I do not buy at all, based on the character art or the pixel art for Marty that he is in high school. Even Conklederp commented that he looked out of place. Maybe Mighty Rabbits were going for that look from the 80s where studios would cast a 28-year-old to play a 15-year-old kid, or thereabouts. Maybe it is just his white button-up shirt and jeans that look like he should be selling stereos in a strip mall on the weekends between college courses. A lot of the NPCs though do seem like they fit in with the high school setting and I understand that this setting would need to be in a high school rather than a jr. high because Marty has/wants Samantha as his girlfriend, plus violence against kids is kind of frowned upon. So, I understand the need to have the game set where it is, but just that Marty does not look the part, and maybe that is addressed somewhere in episodes three through five, but for the first two, I do not like the character design.
As of right now, I am only about 55.47% invested in Saturday Morning RPG. The main urge driving me to continue through Episode 3 and the remaining episodes is because I want to finish a game that I bought. I am not invested in Marty or his budding relationship with Samantha or his quest to save the world/high school from Commander Hood (I have kind of forgotten about this whole aspect of the game). This, again, makes me sad because there is so much in this game that I enjoy like the battle mechanics (apart from the scratch), the skills/stickers system (apart from the scratch) and leveling up, the 80s and 90s references (as well as video game references like the Street Fighter II one above) but the execution has just left me feeling all sorts of meh. I guess we will just have to wait and see if there ends up being a Game EXP at the end of this.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Won't You Let Me Walk Away This Time?
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