Mario & Luigi: Dream Team
Feb. 13th, 2015 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroMario, Luigi and the Princess are invited to a new resort on the mysterious Pi'illo Island, a magically restful place covered in the ruins of the ancient Pi’illo society, which vanished many years before. But the Pi’illos aren’t gone—they were petrified in a battle against an ancient evil and trapped in the dream world. And when that evil returns (and teams up with Bowser, because of course), Mario and Luigi will need to rescue the Pi’illo folk to find out how to stop it.
A grand assortment of characters from the previous games return, including (for no particular reason), Starlow, Broque Monsieur and Broque Madame, various Bean people, various block people, that annoying thief guy whose name I can’t remember, and Bowser’s usual goon squad. Though I’ll give them credit in that making Starlow a member of your active party gives you another speaking character who can exposit (Mario and Luigi just mutter in faux-Italian, they’re effectively silent protagonists); and it gives you another female character in an extremely male franchise.
The gameplay is a continuation of everything we’ve seen in the series so far: Attacks, dodging and special moves based on Timed Hits; lots of map-screen action puzzles; a zillion things to find and plenty of minigames; and lovely animation with a good sense of humor. They try to heavily use the new features of the 3DS. There are a lot of the front-and-back bits 3D bits I saw in Kirby Triple Deluxe that I noted as being reminiscent of the Virtual Boy; and also jumping bits and enemy attacks that are much easier to track and dodge if you’re seeing them in 3D. They also love the gyroscope feature of the 3DS; it’s used to aim a number of important attacks in boss sequences. (Which, I’ll admit, sometimes pissed me off—it’s a really inaccurate way to aim.)
The “turn the DS sideways for a kaiju-size battle” feature from Bowser’s Inside Story also returns, though those battles feel more…streamlined, I guess? The Bowser ones felt more like battles; these feel more like puzzles / minigame sessions.
The dream world battles are done effectively as solo Mario battles, which on one hand are easier (fewer buttons to keep track of and things to watch out for), but on the other hand are less exciting and less interesting. Certainly not bad, but on the margin I wouldn’t rate them as highly as the other alternate battle setups (the baby bros, Bowser) in the series.
They get increasingly generous with equipment that makes Mario & Luigi regenerate HP as the game goes on, which I found made the game much easier—I’m much better at scoring Excellent hits to deal damage than I am at consistently dodging/counterattacking. I actually used relatively few healing items and I didn’t really need to purchase any. (If you’re really good at Timed Hits, the game offers super-strong equipment that hurts you if you don’t score Excellent hits; or that will KO Mario after a set number of turns unless you win the battle before then. There are lots of ways to live on the edge in this game.)
The balance does tip more towards needing to be at least somewhat good at the action part of “action-rpg” to win the game, which I think the series has generally shifted into over time. Super Mario RPG could be beaten without ever scoring a Timed Hit, it was just much harder. I don’t think this game could be completed—even if you grinded like crazy—if you had take every hit and only dealt “OK” damage.
As compared to the other games in the series, though, I have one major complaint: This game is too long. The previous three games took 15-20 hours each, and had an appropriate amount of plot, puzzles and fighting for that length. This one is twice as long, and the vast majority of that additional time feels like padding. You’ll feel like a dungeon should be over, and then there’ll be another segment just like the first one; and then there will be a whole additional Dream World dungeon at the end that doesn’t actually add any story value. While I think I was underleveled for chunks of the game (I apparently am not badass enough to complete many of the “expert challenges”, but good enough that I never needed to grind to pass anything, just retry on a few boss battles), the boss battles still often felt like they took forever—one of the three final boss battles took me 45 minutes. This went beyond “getting my money’s worth” and well into, “Seriously? We’re not done yet?”
Overall: I think Bowser’s Inside Story was a stronger game in a bunch of ways; this suffered from a bit too much 3D gimmickry and far too much padding. But it’s still a fun game and if you’ve enjoyed the Mario & Luigi series so far, you’ll like this too.
A grand assortment of characters from the previous games return, including (for no particular reason), Starlow, Broque Monsieur and Broque Madame, various Bean people, various block people, that annoying thief guy whose name I can’t remember, and Bowser’s usual goon squad. Though I’ll give them credit in that making Starlow a member of your active party gives you another speaking character who can exposit (Mario and Luigi just mutter in faux-Italian, they’re effectively silent protagonists); and it gives you another female character in an extremely male franchise.
The gameplay is a continuation of everything we’ve seen in the series so far: Attacks, dodging and special moves based on Timed Hits; lots of map-screen action puzzles; a zillion things to find and plenty of minigames; and lovely animation with a good sense of humor. They try to heavily use the new features of the 3DS. There are a lot of the front-and-back bits 3D bits I saw in Kirby Triple Deluxe that I noted as being reminiscent of the Virtual Boy; and also jumping bits and enemy attacks that are much easier to track and dodge if you’re seeing them in 3D. They also love the gyroscope feature of the 3DS; it’s used to aim a number of important attacks in boss sequences. (Which, I’ll admit, sometimes pissed me off—it’s a really inaccurate way to aim.)
The “turn the DS sideways for a kaiju-size battle” feature from Bowser’s Inside Story also returns, though those battles feel more…streamlined, I guess? The Bowser ones felt more like battles; these feel more like puzzles / minigame sessions.
The dream world battles are done effectively as solo Mario battles, which on one hand are easier (fewer buttons to keep track of and things to watch out for), but on the other hand are less exciting and less interesting. Certainly not bad, but on the margin I wouldn’t rate them as highly as the other alternate battle setups (the baby bros, Bowser) in the series.
They get increasingly generous with equipment that makes Mario & Luigi regenerate HP as the game goes on, which I found made the game much easier—I’m much better at scoring Excellent hits to deal damage than I am at consistently dodging/counterattacking. I actually used relatively few healing items and I didn’t really need to purchase any. (If you’re really good at Timed Hits, the game offers super-strong equipment that hurts you if you don’t score Excellent hits; or that will KO Mario after a set number of turns unless you win the battle before then. There are lots of ways to live on the edge in this game.)
The balance does tip more towards needing to be at least somewhat good at the action part of “action-rpg” to win the game, which I think the series has generally shifted into over time. Super Mario RPG could be beaten without ever scoring a Timed Hit, it was just much harder. I don’t think this game could be completed—even if you grinded like crazy—if you had take every hit and only dealt “OK” damage.
As compared to the other games in the series, though, I have one major complaint: This game is too long. The previous three games took 15-20 hours each, and had an appropriate amount of plot, puzzles and fighting for that length. This one is twice as long, and the vast majority of that additional time feels like padding. You’ll feel like a dungeon should be over, and then there’ll be another segment just like the first one; and then there will be a whole additional Dream World dungeon at the end that doesn’t actually add any story value. While I think I was underleveled for chunks of the game (I apparently am not badass enough to complete many of the “expert challenges”, but good enough that I never needed to grind to pass anything, just retry on a few boss battles), the boss battles still often felt like they took forever—one of the three final boss battles took me 45 minutes. This went beyond “getting my money’s worth” and well into, “Seriously? We’re not done yet?”
Overall: I think Bowser’s Inside Story was a stronger game in a bunch of ways; this suffered from a bit too much 3D gimmickry and far too much padding. But it’s still a fun game and if you’ve enjoyed the Mario & Luigi series so far, you’ll like this too.
