Mario villains battle royale:

I'd believe that if super dimentio weren't such a weak boss. I mean all it does is try to step on you or shoot easily dodged blocks.
Gameplay and story are completely different. If they gave some random Goomba in TTYD 5000 HP that wouldn't make it any more powerful story wise just a heck of a challenge to beat gameplay wise. Similarly if the Shadow Queen were easy that wouldn't make her not a near invulnerably almighty demon who can enslave the world on her own.

Just because a boss fight is easy doesn't mean the character is weak or vice versa.
 
if they wanted to make the player believe that this entity is super-powerful, they would certainly tie it in the gameplay in some manner you know

that's why they don't give goombas 500 hp (also making enemies damage sponges suck). that's why they make the final boss in many games, like, really destructive and all and sometimes, very difficult. that's why i believe cackletta's soul is more threatening because that person can ohko on her first term because your characters start out weakened.
 
if they wanted to make the player believe that this entity is super-powerful, they would certainly tie it in the gameplay in some manner you know

that's why they don't give goombas 500 hp (also making enemies damage sponges suck). that's why they make the final boss in many games, like, really destructive and all and sometimes, very difficult. that's why i believe cackletta's soul is more threatening because that person can ohko on her first term because your characters start out weakened.
Of course there's a general correlation. But it's not always the case. Imo Cackletta isn't as powerful as the Dark Star yet Superstar Saga's final boss is harder than Bowser's Inside Story. One boss being harder than another may usually mean that it's canonically more powerful, but not always.
 
final bosses don't necessarily need to be difficult but in order for players to accept that, that's true, but, they should tie in more of his supposed power-level with actual gameplay than just dialogue and cutscenes because making a boss fight interesting and somewhat challenging is more convincing of a threatening boss than not.
 
Indeed. I remember when I first played SPM years ago and fought Count Bleck for the first time and after all the build up about how strong he was (note this is the guy who defeated Mario with plot convenience ease in the opening of the game) and all he can do is just throw some easily dodged purple energy balls, open a portal you can easily run away from and make you run slower?

Pretty anti-climactic.
 
Super Paper Mario's battle system is its biggest step down from TTYD if you ask me. I can kind of relate to why they did it, and it's not all bad, Brobot 1 was really creative, and Pit of 100 Trials would be terrible if it were turn based, but just... they took away one of the best things about the first two games and replaced it with something kind of mediocre. One way in which it stalls is that some of the bosses are incredibly broken, including Super Dimentio. It's not just that though, 3 attack power for a final boss is pathetic considering how easy the attacks are to avoid and how short the fight is.

Indeed. I remember when I first played SPM years ago and fought Count Bleck for the first time and after all the build up about how strong he was (note this is the guy who defeated Mario with plot convenience ease in the opening of the game) and all he can do is just throw some easily dodged purple energy balls, open a portal you can easily run away from and make you run slower?
Count Bleck is actually one of the hardest bosses in the game if you ask me. I guess you probably played this in adulthood whereas I was still in my single digits when I first fought Bleck. I didn't get the whole bosses are too easy thing back then. Coming back to it now I can appreciate its flaws for sure, easy bosses being one of them, but that doesn't make the story any less amazing. I agree that both Bleck and Dimentio deserved to be harder which would have communicated their vast power in terms of gameplay as well as dialogue and cutscenes, but that doesn't mean that they're actually less powerful.

Hence my point stands that Super Dimentio to my knowledge is the most canonically powerful any Mario character ever becomes at any point despite how easy he might have been gameplay wise.
 
Yeah, I still don't believe it. It lacks any of the oomph the previous game's had.
 
still think bowser is overall more powerful than he is

he at least comes back. always.
 
still think bowser is overall more powerful than he is

he at least comes back. always.
There's the whole Bowser and King Boo theory. Or we could just assume the plots are discontinuous. Plus if Bowser is cannonically more powerful than Super Dimentio the heroes should have won the first half of the Super Dimentio battle and wouldn't need the Pure Hearts. Bowser is pretty powerful for sure but he's not a godly almost immortal multiverse eater.
 
yeah but he doesn't have one terrible weakness that brings him down permanently. and he always comes back up. resilience is a really important trait to have, it's what makes mario powerful himself.
 
yeah but he doesn't have one terrible weakness that brings him down permanently. and he always comes back up. resilience is a really important trait to have, it's what makes mario powerful himself.
Bowser has a lot of weaknesses and oversights in his plans that let Mario kill him like the Star Spirits in PM64 or simply uinderestimating Mario (in several games).

Yes there is the fact that Super Dimentio's defeat was permanent whilst Bowser seems to revive multiple times but that definitely doesn't override the fact he was so hard to kill in the first place. Dimentio was cunning and persistent, he planned the whole thing out from the beginning and kept through it until he couldn't fight anymore. It wasn't really "a terrible weakness" since he plotted around that too. He just didn't realise that the Pure Hearts could be used multiple times if recharged by love. If not for that he truly would have been immortal and easily consumed everything.

Mario in his base form has defeated Bowser multiple times and yet Mario and Bowser together can't defeat Bleck let alone Super Dimentio without the Pure Hearts on their side. To me that's proof enough.
 
im pretty sure it's not dimentio the one who is very powerful but rather, derives his showcase of of power in conjunction from the sheer incompetence of the assholes who don't launch the dark prognosticus into a volcano instead to begin with and everyone else being incompetent if all it takes is having a boner for another character in order to recharge batteries on a device to defeat him (god sorry i think the plot is so dumb).

bowser always comes back and you proved my point that because mario defeated him many times, he's more of a persistent threat that makes him far more dangerous and powerful. he may not be the most physically strong character nor that ambitious of the mario characters, but he'll always be there, causing more trouble on a longer term.

and as for the villain, he's practically nothing without his equipment. you can make the argument that any character corrupted by this macgufffin would make them unstoppable. who's going to stop, say, bowser being possessed by the evil variants of the blood pumping organs?
 
What do you mean?
well I won't talk about the final battle from PM because you haven't beaten it yet but when you fight the shadow queen in TTYD let's just look at all the stuff she can do, she can breath different types of breaths that cause status affects, she can suck the life out of you to heal herself with her hands, turn her big hands into an army of small hands that drains the audience or attacks you, she can temporarily increase both her damage and defense and for her most powerful attack can charge up energy and let it all out in a single large explosion.

Honestly I get the impression the chaos heart doesn't actually increase your power beyond some invincibility.


Also I just want to point out that 90% of the time Mario needs help to beat Bowser or beats him through trickery or the environment. In a straight up one vs one fight (which doesn't happen all that often) Mario usually lost.
 
im pretty sure it's not dimentio the one who is very powerful but rather, derives his showcase of of power in conjunction from the sheer incompetence of the assholes who don't launch the dark prognosticus into a volcano instead to begin with and everyone else being incompetent if all it takes is having a boner for another character in order to recharge batteries on a device to defeat him (god sorry i think the plot is so dumb).
and as for the villain, he's practically nothing without his equipment. you can make the argument that any character corrupted by this macgufffin would make them unstoppable. who's going to stop, say, bowser being possessed by the evil variants of the blood pumping organs?
I said, Dimentio isn't extremely powerful in his base form (though I'd argue still a considerable threat) but Super Dimentio is the most powerful form any Mario character ever takes. If Bowser got the Chaos Heart or something at least as powerful (I know someone was saying the Star Rod but my impression so far is that Chaos Heart > Star Rod, as for the Dream Stone I've not played DT yet so I'll have to wait before giving my opinion on that one) I'd agree he could be at least as powerful as Super Dimentio ever was.

bowser always comes back and you proved my point that because mario defeated him many times, he's more of a persistent threat that makes him far more dangerous and powerful. he may not be the most physically strong character nor that ambitious of the mario characters, but he'll always be there, causing more trouble on a longer term.
I know. But Dimentio was persistent as well he just got defeated permanently. We don't even know that for certain however, we just assume it because we never saw him again (though I really wish we did). Infinite revival doesn't mean everything. If I had to pick the more powerful character out of this one dude who doesn't do anything and doesn't have any real power but keeps being annoying because he can come back to life an infinite number of times, or someone with divine evil power that can basically kill anything and did lose forever, but only because of one very specific and difficult weakness, hands down I'd pick the latter.
 
well I won't talk about the final battle from PM because you haven't beaten it yet but when you fight the shadow queen in TTYD let's just look at all the stuff she can do, she can breath different types of breaths that cause status affects, she can suck the life out of you to heal herself with her hands, turn her big hands into an army of small hands that drains the audience or attacks you, she can temporarily increase both her damage and defense and for her most powerful attack can charge up energy and let it all out in a single large explosion.

Honestly I get the impression the chaos heart doesn't actually increase your power beyond some invincibility.

and also, there's culex from super mario rpg. he's an optional boss but he's really powerful and he lobs lots of powerful attacks at you.

If I had to pick the more powerful character out of this one dude who doesn't do anything and doesn't have any real power but keeps being annoying because he can come back to life an infinite number of times, or someone with divine evil power that can basically kill anything and did lose forever, but only because of one very specific and difficult weakness, hands down I'd pick the latter.

okay, i know bowser probably isn't the strongest mario character but he's not "one dude who doesn't do anything and doesn't have any real power" come on now don't be disingenuous
 
and also, there's culex from super mario rpg. he's an optional boss but he's really powerful and he lobs lots of powerful attacks at you.
Yeah haven't played that
okay, i know bowser probably isn't the strongest mario character but he's not "one dude who doesn't do anything and doesn't have any real power" come on now don't be disingenuous
I was exaggerating, but my point stands that infinite revival doesn't override everything else.

well I won't talk about the final battle from PM because you haven't beaten it yet but when you fight the shadow queen in TTYD let's just look at all the stuff she can do, she can breath different types of breaths that cause status affects, she can suck the life out of you to heal herself with her hands, turn her big hands into an army of small hands that drains the audience or attacks you, she can temporarily increase both her damage and defense and for her most powerful attack can charge up energy and let it all out in a single large explosion.
Thanks for respecting spoilers. I mean as I say gameplay and story are different, I'm pretty sure that lots of games have gameplay mechanics that exist for just that and aren't representative of what goes on canonically. SPM may have kind of botched the combat but it's not fair to also say that its bosses are cannonically less powerful because the devs added weak attacks gameplay wise or made them too easy.

Honestly I get the impression the chaos heart doesn't actually increase your power beyond some invincibility.
That and the whole multiverse consuming process. There might be other stuff but that we know of that's all I can think of.

Also I just want to point out that 90% of the time Mario needs help to beat Bowser or beats him through trickery or the environment. In a straight up one vs one fight (which doesn't happen all that often) Mario usually lost.
I'd argue that picking up Bowser by his tail and throwing him into a mine isn't as impressive as travelling the multiverse to find ancient artefacts that allow you to be fully empowered by the power of love and save the multiverse.
 
No instead he just goes to dozens of different worlds to collect the maguffins he needs that supposedly give Mario more power to fight Bowser.

I say supposedly because like SPM Mario 64 is very much a tell not show kind of game.
 
No instead he just goes to dozens of different worlds to collect the maguffins he needs that supposedly give Mario more power to fight Bowser.

I say supposedly because like SPM Mario 64 is very much a tell not show kind of game.
In any case the Pure Hearts are definitely more powerful than a triplet of ordinary old mines.
 
Not really since the pure hearts just turn the invincibility off.

The mines explode and hurt people.
 
Not really since the pure hearts just turn the invincibility off.
I mean counteracting the protective power of the Chaos Heart is a huge amount of power in itself. It's not just that they're a special maguffin that can do this, they really are presented to be the most powerful thing there is and are the only hope of turning back the evil prophecy. The ancients had to hide them in all their secret places so that only the true, worthy hero would find them. They open doors to new worlds. They are a force so powerful Tippi can feel it from a mile away. Cmon thats definitely better than just a regular old explosion.
 
They are presented as the only thing that can counteract it's power yes but that doesn't make them actually strong things in of themselves. These aren't the star spirits or the crystal stars that grant new powers or abilities, all they do is turn off the invincibility of the person who uses the chaos heart so they can be destroyed.

This is why I compared it to thinner and paint.
 
I said, SPM gives me the impression that the Pure Hearts are unique in being able to disable Bleck/Dimentio's invincibility because they are the only thing powerful enough, not just being a special maguffin which switches it off.

These aren't the star spirits or the crystal stars that grant new powers or abilities,
Again gameplay =/= story. That was just a part of the battle system which SPM didn't have, and I don't think would have worked with this game.
 
I know what you said and I'm saying the opposite. There is nothing in the game that suggests they are super powerful, just that they can counteract it's effects.

Like an antidote for a poison, only in this case the poison is killing worlds rather then bodies.

And they could have easily worked special attacks into SPM, hell offensive items practically work like it already.
 
I know what you said and I'm saying the opposite. There is nothing in the game that suggests they are super powerful, just that they can counteract it's effects.
I don't remember if it was ever said explicitly but definitely it feels implied. Whoever wrote the Mario Wiki page on the Pure Hearts agrees with me anyway.

I'm also quite sure Mario has defeated Bowser on his own without help of anything hugely powerful. IIRC openings of both SSS and BIS, Glitz Pit fight in TTYD, and bitlands fight.

Anyway Super Dimentio displays a huge amount of power, and Tippi explicitly confirms "that monstrous body has immense power" even after the Pure Hearts did their job. Bowser may be powerful but there's no way he's as powerful as Super Dimentio.

Unless we're talking about Star Rod Bowser, who's a considerably greater competitor to him in terms of power. My current impression is that the Chaos Heart is more powerful than the Star Rod but my opinion is not sure yet.
 
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