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So on MLK Jr. Day I finally got around to purchasing a Nintendo 3DS, and I love the system. The 3D capabilities are fantastic, it feels great (if a little less comfortable than the DS), and the Circle Pad feels more responsive than an analog stick.
Right now I only have one game for the system, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, the sequel to the other three Mario & Luigi games that I praise oh-so much. The first game in the series, Superstar Saga, is my favorite RPG of all time, and the third entry, Bowser's Inside Story, isn't too far behind. Partners in Time was not so much a bad game as it was a victim of a short development cycle.
I'll be completely honest. Dream Team is a mess. I don't exactly know how to react to it. There are so many things that I love about it, but yet there are so many things that I absolutely despise about it.
This isn't going to be a formal review as I have not finished the game in its entirety yet. This means I won't be explaining the story or the game, and I am going under the assumption that you know at least a little about the game. I will, however, discuss the good and bad about it.
Let's start with what I like.
I love how much the game has called back to its predecessors.
By far my favorite thing about Dream Team is how nostalgic it makes me feel. For the longest time, each game was its own separate entity, with minor exceptions like Fawful's appearance in the subsequent two games and the Shroobs finding their way into Bowser's Inside Story. In Dream Team, I'm pretty sure there are more old characters than new, and I really like that. From Monsieur Broque to Kylie Koopa and even to Popple, a near-uncountable cast of characters find their way into this game. I got a smile on my face when I found lines like "I'm a master thief, see?" or "Zis is incroyable, non?" because they remind me of what I loved so much about the past games.
But while I appreciate the nostalgia more, it is probably more important to understand how many good elements the game has taken from the previous Mario & Luigi RPGs. Of all of the features I was happy to see return, I loved that Mario and Luigi had different Bros. Attacks, something that hasn't occurred since Superstar Saga. I was so happy to find something that made Mario & Luigi noticeably different aside from some stat differences like in the classic GBA title. In addition to that, Attack Pieces and Ranks return from Bowser's Inside Story, and the double jump returns again, originally found in Partners in Time. Bros. Points are no longer called Special Points, and Nuts return as a method of healing both brothers (instead of mushroom drops - what a stupid name for an item!). The Badge system is retained from Bowser's Inside Story, in addition to the multiple gear slots, however the gear itself has more special abilities like the gear in Superstar Saga. The 2D sections make a return from Bowser's Inside Story, but - well, we'll get to that later.
I love the complexity of battles.
Past Mario RPGs were very simple with their battle systems. It was a simple matter of selecting an attack and pressing a button or two to execute it. It is a hell of a lot better than selecting attacks and praying that they'll connect, but at the same time I can respect an argument that those action commands don't add a full level of control. On a system like the GBA, it's hard to make every attack that complex. They managed to do it with the Bros. Attacks, but, as I said, I can understand someone arguing that it could be even more in-depth.
Dream Team solves this nonexistent problem by making the execution of any attack require a good degree of skill. Jump and Hammer attacks require perfection in order to deliver the maximum amount of damage, something that simply did not happen in Superstar Saga. That doesn't make Superstar Saga's method bad, but I certainly can say that I prefer this system better. It requires mastery, something that a lot of RPGs lack. The Bros. Attacks also require a lot more skill than before. The Fire Flower used to be somewhat of a button-mash skill, but now it is a close observation game where you wait for each fireball to glow before you throw it. Similarly, the new Luiginary attacks require an immense amount of skill, from using the 3DS Gyroscope to roll a Luiginary ball over a bunch of Luigi clones to make it huge to building a giant stack of Luigis by figuring out exactly when and how to jump to make the tower stand straight.
The only complaint I have is with the Bye-Bye Cannon Bros. Attack. I'm partially color-blind, and Luigi's shade of green is closer to Mario's shade of red, making executing this attack especially difficult for me. It's just a small oversight, however, and it's not worth writing home about.
Speaking of visuals, however...
I love this game's presentation.
My god, Alphadream went all out with the music and graphics for this game. It's a joy to play in 2D, but it looks even nicer in 3D. Nothing really pops, but it adds a layer of depth. Touching back on the battles for a second, this added depth also enhances the battle gameplay, making dodging far more complex than timed button presses.
The music of this game is probably my favorite part of it. While the boss theme is the only one that really stands out, there is something to be said about atmosphere, and this game has that. The songs fit the tone of each area perfectly, and it creates a sense of immersion that the other Mario RPGs could only dream of when combined with the visuals (Get it? Dream?).
The environments are all beautiful 3D models, but perhaps even more impressive is the spritework. That's right, the characters are still sprites. You can only find out that they are sprites if you look very closely during certain dialogue sequences. Most of the time, everything looks like a beautiful model, and even when compared to Bowser's Inside Story, the graphics look loads better than any other Mario & Luigi game, and perhaps any Mario RPG in general. Honestly, the graphics also are a bit of a callback to Super Mario RPG to me, as the looks-like-3D-but-isn't spritework appears very similar.
This game's presentation tops everything else about the game. And, while it speaks miles about how good the presentation is, it also speaks poorly for the game in general.
With that, let's talk about what I dislike.
The game DRAGS.
The other Mario & Luigi RPGs are generally about 20 hours long. It's a good-length game that definitely takes time to beat but doesn't overstate its welcome. Lately, games have been expanded to take hundreds of hours to beat. Bethesda, as much as I like them, always makes their games way too long. People see this as a good thing as they get more content for their dollar. I see it as a bad thing because it always means that that content is simply not as high-quality.
There are long games that are fantastic. I've been playing Persona 4, and while its battle system is something I had to take a while to get accustomed to, it is a really good game, despite the main campaign taking around 90 hours to beat. Meanwhile, games like Portal and VVVVVV are also fantastic, but the games are only as long as they need to be.
Alphadream didn't understand that, evidently.
I've played about 18 hours of the game and I'm not even close to the game's final act. It seems like they decided to double the game's length without doubling anything else. The story is incredibly simple, the environments are generally uninteresting despite how nice they look, and the characters just aren't memorable.
A great majority of the game consists of collect-a-thon segments that were designed solely to make the game longer. Part of the Dozing Sands area involves using a cart to crush rocks, but this cart constantly goes on a circular track until you flip a panel to change the track layout. You have to find four Pi'llos that will give you a certain item by crushing all of the rocks until you find them. It was one of the most monotonous segments of the game, and it comes quite early. Another annoying collect-a-thon quest happens later in the game, but it could be considered a callback to Superstar Saga because it is very similar to the Beanstar Piece hunt, albeit a lot longer and more tedious (at the time of writing this, I have not finished it yet).
Then there's the stupid things, like the lack of a warp system until about halfway through the game. You have to take the time to walk everywhere, and it takes forever without any sort of move that speeds up the bros' leisurely pace. Then, Prince Dreambert randomly pulls out a block and says "Oh, yea, we do have a warp system!".
The game does pick up its pace later on, but the typical gamer would get bored in the first few areas of the game quickly and might put it down before getting to the better parts.
The game feels like the "Partners in Time" to Bowser's Inside Story.
If you take your time and look back at the four Mario & Luigi games, you might notice a sort of pattern. Partners in Time feels a lot more like Superstar Saga than Bowser's Inside Story does, and Dream Team feels a lot more like Bowser's Inside Story than it does any other Mario & Luigi game. Why is this?
Perhaps the most obvious thing Dream Team copied was the 2D segments. Instead of these 2D segments being inside Bowser, they now take place in Luigi's dreams. Like being inside Bowser, you can manipulate the outside world to affect the inside world. Bowser is able to use Midbus' ice-breath to freeze the Airway in the same way Luigi can press a button to turn off a heating pad to freeze over Dreamy Mt. Pajamaja. What makes things different with this gimmick is how it was expanded. Now, Starlow can do something to Luigi that affects the Dream World, whether it be making him sneeze and make a giant wind whip by in the dream world or spinning the tube he rests on to change the direction of gravity. Instead of Dream Team having new ideas of its own, it rebrands the same gimmick and sells it as something new.
And, you know, that would be fine if the level design wasn't so lazy in these areas.
Sometimes I enter the dream world to find a host of enemies and puzzles and other times I find an empty room with a few platforms in it. It's almost random as to whether you get a lazy dream world or a complete one, and it bugs the hell out of me. Luckily, the plot-pertinent dream segments are relatively fleshed-out, but some of the minor ones have no thought put into them at all. The only positive is that the dream segments don't ever drag out like Bowser's Inside Story's infamous Flab Zone. I would rather have that, however, than lazy level design.
Partners in Time, to me, gave me a similar feeling to Dream Team in that the entire game felt like a rehash with a few added gimmicks. The Vim Factory could be easily compared to Woohoo Hooniversity, the Thwomp Volcano felt like Hoohoo Mountain, and Star Hill felt like a slightly-less-annoying version of Joke's End. The design in some areas felt lazy, and the parts that were really good were overshadowed by the game's many faults.
The good news is that Dream Team has a lot more good things about it than it has bad things, and it's a lot better than Partners in Time, however some of the copy-paste choices cannot be ignored, and the lazy design in some areas is inexcusable.
I don't think the game is as charming as the others.
Humor was always at the forefront of the plot of Mario RPGs. Whether it be Lord Crump's "Buh huh huh!!!" from Thousand-Year Door or Fawful's "Mustard of Doom" from Superstar Saga, I always was able to appreciate the writing of the Mario & Luigi RPGs.
The plot, for once, is actually relatively dark and serious for a Mario & Luigi game, and it really threw me off. Whenever the main story is talked about, the mood gets incredibly grim. Comparatively, the story of Bowser's Inside Story consisted entirely of hilarious rambling, stupid diseases, and Bowser's constant sarcasm. Even Partners in Time's story, no matter how flawed, was at least entertaining thanks to the never-ending slapstick humor.
Most of the time, Dream Team isn't that funny. It certainly has its moments (one part of the game is particularly "beefy" with humor), but it just hasn't made me laugh nearly as much as its predecessors, and that's sad. When I started Dream Team, I expected to laugh my head off, but I didn't really get that until I was almost 5 hours into the game, and then when that part ended, I had to wait another 4 or 5 hours before I found a particularly funny part of the game.
I guess that when I say the first thing that made me laugh was Starlow saying "HEY! I AM WEARING CLOTHES! I HAVE SHOES!", it didn't really get my hopes up on humor for this game.
I'm not saying the game isn't funny - it is. But it's the least funny of the four games by far.
So here's my verdict.
Dream Team is a good game. It's a really good game. It just doesn't compare to the likes of Superstar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story. I really wanted to fall in love with this game, but that just didn't happen.
I won't give it a score as I haven't beaten the game yet, however I will say it's my second least-favorite Mario & Luigi RPG, above Partners in Time.
I definitely encourage you to give the game a try if you have a 3DS, but I must warn you that you'll have to be patient and forgiving with it. If you can overlook those things, however, it's certainly a fun time.
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