Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Feb. 3rd, 2011 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroBowser ate some things he shouldn’t have…including Mario and Luigi. Now, as Fawful has chortles all over the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario and Luigi must help Bowser from the inside to defeat him.
Someone decided this game must use every feature the DS has to offer. Every button, both screens, the touchscreen, the microphone; hell, there are battles that require you turn the DS sideways. (When you play as Giant Kaiju Bowser!) It is amusing, though. And it continues the trend in these games of blurring the action/rpg line, as it would be impossible to win (as opposed to merely difficult) if you didn't have the reflexes to hit action commands properly. (For the bros, it helps to have a thumb big enough to press A and B at the same time. Makes dodging things much easier.) The game is constantly throwing new stuff at you. It's like every minigame from the earlier games in the series plus a stack of new ones. New battle options and special moves keep getting introduced through the very end of the game.
One of the main gimmicks is that Bowser can inhale enemies (or parts of them), which the bros then have to fight inside of him. Most boss battles work this way, including all of the late-game ones. Typically, Bowser is on the top screen and the Bros are on the bottom, and you can switch between them with a single button-press, which is required for most of the puzzles inside of Bowser’s body. Fortunately, you never need to control them both simultaneously.
The final boss wasn’t insanely difficult! Amazing! After the insanely difficulty final boss of Superstar Saga, which was the only thing in the game that made me grind and search for game-breakers, the final boss here was remarkably do-able. Not easy, certainly, but if you’d gotten the hang of the game, not impossible either. In general, boss battles are kind in that you can screw up the dodges for each attack the first time you see them, and it won’t kill you outright—the game lets you have a little learning curve and still win the battle, rather than being sent back to your previous save.
The actual plot is pretty standard: Villain goes for macguffin, disaster ensues, Princess gets kidnapped, the usual stuff. The individual events and the dialogue are fantastic, though. The translators were aware of all internet traditions; Fawful speaks in Zero Wingrish and video games references (“IT’S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY”) and one of the enemies is a Fawfulcopter. Bowser interrupts speeches that have too many words and tells someone “Cry more.” The brothers look like standard sprites from the 16-bit era, but go “off-model” in delightfully unexpected and amusing ways—there’s suddenly far better animation than you’d expect given the art style.
There’s also a remarkably efficiency of locations. Late in the game, Mario and Luigi go revisiting areas, and monsters you could just knock away as Bowser are a big threat to the bros (and usually give better rewards than the big monsters). (This isn’t really a spoiler, because jump-blocks that Bowser can’t reach are present in all of these areas, implying the bros will get there at some point.)
There are a lot of minigames, a challenge arena, and a bean-collecting sidequest that could probably take six hours without a guide, but the game proper clocks in at a perfectly-respectable 20 hours. It doesn’t really demand grinding, and enemies are always visible on the map screen so you can avoid them if you want. Combined with the action commands, it’s a good rpg for folks who think rpgs are slow or boring.
Someone decided this game must use every feature the DS has to offer. Every button, both screens, the touchscreen, the microphone; hell, there are battles that require you turn the DS sideways. (When you play as Giant Kaiju Bowser!) It is amusing, though. And it continues the trend in these games of blurring the action/rpg line, as it would be impossible to win (as opposed to merely difficult) if you didn't have the reflexes to hit action commands properly. (For the bros, it helps to have a thumb big enough to press A and B at the same time. Makes dodging things much easier.) The game is constantly throwing new stuff at you. It's like every minigame from the earlier games in the series plus a stack of new ones. New battle options and special moves keep getting introduced through the very end of the game.
One of the main gimmicks is that Bowser can inhale enemies (or parts of them), which the bros then have to fight inside of him. Most boss battles work this way, including all of the late-game ones. Typically, Bowser is on the top screen and the Bros are on the bottom, and you can switch between them with a single button-press, which is required for most of the puzzles inside of Bowser’s body. Fortunately, you never need to control them both simultaneously.
The final boss wasn’t insanely difficult! Amazing! After the insanely difficulty final boss of Superstar Saga, which was the only thing in the game that made me grind and search for game-breakers, the final boss here was remarkably do-able. Not easy, certainly, but if you’d gotten the hang of the game, not impossible either. In general, boss battles are kind in that you can screw up the dodges for each attack the first time you see them, and it won’t kill you outright—the game lets you have a little learning curve and still win the battle, rather than being sent back to your previous save.
The actual plot is pretty standard: Villain goes for macguffin, disaster ensues, Princess gets kidnapped, the usual stuff. The individual events and the dialogue are fantastic, though. The translators were aware of all internet traditions; Fawful speaks in Zero Wingrish and video games references (“IT’S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY”) and one of the enemies is a Fawfulcopter. Bowser interrupts speeches that have too many words and tells someone “Cry more.” The brothers look like standard sprites from the 16-bit era, but go “off-model” in delightfully unexpected and amusing ways—there’s suddenly far better animation than you’d expect given the art style.
There’s also a remarkably efficiency of locations. Late in the game, Mario and Luigi go revisiting areas, and monsters you could just knock away as Bowser are a big threat to the bros (and usually give better rewards than the big monsters). (This isn’t really a spoiler, because jump-blocks that Bowser can’t reach are present in all of these areas, implying the bros will get there at some point.)
There are a lot of minigames, a challenge arena, and a bean-collecting sidequest that could probably take six hours without a guide, but the game proper clocks in at a perfectly-respectable 20 hours. It doesn’t really demand grinding, and enemies are always visible on the map screen so you can avoid them if you want. Combined with the action commands, it’s a good rpg for folks who think rpgs are slow or boring.
