Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time

"I can't believe I actually finished this game!"

Basic intro
OK. So I'm at Gamestop recently. I'm looking for a new DS game. So I ask one of the dudes there if he's played any good DS games lately. He told me no, but he heard that the original Mario and Luigi was good, so I should try out the newer one on the DS. So I strongly agreed and proceeded to purchase it and take it home. The rest from there is history.

Gameplay 2/10
It's a lot more complicated than the original that's for sure. Whenever a person first plays this. He plays with just Mario and Luigi and then proceeds to kill things. Fun, right? It's all fun until we meet the babies. Then we have a whole new style of fighting going on here. Now instead of pressing the right action button at the right time, you gotta do it twice. Which is kinda annoying. A single jump is okay, but now you gotta throw the darn baby too. Well not really throw... it's complicated... It's... ARGH! It's just some weird piggy back attack, go look up gameplay videos. So other then just jumping there is the hammers. The babies use the hammers which is very odd... And on top of that they are hard to use and useless. Just like the jumping there's a second action command which doesn't really work. The hammer is useless at all times in battles except in maybe one or two battles. And when you hit an enemy with the hammer to start the battle. Well in other Mario games it hits the enemy, but in this one it initiates the battle and then it just shows the baby slamming the hammer... That's it... No damage or anything. So attacking first with the hammer is pointless. And just being in the world itself is boring. You follow a path, kill an enemy or two,then continue to follow a slow slow slow path. There's no exploration to this game either. It's always just a path. Also you can't leave princess peach's castle in the future, you only go through the time holes which show you them from the past. So you can't really see how things affected the future. And to top it all off, the number one thing to get on my nerves about the gameplay is boss fights. Boss fights are like Legend of Zelda fights plus RPG style fighting. You figure out how to hurt it, because from the start, regular attacks don't hurt it. Once you figure out it's weakness you spend about 3-5 turns exposing it. And then you have from 2-3 turns of whacking at it. Now I should tell you, it's extremely pointless to just use the regular attacks on the bosses because the attacks are EXTREMELY WEAK. You come equipped with bros items, the only key to boss fight survival. Without bros items, boss fights would take an hour. Not to mention boss fights already take 30 minutes with bros items.

Storyline 3/10
The storyline is laughable. There's an evil mushroom planet with evil mushroom creatures called shroobs back when Mario and Luigi were all babies, blah blah, wants to take over a world, blah blah, chooses to take over princess peach's castle. While simultaneously in the future, E. Gadd invents a time machine to send princess peach all the way back to the past! And oh boy, she gets sent right back to the shroob attack on her castle. My main problem with this story is that doesn't anyone here remember this attack? An alien race attacking the mushroom kingdom is a pretty big deal, even bigger than bowser kidnapping the princess. Shouldn't E. Gadd or even more so Toadsworth know this is all going to happen? Sure they're old, but E. GADD INVENTED A FREAKIN' TIME MACHINE! HE'S A GENIUS! His mind should be working at full power and should know that there was a shroob attack when he was younger. So Mario and them go back in time through these little time holes, all strangely lead to each area of the mushroom kingdom. But you can't leave princess peach's castle to see how your actions in the past have affected the future. That's just annoying. And one more thing I'll quickly mention is that there is only one star. But it's broken up into 5 shards... Only 5? Not 7? How messed up is that? All other Mario RPGs required you to get 7 stars, not 5 shards of one star... And how you get them is messed up, first one you get, you don't even fight a boss for it. But then you get it stolen, and then you get another and then you get two. And... it's just confusing.

Graphics/ Sound 4/10
Graphics better than the last game, that's for sure. But entering a battle is less charming as it was in the original. The screen scrunches up into a ball and one baby goes GOO GOO and then the ball drops. Then enter the fighting scene. They tried to charm it up my making them do cute adorable dances like they did in the first one, but it just plain lost it's charm. It's pretty decent. But the maps above the screen are solid and your icon doesn't follow you around in the room so it's annoying to have to find out where you are. And there's no original or neat music for any bosses or enemies, it's all the same music and the music isn't even that good. Only different battle music you get is the very final form of the final boss which is very calm and not so final-battlish. Only awesome song in the whole game is princess peach's castle! Remix of the super Mario 64 one. Everyone reading this review knows what I'm talking about and this aspect is the only enjoyable part of the game. As for princess peach's castle music in the past... It's very disgusting.

Play Time/ Replayability 1/10
Long game... But not because of gameplay, but because of scenes. Might as well go watch a movie instead of video game dialogue and pointless running around like you're watching a play. Boss fights are a major eat up of time too and become tedious and repetitive.

Overall Recommendation 3/10
I couldn't think of a joke to put this review to end, but point is, don't play this game. There's no side quests apart from the main quest

Reviewer's Score: 3/10 | Originally Posted: 06/09/08

Game Release: Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (US, 11/28/05)

Liked this review? Recommend it to others!