Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time Review by StephenYap
Nintendo DS Reviews
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Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time Review

“Where the series strikes out...”

Ever since the hit title Mario and Luigi (known as Superstar Saga) had hit the stores, people wanted more and more luster of its humor and fun adventure. Of course, there’s the comical version of the Bros’ nemesis Bowser, then there’s a wide variety of outside characters that join in too. Be it, Queen Bean, Prince Peasley, Fawful, and even Cackletta. These characters are the source of the inner humor of the game that started the first hand-held Mario RPG series, or on the Game Boy Advance. Unfortunately, these characters that are not named Fawful are no longer in Partners in Time as there are more characters, coming off uninspired at best. Worst of all, because Partners in Time doesn’t introduce a whole lot of new features (and being how easier and shorter than its predecessor) it seems Alpha Dream made this game to make money instead of fun for players, a conspicuous sign of a good video game company crossing their own players. Alpha Dream put their best effort in Superstar Saga, but why not for this game? Not sure why.

In the past, the baby bros were called to Baby Peach’s castle for a visit, until Baby Bowser appeared and kidnapped her in their very eyes. Baby Mario, the only baby left standing to fight the little tyrant, stomps him as usual. That was until a bunch of aliens had invaded the castle and the babies had to run away from the invasion. With the castle inhabited by aliens, known as Shroobs, with a purple mushroom body for each the world needed to be saved. Meanwhile, in the present, Professor E. Gadd (Luigi’s partner from Luigi’s Mansion and SS) builds a time machine to go into the past for testing. He put the princess in there and for a sudden, when it reappeared, a monster took her place and Mario stomped it eventually. So now, the adults and babies need to meet each other in the past and save the past Mushroom Kingdom from the Shroobs.

As for the Shroobs, they are entirely different to other villains in the Mario universe. Instead of a few or lesser amount of villains on the main list, Shroobs consist of millions for Mario and Luigi to defeat. Instead of granting the plumbers mercy at moderate times, they stop at nothing to finish their job. You’ll be seeing them taking Toads into their spaceships, blasting the adult Mario Bros into defeat a few times, taking down Baby Bowser’s Koopa Cruiser, managing a factory for their spaceships to get more juice from, getting a giant Piranha Plant to literally devour a couple damsels, and much more crazy stuff. So compared to Bowser and other Mario villains of minor or major, the Shroobs are mortally evil. You will be facing off their army from taking down a mutated Wiggler to downing a spoiled Shroob with a lollipop and much more enemies wait to take you down.

And even with the new villains introduced, Partners in Time isn’t really a good game for a lot of reasons. For starters, the plot is just far too dark, greatly offending the spiritual plot staple of the Mario RPGs. Paper Mario 2 may have followed with a dark plot to attract readers, but Partners in Time is an exception. You will see a lot of devouring to such innocent people and worst of all, aliens and monsters are picking on poor babies like the Baby Bros. And then the babies cry, which gets beyond annoying throughout the whole game. To top it off, Baby Mario and Baby Luigi steal the spotlight from the Adult Bros for nothing. They hardly do anything memorable and ruin the role of the Adult Bros entirely. Because of this, Partners in Time should’ve been something like “Baby Mario and Luigi: The Game” or whatsoever. Yeah, it’s that bad to have a bunch of babies ruling over a game instead of having them to share it with others. I do like the Baby Bros in Yoshi’s Island and Mario Kart: Double Dash, but this is an exception for me.

Partners in Time artwork 1


One of the lame aspects of Partners in Time’s game play is the addition of the babies fighting in battles. They’re very weak and steal the spotlight, but they can’t jump as high as the adults can. The adults are obviously stronger than the babies, but lack the hammers and don’t get much sunlight like how they did in Superstar Saga. When they’re together, the matter for the bros get better as the game play becomes easier. In bargain, the adults get a few more abilities to do more damage than they would normally do. For instance, the adult and baby can execute a double-stomp or high-hammering attack, making battles in this game progress. And as long as they’re together, the survival aspect plays out like this: The adults are always upfront and if one or both adults eat the dust, the babies take over until they too bite the dust, losing the game. If you’ve been playing Super Mario Bros or Ghosts n Goblins, you’ll be pretty familiar on how this aspect works.

At first when I have beaten the game, I felt that something about Partners in Time didn’t feel right and even beating the final boss multiple times for fun, it was still there. It was hard for me to figure out what that was, so a couple years later I started on the game from the beginning to discover what that was that made me feel different after beating the game. I played from the beginning to the midpoint and tried my hardest to find out what that was. And so, it finally came to me about the reason the game play wasn’t as good: The Bros Items themselves were the problem.

All Mario RPGs were supposed to be fun in person, but Partners in Time’s Bros Items nukes down the fun to creating a slice of what gaming wasn’t supposed to be from the beginning. Superstar Saga’s Bros Attacks were always fun, creative, and balanced to making boss fights the most excellent in the library of Mario games, but PiT’s boss fights are beyond different. Bros Items suffer in being overpowered and broken, a bad result of an easy game becoming much easier. And does it get worse? There are blocks in the game that give you too much Bros Items, making it the worst to ever happen in the game, making a game very easier than very easy.

The absence of the Bros Points, a stat that gauged on how much times a brother can use his Bros Attack, is somewhat an annoyance. Bros Items now have separate uses that acts like normal items, removing the traditional staple of the Flower/Bros Points in many of the Mario RPGs. Any brother can use most of them, but the rest of the few are only used when both the adults and babies are together and alive. Bros Items range from Koopa Shells to Trampolines, from Cannons to Eggs, and from Fire Flowers to the dreadfully powerful Bros Item that is gotten last in the game. And again, if the bros and babies are together, most Bros Items open more strategies to attacking enemies differently. Some Bros Items may cause more damage while others go after airborne enemies.

Unlike Superstar Saga, the option to adjusting the cost of Bros Points and slow motion movement is absent. Instead, it is replaced with a badge in the game for one brother to equip to make all Bros Items collected infinite while reducing the attack power significantly, but even with that equipped to one of the boys, the game becomes far too easy. While the Bros Attacks didn’t last as long, Bros Items last far too long and are totally simple to rack up enough damage to pull off a “massive” blow on enemies, a perfect term for the Bros Items being “overpowered”. In Superstar Saga, it was always fun to see what happened if you missed a button. For instance, if Luigi had missed the enemy with his thunder hand attack, he would be electrocuted but not lose any HP. The slapstick for the Bros Items is no longer here and even if there was any, they’re lame and lack any taste to it. The lack of the slow motion, modes, and slapstick for the Bros Items turn Partners in Time into Campfest of 2008, but it gets worst.

And one last major problem with the Bros Items is the fact that they’re insidiously out of balance. Superstar Saga’s Bros Attacks were up to the shape and versatile enough for the players to choose which Bros Attack is the best choice for certain enemies. Partners in Time lacks that staple and imitates more on the Attack Items in other RPGs, where if you have a ton of weak-damaging items and a few of heavy-damaging items, you won’t know which item to use until you take a whack at it. The Bros Items gotten earlier in the game become of use for that point on until when you get better Bros Items, the early-gotten Bros Items become gradually useless on the second half of the game. Those useless Bros Items may give later bosses a challenge for players, but the process is much too boring to get past. The powerful Bros Items may make all boss fights end sooner, but render them too difficult to even enjoy the achieved victory. The Bros Items are nothing but a completely flawed concept, lacking the cost of Bros Points and the balance in both causing damage and versatility. The first half of the Bros Items are original while the second half is either better clones or just updated, but lazily-made hard-hitters.

And yet, there are normal items. Again, the BP-restoring Syrup items are replaced with Bros Items to buy from shops. Only a couple is available from the beginning, but as you progress on through the game, more Bros Items become available for resupplying your arsenal. Even with this method to resupplying on Bros Items, Partners in Time throws you enough Bros Items in Question Mark Blocks to last you the whole game. So basically, the Bros Items from shops are for people who mess up very easily on racking up damage from Bros Items while not so much for the skilled players like I.

Partners in Time artwork 2


Anyway, onto the normal items: A few items from Superstar Saga were taken away for the absence of the Bros Points, removing the stat increasing items also. The Mushroom Drops replace the Nuts, which in this game restores both the Adult and Baby Bros’ HPs. The Red and Green Peppers are back and unfortunately, no longer puts any one under the effect of heavy-weight or feather-weight ailments and to top it off, the peppers now affect both Bros instead of only one. And introducing the one new item in Partners in Time is the Blue Pepper, increasing the Speed stat instead of Power or Defense. The Red and Green Peppers make an easy game too easy while the Blue Pepper is by far the most useless item ever made. In Superstar Saga, the items were the best and balanced in many ways possible.

As for PiT’s bosses, they do a lot of damage from an easily-avoidable attack, unless if you’re really skilled in dodging any attack. For one example, there is a mutated wiggler that acts as a boss fight. His attacks are very easy to avoid and he is taken down with 4 Cannonballer Bros Items. If you’re very skilled, he’ll be no problem at all. Another example is Shrooboid Brat, an overweight Shroob and holds a lollipop. His attacks are throwing his lollipop or chucking a lethal projectile at any bro. All of his attacks are even worse than the last and they are completely obvious on what you should do to avoid his attacks. In bargain, he has high HP, but can be taken down with about 7 Green Shells. One more example is Mrs. Thwomp, who is even worse than the previous boss. Her attacks are easily dodged and she only takes about 3 Trampolines to be defeated. The only bosses that are all at skill are the couple bosses at the end of the game, but even those bosses become a real joke after learning their techniques. Any boss takes no more than 10 Bros Items to defeat, which isn’t necessarily how Mario and Luigi is supposed to work.

The removal of the hand powers for the adult Mario and Luigi from Superstar Saga are equally annoying, replacing them with cheap Bros Items if the adults become separated from their baby counterparts. The adults’ only physical attack is jumping while for dealing with jump-hazardous enemies, they are forced to use Bros Items. As for the babies, they can do the same or use their hammers gotten later in the game, which if the adults want to hammer enemies, they have to have the babies with them. Why, Alpha Dream? This serves as another example of why the adult Mario Bros’ roles have grown shorter in the series.

Superstar Saga had some of the best humor I’ve ever seen in a Mario RPG, but Partners in Time goes over the top by throwing obscene content at you. Alpha Dream has made the lamest and cheesiest jokes ever, just to attract teens and adults. Only the majority amount of jokes in Partners in Time are a G-rated version of Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force and even Nickelodeon’s Adult version of Ren and Stimpy, while the rest is all downhill from there. Of course Alpha Dream wants to create more laughter in the series, but this is a Mario game! Mario humor is about running gags that keep at a steady pace while keeping the river clean. Do you see the Mario Bros exiting a monster’s body from the backyard? No. Do you see babies being flattened by bullies? No. And do you see butt jokes all the time? No. If you’re looking for that kind of humor, you’re home.

And while the Mario RPGs had a few to oodles of mini games, there is only one mini game in Partners in Time: Slot Machine. Is it boring? Yes. The mini game works as the Mario Bros in ball form collect the diamonds in a maze to fall down a hole, and with each diamond collected the Baby Bros get one spin of the slot machine for each. Getting three Mushrooms or Flowers in a row will grant them coins, but getting three Stars gives them one bean, used for buying equipment that makes a game too simple to master. For instance, you will find a shop that takes Beans to buy broken equipment that gives you infinite usage of Bros Items without any drawbacks! That makes a game too easy.

Finally, for some reason, Partners in Time uses the touch screen for only one short part of the game. After getting past that part, put away your stylus: The touch screen is unusable from that point on. Again, how could you do this to us, Alpha Dream? The touch screen could’ve been used for operating Bros Items or selecting commands or menu items, but it’s so sad Alpha Dream forgot that this game is on the DS.

To be fair, everything above doesn’t make Partners in Time an entirely bad game because it does have some good and valid parts. The graphics in this game are absolutely beautiful and by far, one of the best I’ve ever seen in a Mario game. You’ll find the baby Mario bros greatly made with cute animations that range from humorous sprites to the coolest for cut scenes in the entire game. Sadly, the graphics are the only good part about this game...sobs...but look on the bright side: This isn’t the worst game of all time.

-Pros-
Good graphics
It’s not the worst game in the whole world

-Cons-
It’s...too...easy...
Shorter and darker story
Broken Bros Items and Overpowered Bros
Normal items that make a game much easier
Game gives you too much items, Bros Items, and equipment outside shops
Lack of Bros Points
Why Baby Mario and Baby Luigi?
Humor is too dark
The Shroobs are too evil!
No touch screen usage?
No replay value
Not much new stuff...

--Final Words--

No, I do like the Mario RPGs with different twists and all, but this is an exception. My only crab about this game is that it was too easy and too horribly made (like how the Mario Bros are treated like companions than protagonists), so in my opinion this is regretfully the most disappointing Mario RPG ever born (and being the most subpar in the Mario and Luigi series), but somehow it fares good even today by others. If you haven’t played a Mario RPG before,Toadsworth you may be able to enjoy this for a couple of runs through the whole game. Otherwise, Partners in Time is not good enough for familiar players and therefore, not worth the money. And finally, it is with a heavy a heart that on a scale of 1 through 10, I give Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time a...

1.7 out of 10

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