"Doesn't live up to the GBA Mario & Luigi... Or any of the Mario RPG games."

Introduction
As I have said in another Mario review Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga in my honest opinion is the cream of the crop when it comes to Mario RPG titles. As for this game though, I was out at Wal-mart one day when I discovered it. At the time I was not really playing anything or researching the newest titles out. I originally planned to buy Metroid Prime Hunters for DS but instead I picked this title due to the fact it looked very similar to M&L for GBA, I expected a fun rehash. I was wrong on many levels; I highly regret buying this game now.

Story - 5/10
Starting with the story we can see problems, not only has the story line took a turn for the worse in Partners in Time, the humor of the first game is gone. The actual story first though, this game starts you off in Mushroom Kingdom past. Baby Bowser has attacked the castle to of course steal baby Princess Peach. Baby Mario and Luigi come to the rescue from there, which serves as a tutorial for the battle system. Now to add the twist we all expected, aliens come and attack. That is okay, no problems really at this point.

So we skip back to the future of mushroom kingdom and are greeted with a newsflash. E. Gadd has successfully made a time machine and Princess peach tried it out. From there we are taken to a scene in Peach's throne room, suddenly the time machine falls from the sky highly injured. Princess Peach is no where to be found, in her place however an odd alien walks out of the time machine. This fight for some reason I can not understand serves as yet another tutorial over the same thing we learned less then 5 minutes ago. After the fight the story line continues on very cliche style, no plot twists or anything remotely exciting happens but it is not as bad as some games are. The story does actually progress it is just bland. As a slight twist you will have the baby Mario brothers adventure with you... but they are more of an annoyance then anything at all to say the least.

Now for the humor. It has mysteriously vanished in this game. Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga had plenty of moments to make me laugh. This game however has nothing at all really. Something good about the first game is how no one knew who Luigi was. It made for funny moments of people saying Mr. Green or something. Now he seems to be as cool a cat as Mario. Maybe this is due to the fact this game takes place in Mushroom Kingdom, but it lost a lot of its humor.

Graphics - 8/10
Overall the graphics are pretty nice but they are somewhat a letdown seeing as this game is on the DS. They could have gone the 3D route which would have been nice but I like 2D so I don't mind, 2D RPGs can be well done, this one is for the most part. I do have one minor complaint though.

MARIO. For some reason I can not figure out Mario is now a hunchback. When you start the game and watch adult Mario walk he is hunched over like he has a back problem. I found out later this is because the babies ride on Mario and Luigi's backs but the developers could of at least taken the time to change the sprite based on if the baby was on their back or not, with a 2D game it could have been handled much better, it feels like the developers got lazy or something. This sounds like a minor complaint, but for the amount of time the babies spend on your back it turns out to be a lazy annoyance.

Sound - 10/10
Awesome, something really good about the game. While the sound effects are not exactly the best ever, the music for the game is great. There are a lot of Mario songs completely remixed for our enjoyment here. This is a very nice addition seeing as other Mario RPGs lack in the 'good music' department.

Gameplay - 5/10
While the music is good it is hard to cover up the sound of failure, which is exactly what has happened to this battle system. The first Mario & Luigi offered the best and most involved battle system of any of the Mario RPG titles. It offered Bro Moves which essentially were combos Mario and Luigi could perform together to do nice damage. This has been completely reworked with something that smells of Final Fantasy VIII. Your special abilities now are in the form of items... How exciting. When you run out you must either buy more items or find them in blocks. Even with the fact you have to gather them like ammo these items add variety of attacks to the battle system the other Mario RPG lacks... What makes it bad though is the overall numbers of everything in the game.

Battles in Partners in Time last FOREVER. Enemies have far too much HP. Some boss battles especially near the end of the game can last up to half an hour or more, while normal 'random' encounters can last five minutes+. To top it off, enemies can knock away half of your HP in one attack sometimes, and often it is impossible to fully dodge their attacks. It can get tiresome having to heal every other turn which slows down the killing process which is slow enough as is. Also another complaint is along with most enemies taking forever to die there are usually 3 or 4 enemies in one fight, thus again incredibly lengthening the fight's time.

As for the rest of the combat system itself, it fails just as much as the rest of the mechanics aside from jumping. The hammer is hard to get used to at first and it hits very lightly. In fact anything that is not Bro Item things hits lightly. The jump attack is a slight upgrade compared to other normal attacks but everything fails compared to Bro Items. At the end of the game I could have a green shell which is the most basic of Bro Items hit harder then any of my attacks if executed perfectly. The game is completely imbalanced like this and the only way to make a battle shorter is to perfectly execute every combo of items which to be blunt can be annoying and hard.

Finally though, the reason I did not give this section a 0/10. The world map and dungeon gameplay has gotten a giant upgrade in terms of fun. The last game incorporated amazing platform elements into the world. This game does that and more. Some field actions have been replaced while some new ones have been added. The fact there are four Mario brothers now adds a fun twist to the amount of puzzles that can be done. For example one of my favorites, splitting up and the babies doing something so the adults can progress and so on over and over again. I enjoy this in RPGs and this actually did a good job of it.

Conclusion
Average RPG gamer looking for a DS RPG look elsewhere. This game has more cons then pros and while it has its moments of fun overall it is just not a great game. I really don't even advise it to hardcore Mario RPG fans looking to play a new title... Replay Paper Mario on the Wii's VC or something. This game is just not great. I am happy for it to be in my collection of Mario RPG games but it is defiantly the worst of the current five games.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/23/07