Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
My first game review of something I can play thanks to the power of a hacked 3DS! (Thanks Benny). I've played a good chunk of the Mario & Luigi series (Superstar Saga, Inside Story and Dream Team) but only ever properly beaten Inside Story, so I was pretty interested in seeing how the one game in the series closest to my favorite entry would play. Now I'm going to say right from the start that I really enjoyed this game, but I critique it a lot here. Not as a statement of "Partners in Time is bad" but more that "Bowser's Inside Story does so much right and shot my expectations sky high" and a lot of the resulting critique is made by looking at all the mechanics and systems I took for granted that I now realize were iterated on from Partners in Time's very experimental approach.
First things first is that on the surface it plays just like any other Mario & Luigi game with series staples like action commands, Bros. Attacks and overworld puzzles. The most immediately obvious change being the addition of Baby Mario and Luigi. I do have to say I feel pretty mixed about their implementation. Coming from Inside Story, I was a big fan of having Bowser so any characters other than the original Bros. is a positive to me. I really enjoyed the puzzles that required you to separate the pairs even if it was fairly simple stuff like "hit this switch with the adults and then hit another switch with the babies". The part I wasn't a huge fan honestly all came down the hammer. Since you need to separate fairly frequently to complete puzzles I figure the devs didn't want to leave you with enemies you couldn't hit so there aren't very many enemies that require the hammer to be beaten. This in turn leads to jump being the best option for a lot of cases since it's way easier to get max damage off of than hammer and enemies are way more likely to be able to dodge hammer than counter jump. This may seem minor but the game having very simple battle mechanics means that anything that simplifies the battles further is going to feel MASSIVE. Besides that I do think battles were fun especially when they were made to take advantage of the full set of Bros in stuff like boss fights. Bros. Attacks are now Bros. Items and MAN is this weird to me. All of a sudden you get special attacks from a store and frankly all of them are useful for far longer than I thought they would be. One of the things I liked about PiT was that it makes you really ration your money as a result of needing to balance spending between support items, Bros Items, gear and badges to support all 4 characters, I was thinking pretty hard about how I spent my money each time in the shop which I appreciated. (This could have been caused by my particular style of play but I'll talk about that soon). As for overworld design, what Eva told me was true, this game is strangely linear. It really made me appreciate just how difficult it must've been to design Inside Story maps for two very different characters navigating locations and two very different times. While this lack of exploration didn't bug me that much I did miss little things like the special attack minigames and a more lively feeling world.
Graphically this game is solid! Not as polished as Inside Story but it still is really nice to look at. Very big fan of both Luigi's idle stances, love these silly fellas.
The music felt a tad lackluster, which surprised me considering I usually love Yoko Shimomura's work. It's probably the loudest element of this game that screams "EARLY DS TITLE", it just doesn't have the range of later DS titles. The one track that did stick out to me was Elder Princess Shroob's battle theme. It has a sort of somber tone that almost reveals a sort of desperation to the shroob's invasion considering they are trying to escape a dying homeworld which leads to her battle feeling rather poingnant end for a Mario & Luigi finale. At least it does until the game throws Shrowser at you. (He felt pretty unnecessary and last minute to what already felt like a solid conclusion).
Now about my particular playstyle I mentioned earlier. Below this you'll see my stats pre-Princess Shroob fight.
Needless to say I wasn't really grinding out every encounter I could. By the time I got to Shroob Castle I was only level 19 and as you can see above, I finished the game with a level lower than the lowest level encounter in Shroob Castle, the Tashrooba at level 26. Now, I'm a pretty big proponent of there being two reasons for grinding in an RPG:
- A bad game
- A bad player
And considering that I do not think PiT is a bad game, you can figure which category led to me having to grind out a couple levels so I didn't get two shot by everything in Shroob Castle. I realized that I was just fighting whoever was in my way and if I could avoid them to solve a puzzle I would. Not terribly healthy for my coin reserves and EXP. This sort of stubborn laziness also led to a pretty funny scenario in the final boss where I ran out of useful Bros. Items about halfway through Elder Shroob phase 2's HP leading to me bumbling around trying not to die while desperately jumping on her for dear life. While it was a trial entirely of my own doing, I did enjoy the extra challenge. (I also liked the subtle callback to Superstar Saga with how the Elder Shroob UFO attacks would target Mario if they were on fire and Luigi if they were sparking with electricity).
Overall PiT is a lovely and quick game that, despite it's flaws is still a worthwhile experience. It's an interesting look into not only the early Mario & Luigi series but also as an early entry in the DS's powerhouse library.