About your first sentence, perfectly aware of it, why do you think I lacked confidence to post that? Same reason. Which is why I sort of feel a bit upset when I realised I shouldn't actually post that....but you made me change my mind.
also, I'm taking advance, but those aren't really weak....it's mostly misunderstood, you'll get this further in this post.
The beams is actually something I haven't told you: it's rare that I'm interested to 100% a game. When I said I was strict, I basically mean that to get any optional stuff, I just need to think the effort put to do it would worth the rewards/satisfaction in the end. This also depends on if I'm like near a beam hole, then why not? I'm near and it's almost effortless (minus the L and R setup). Getting every beams however, this is when it'll be uninteresting for me to do it for me to not do it. It's just how I play games, SS isn't an exception.
There's cases though that I love the game so much that I would be up to it. Although, I feel bad for not completing the recipes in spm....it doesn't make sense I didn't yet
As for the scenery, I just don't feel the same amount of details as you see. I just don't and I can't exactly explain why, maybe the colors scheme being not much bright? idk, I can't tell you, but I'm sure I don't see the same amount of details as you see and remember again, I'm picky so it might also be due to that
....ok, I meant repetitive in a very general way.
Like the way I meant this is that your fnaf thing, is repetitive, but is hidden by the difficulty and strategy options. Now, you also have to consider the encounter type (my worst is fully random one like pokemon) because they can also make your exploring experience good or bad. Though, both rpg has the one I love: physical encounter.
But when I say repetitive, I mean the action you do in game is grossly the same. Say, you have an encounter, you could run, but what you would mostly want to do is to attack until the enemy dies. The process you do it, that has to vary of course, but at the end, you get exp.
Now, you realise what I meant, idk any rpg that doesn't use this formula because it's so basic. You do the same battle process to get exp....that's like the base of every rpg I saw.
This brings up an awesome thing that is the reason I love this genre so much: immersion of work. By doing these over and over, it gives you a very strong impression you're actually progressing and even more, the state of your character becomes more accesible for you to get. Take earthbound, the rolling hp when yoy took a mortal hit....you just are panicked with your controller trying to pass the text.
The bad thing about it is that because you get that it's the same process, it can feel like you did the exact same manipulations seconds ago which makes you use the run option more often. This is bad because you first are preventing yourself to progress, but you're stuck to "endure" these. This is only you feeling it, but this is outside of the game, it's completely with yourself which is why it's like somethign you absolutely want to reduce, but you can't vanish it...it will and still has the repetition, it just needs it.
This is why I saw several design decision to decrease this feel. Some notable one are the active mode and the gauge in chrono trigger, the auto fight of earthbound and the repels of pokemon. The example you pointed out is the difficulty of the battle which actually....I never felt once. You could argue earthbound is hard, but you pretty much have to reload the scene to get the game done or otherwise it's impossible and yes, I did it a lot. Still enjoyed the bosses though.
Now, since this is clear, you already know my stance on Paper Mario, but M&L simply didn't felt it was doing it. Now, it might be related to my scenery part, but I can't explain it. Colors? Animations? I can't tell, but what i'm sure is that I don't see it as much as you and as much as in Paper Mario games. And actually, idk about you, but I found M&L way too easy except the final boss BUT, that final boss ended up to be very boring because it was like do the same bros attack over and over in the same order.....I think I took 30 minutes to get it.....that's a bit too much of a repetition. Again, I don't know why, but smrpg had the same feel on bosses and I never felt annoyed....I don't get it.
Ok, i get about buttons....though, we have more buttons today, people loves to push stuff
But you do have areas that you have to switch in under a time limit to get just one setup....there was much easy way to get confused that it happened every time. Again, mind that that I know ofr a fact that the series improved on this.
So, what did I got in the end?
You can see that indeed, some of my reasons have an unknown cause....but I think I get what is is grossly, a lack. it's not normal that I played smrpg, M&L SS which are really on the same base and they feel the same on battles and difficulty, but love smrpg a lot more. This is extremely weird because I'm ready to say that M&L stayed more closer to smrpg than Paper Mario which got on his own way. Than again, square was into the smrpg thing....the one who made chrono trigger which I loved for its deep plot (and plot twist too).....
Hey, is it because of the deepness of the battles then?
It could make sense because honestly, I realised you had a bit more attack options in the Paper Mario series. Also, the thing about Paper Mario visuals is that I don't think you can offer something that is EXACTLY my tastes. But still, smrpg was very different and I didn't had much of an issue....but smrpg did had more options than M&L maybe because you manage 3 characters?
Yeah, it seems to be a lack of deepness.....
Which means i was actually right, I don;t feel as much details as you because I seek deepness within simple stuff.
So, thanks for this reply, feel free to talk about the other part I made if you want, this seriously seems to have lead me somewhere