Mario & Luigi Superstar saga is the first of a long lineage of Mario & Luigi RPGs that were both faithful sequels to Super Mario RPG on SNES, but also a variation of the Paper Mario RPG series that took concepts from both. Since Mario & Luigi games were always released on handheld consoles, it's reasonable to assume M&L as I'll refer to it from here on, was meant as the portable RPG series, while Paper Mario would be the home console series... at least until Sticker Star. With that in mind, M&L might come off as an afterthought or not nearly as ambitious or high quality comparatively, but not only does it succeed expectations, it's incredibly transformative of the Mario world and really sets itself apart from its contemporaries.

M&L Superstar Saga is as ambitious as it is transformative. The emphasis of Superstar saga is the simultaneous control of Mario & Luigi, and how they put their skills together to traverse and clear puzzles, or separate and tackle objectives with their own more limited skillsets. While ultimately the pacing can be reduced to a crawl in many sections requiring constant "Bros. Moves", the level design is very proactive to keep these capabilities in mind which allows for more creative concepts in level design to keep it interesting and unique. Cycling through the Bros. Moves can be a chore, and swapping the positions of Mario & Luigi grows tiresome especially when it's required to do multiple times in one section, which is probably why the next few entries do away with it, to remove intrusive requirements for progression. With that said, all the animations and interactions Mario & Luigi have with each other using these abilities are incredibly charming and pretty funny, especially if you don't have a specific ability yet and attempt to use the action combination, you can see Mario or Luigi get rather angry with the other, which I really like.

The story and general world building of Superstar Saga are simple, but present some very interesting ideas. A neighboring kingdom of the Mushroom Kingdom, BeanBean Kingdom pays Princess Peach a visit in an attempt to enforce relations and presumably peace. All for it to be a ploy for Cackletta, a rather infamous individual in BeanBean Kingdom, to steal Princess Peach's voice for undisclosed reasons at the start. It's incredibly interesting to have a villain other than Bowser to be the catalyst for Mario & Luigi's adventure, even having Bowser take on a supporting role much like in Mario RPG, unfortunately not playable this time around. While I could tear apart the inciting incident about how the implication of a neighboring kingdom harming another that could easily lead to misunderstandings, war, and many other ugly consequences, I won't because Mario isn't that deep of a franchise, nor would it exactly fit with Mario's upbeat energy and vibe, so we'll continue on. Mario, Luigi (against his will), and Bowser set out for BeanBean Kingdom to stop Cackletta and retrieve Princess Peach's voice, this all goes awry when Fawful, Cackletta's... understudy? Minion? Friend? I don't know, but anyway, Fawful stops them in their tracks, and the real adventure begins from there. While I won't delve into everything here, the story presents a lot of concepts the Mario series has never tackled before which I liked. One thing that really stood out to me is the rather dark undertones this game has, there's definitely a few settings and incidents that come off rather grim or disturbing which was a fantastic subversion for Mario and how the game itself is presented.

Exploring BeanBean Kingdom is great since it presents a lot of settings that haven't been in a Mario game before, but do play it safe with staple environments like a desert and some woods, though the history and purpose of these settings is fleshed out enough and significant enough to Beanbean Kingdom to make them stand out and feel justified. There's also some interesting concepts of Mushroom Kingdom immigration which I find particularly fascinating and wish they delved into that more, but I'm glad it was there at all. As I mentioned, BeanBean Kingdom has extensive history, and you get to go through many historical areas such as ruins, castles, and forgotten structures it really helps the setting of BeanBean Kingdom feel like it's existed for a long time, and has significance in the Mario World without ever being acknowledged or explorable until this game. While it can get a bit repetitive at times, I very much enjoyed exploring these areas and gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation for the setting, since the developers really tried to do everything they could to accomplish that, and I think they definitely did it well.

Combat is very creative while taking notes from other Mario RPG's. Contrary to Mario RPG and Paper Mario that give player input on lowering damage by guarding at the right time, Mario & Luigi takes this concept and expands upon it. In M&L you can potentially avoid taking a single hit of damage through the entire game if you understand enemy moves, timings, and patterns well enough. Rather than guard, Maro & Luigi can avoid damage by jumping, and remove projectiles or other obstructions with hammers, they can even attack the enemy during their turn by jumping on them or smashing them with your hammer during some of their attacks. Not only does this keep combat constantly engaging and forces you to always pay attention, but it rewards mastery and skill remarkably well which is a huge plus. It could inadvertently do the opposite as well though, where the game can come off as too easy and be incredibly unengaging because there's no stake or risk in fights if you never take damage. This is remedied a bit by the fact most enemies in Superstar Saga hit like trucks, especially later on, and attacks become harder to react to with odd timings, wind-ups, and difficult visual tells you need to pay attention to or else you're in a world of trouble. Not to mention the status effects in this game like tripping prevent you from dodging the next incoming attack, which can be devastating depending on the circumstance. It's... an odd system, but I think Superstar Saga does a great job at balancing it and gradually increasing the difficulty overtime to not make it feel inconsequential.

M&L has a big emphasis on timing with both counterattacks, but also regular attacking. This is very much like Mario RPG and Paper Mario where just before landing an attack, pressing the corresponding button will ensure your attack goes off correctly. Which, once again ensures the player is always focused and engaged with combat encounters so they can get through it quickly or optimally so they can progress the game. M&L takes it a step further with Bros. Attacks. While you're learning different traversal techniques outside of battles, those same techniques can be used in combat to perform very powerful attacks that require multiple different button inputs to pull off for a huge payoff of damage. Bros. Attacks require both Mario & Luigi, and each have different button combinations and timings you need to learn and master before utilizing them properly. The game does a fantastic job with the ability to make the Bros. Attacks easier to perform, but cost more BP (Bros. Points) to use, by slowing down the animation and showing the button prompts on screen. You can increase the difficulty of these moves which will decrease the amount of BP used, but the attack will move at normal speed and with/without button prompts depending on the difficulty you selected for it. I love this idea a lot since it feels like a tutorial while still giving the player's a reward with a higher cost, while mastery of the move only increases the rewards with a lower cost. There's an additional layer to all this as well, if you use a specific Bros. Attack enough times, the move will gain an "advanced" variation which is much harder to perform, but have additional benefits like stealing items, giving status elements, or simply doing more damage. No other M&L game does this, or really any other Mario RPG, so its exclusivity, while sad, is a huge boon this game has going for it. The amount of learning and mastery of these moves only to become harder and more rewarding is an incredible idea that never feels impossible to implement in your gameplay, but you also don't necessarily need to if you want to stick to the normal versions. To be frank, there's specific Bros. Attacks that are so over-tuned anyway, you'll probably end up using them the entire playthrough, which is unfortunate because it sort of defeats the point of all the variety and evolving moves, but it's still a very much welcomed addition.

Sound design and music are phenomenal here as well. There's a ton of upbeat tracks, a good amount of ambiance, good climactic music, everything you need is here. Nothing really stands out in a bad way except a few voice lines that sound a bit off, but other than that, nothing really stood out as bad or distracting.

Superstar saga impresses me as the first outing for this series. A lot of my criticisms are either fixed or at least addressed in later entries, the prospect of a new kingdom, characters, antagonists, and concepts for the Mario world are very much welcome and executed incredibly well while feeling very creative. BeanBean Kingdom feels like it really belongs with an extensive history that is fleshed out throughout the game while exploring it, while also slightly dipping its toes into Mushroom Kingdom immigration and general relations enough to satisfy me as well even if I did want a bit more of that. The combat is very innovative with a strong emphasis of mastery that rewards players constantly and feels very satisfying to master. Bros. Attacks having built-in tutorials for a higher resource cost so you can familiarize yourself with it to increase the difficulty while lowering the cost is great, it gets even better when those attacks get harder variations later with even more rewards to further encourage mastery is honestly something I want to see more of in RPG's 100%. I highly recommend this game since it's very creative and has a lot of unique concepts that you won't really find anywhere else. My largest criticism is really just some of the level design involving Bros. Moves to progress, and constantly having to switch positions to use certain ones can be annoying, but otherwise, everything here is very well done. I suppose my next review will be Mario Wonder in a week or two depending how long it takes, so please look forward to that as well. Thank you all for reading!

I normally don't enjoy RPGs, but I gave Paper Mario a shot and adored it. I then played TTYD and loved every minute of it. So a friend recommended Superstar Saga.

I really wanted to love this game. But it just wasn't fun to play.

The dialogue was FANTASTIC, and I loved the story. But the gameplay was far too tedious to justify playing through the game just to get to the story.

The credits are literally rolling as I'm typing this. I gathered a lot of thoughts on Superstar Saga during my playthrough and I wanted to see it through to the end before I put them into words. Needless to say I got very antsy.

I didn't play this game during its heyday, but I did play Partners in Time (and Super Mario RPG) and held that game in high regard. It's the only other M&L game I played and I have an appreciation for its combat system. A four-person party with each member assigned to a different face button, along with a plethora of various team attacks and offensive items that both require an understanding of the timing to pull them off while also rewarding peerless play by allowing seemingly infinite combos until the time window to pull them off gradually become more difficult. It's fun, stylish, an addictive. I played Partners in Time twice, once as a kid and later as a teenager (I'm 23 now) and both times I couldn't resist running into every enemy in the overworld to have another attempt at mastering each and every attack.

I was aware of Superstar Saga and its premise. My understanding was, being Partners in Time's former, that it was just a more primitive, simple version. That turned out to be true, but my experience and feelings got a little more complicated as I sunk my teeth.

At first glance, SS is as charming as your standard Mario fare and more. After looking at Alphadream's Tomato Adventure (a game I am now currently playing) you can see why Nintendo chose them for the job. This game is brimming with bright colors and beautiful spritework for the GBA. The writing is entertaining and the humor works more than it doesn't. My experience through the first act of the game went joyfully, only being minorly annoyed by the lengthy tutorials for some menial menu navigating here and there.

But as you get settled in... does the colorful paintjob start to peel? What's left underneath? It's a slow and painful peel, as enemy encounters become more plentiful and complex while your arsenal of your own... doesn't seem to evolve as much. SS painfully lacks the multitudes of combat options its predecessors grant you. What is sparsely given to you, whether a hammer attack or a Bro Command, is dripfed to you throughout what seems to be a needlessly overly-long campaign, one that is incessantly padded with fetchquests within fetchquests, constant meaningless backtracking, and an obtuse world map. All the while the vastness of the Beanbean Kingdom slowly just becomes one blur, areas upon areas of similar looking tiles, assets, and locales. Try finding a crucial NPC in a nameless cave when the entire world you're adventuring is one massive square, filled with smaller room shaped squares of green grass and flowers, all with their own nameless caves that lead to god-knows-what except your destination.

SS becomes a game of walking around, either avoiding enemies or accidentally getting into fights you don't want to be in.

The game makes its attempts to break the pace with its dungeons but man. None of them are good. Not a single one. Every single dungeon in this game is a non-linear sequence of square rooms that use the same sequence of puzzles. Use a hammer to open a door. Use a hammer to squish Luigi into the floor so he can go under a grated fence and use his hammer to open a door for Mario to open a hammer to open the boss door. Use a hammer to squish Mario so he can fit through a small opening and use his hammer to open a door for Luigi to go into to use his hammer to press a button to open a door. Use the hammer. Use the hammer. Press a button. Squish Mario. Squish Luigi. Hammer. Button. Squish. Barrel. This is done in just about every combination sequence possible, and they just get longer and longer and longer. Because late game difficulty is longer puzzles.

And then you're back walking around and around and around and trying to find one damn thing in one specific corner of the game world that you were given one line of dialogue of description to find. Just one meaningless macguffin to find and then it's on to the next one and the next and then the game is over. By the end of the game I barely felt any different than the Mario and Luigi I started with. Maybe even with a little piece of my soul missing after all the aimless walking and hours wasted.

The balancing also just seems.. odd. I tried my god damnest the whole game but I could not get either of the Bros to be even remotely even stat-wise. In any combination of stat bonuses and equipment and badges and what-not, Mario just always trumps Luigi in stats. The absolute best I could do was deprive Mario of Bro Points and make him the designated physical combatant and dumped all possible BP gain onto Luigi, sort of like a mage. It sort of worked but if was the only sort of control I could get out of that situation.

General consensus is that this is a 20 hour game and it took me about that. The problem is that this game should be 10 hours. By the first act I felt a little drained by the lengthy tutorials but I was eager to level up and learn new abilities. By the ending of the first half I felt barely any different, and I was already tired of the incessant travelling and clunky, time wasting, copy-pasted puzzles. By the last quarter I had long wanted out, but by principle of sunk-cost fallacy I felt like I had to push it through to the end. How I feel/felt by the end? Right now? Looking at my handheld emulator right now giving me the "Thank you for playing" screen? Empty, I guess. Drained.

And yet it's not the worst JRPG I've ever played. Even if the exploration itself is as monotonous as they come it's not even downright bad. It's just boring. I'll take a monotonous game coated with visual sugar and interactable spice combat the way this game did over some of the meandering menu-flipping fare that comes out today. It can be a hair-pulling experience but it's one with things to still appreciate. I love the characters of the Beanbean Kingdom. Fawful had great dialogue. Bowser's role in the story was intriguing and was a good way to make him a more involved character, especially in a conflict that didn't particularly involve him. The entire arc of the game focusing on Luigi was the most fun part of the game and had some depth to how he views himself in the world. I loved the Prince and his characterization as a stunning heartthrob and companion that didn't fall into some insufferable narcissict archetype. It's a cute game that's brimming with color and style that falls flat when it decides to meander you with its gameplay, but it's far more appreciable than what you'd expect.

I absolutely adore the Mario & Luigi series and just because this is the oldest absolutely does not make it the weakest. Everything about this game is just pure fun. While modern Paper Mario may be a bland mess of bad and basic ideas, this is the origin of something special. However the graphics and a few other minor things do hold it back and I believe those issues are just tied to the passage of time. This is why I all around prefer the 3DS remake because it fixes every issue I have with this game. Either way, no matter what means you have to take, you NEED to play this game.

JOGÃO JOGASSOOOOOOOOO

Que jogo FENOMENAL
Serio, divertido pra caralho, um sistema de combate com algumas coisas novas comparadas a jrpgs, juntamente com habilidades que, alem de te ajudarem na progressão, te ajudam no combate

A história é muito funny, os personagens são muito legais, e acho que o único criticismo que eu tenho é a parte de gelo
O nivel de força dos inimigos sobe muito, e a musica repetitiva e estranha faz o jogador querer mutar o jogo
Essa parte realmente me irritou, mas tirando isso, nossa que JOGASSOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Man I never expected the first of the series to be this good! Story is great, and honestly pretty funny (which is something of a rarity for me when it comes to games). Music (apart from Joke's End) is very good too. The Bros Moves are AMAZING in this game. They kind of let you try stuff out on your own by increasing the difficulty of the moves instantly if you want to, and figuring out how to use them is so satisfying. The advancements in the moves is such a great idea and I am honestly a little disappointed they removed this in later instances.
You know, this game definitely had more soul than Dream Team and Paper Jam, that's for sure. The first three games will always hold a special place in my heart. And now I can say that I played all of them :)

This game is absolutely packed with references, cameos and easter eggs that rival the newly released Super Mario Bros. movie (this won't age the review at all!).

Seriously though if you were a long-time Mario fan when this game came out, this game would be like the ultimate gift. Even playing it for the first time now, I can still appreciate the insane amount of sources they pulled from to put into the game. Enemies can be anything from generic Mario enemies, to spin-off stuff like the viruses from Dr. Mario, to variations on them (like mechanical dogs with chain chomp heads, scuba diva Goombas or Bullet Bills with Scope Rifles).

Of course it's not only references, the game has plenty of original content, including taking place in a brand new Kingdom to the Mario world, with everything within having a naming scheme that I...didn't really care for, even if it did fit the tone.

The combat is very interesting in this game since every action, offense and defense, requires player input. If you want to get extra damage on your basic attack you need to time it right, and if you want to pull off a special attack at all you'll need to time and input a short sequence of button prompts. You can even set these to your required difficulty level - you can set it to the easiest mode where the timing prompts play in slow motion with the game telling you which buttons to press, or you can set it to hard mode where the timings play at normal speed and don't tell you which buttons to press. The benefits of hard mode is that it takes up less "bro points" to do the move (think MP in any other RPG).

But I think it's the defensive stuff that makes the combat work so great. You can time your Bros. jumps or hammer strikes when an enemy is attacking to either dodge or counter attack. It makes every single enemy feel unique because the way they attack determines how/if they can be countered. It's such a refreshing system that can make even the most simple of battels feel more engaging for a playstyle that many consider slow.

I guess they do rely on this system a bit too much to carry battles though because Mario and Luigi's movesets are pretty lacking. 2 characters is already a small amount for an RPG, and these guys only get a total of 4 special moves (each with an upgraded version) and 3 basic moves, all of which are slowly unlocked over the course of the game. And yet, somewhat contradictory, it feels like these 4 special moves are also "too many". What I mean by that is, there doesn't feel like nearly enough variation in attacks. There's some simple things such as hammers can attack spiky enemies, but for the most part it rarely felt like there was any specific move that fit a specific enemy, so you just go with whatever. Mario also gets fire power and Luigi gets lightning somewhat late in to the game, so you get a grand total of 2 elements to use across this small arsenal. Even these elements feel underutilised, sure I noticed an enemy or two that was weak to, or absorbed one type of damage, but it was never worth it to me to test these elements out when stomping on an enemy was usually good enough to do the job.

There's a few times when Mario & Luigi are split up too, and Bros. moves can't be used in these instances, so in these battles they must be completed with only 3 basic moves.

So the battle system is weird. It's very fun, but very limited. Whether the battle interaction justifies the lack of options is a very tough question.

Moving on, since this is a Mario game, even if it's an RPG, platforming elements still show up. And it's where my biggest issue with the game came from. The GBA only has a few buttons, but there's a LOT of field actions in this game. And not only does every action they can do to interact with the world have an individual effect, but an effect when used on the other brother AND the order the brothers are set in matters. What this means with few buttons is that you're constantly micromanaging which action is set at any one time, and which of the 2 moustached fella's is in the lead. The amount of times I skipped past an action, or rushed and pressed the wrong one so I made Mario tiny by hammering him with Luigi instead of doing the super jump was annoying. It's a very minor annoyance, yes, but it's one that persists throughout the game.

Speaking of that super jump ability, it's easily the worst one because of how unnecessary it is. It's literally just used to get to platforms slightly too high to reach at a regular jump, but why? Why not just make the platforms normal height? It's not like it was done for gating the player off, since it's one of the two first abilities you learn. It has no puzzle or challenge attributed to it. It's like they just needed a filler ability for Luigi to match Mario's spin one, so they then had to justify adding it by throwing in a bunch of platforms that force you to waste just a couple extra seconds to get past. Yes it's a petty complaint.

Let's get back to praising the game. I really liked the soundtrack, which like anything else, has a mix of new stuff, with old remixes.

The game is full of decently fun mini-games, each of which can be replayed after its mandatory play for extra rewards.

A very small thing, but the luck stat in this game is called "moustache". It also gives you discounts in the store if you grow this "mous-stat". It's that kinda thing that just makes the game a joy.

The game is surprisingly not as hand-holdy as I thought it'd be. Like this is babbys first RPG in many ways. It's not hard at all and many systems are simplified, such as equipment pretty much only ever having basic "power/defense/hp/bp(mp)" numbers and then maybe a simple effect added on. But it gives you access to the world map pretty early on. Of course most of it is locked off until you get the required abilities, but it still surprised me that it let the player explore and find this out themselves, rather than railroading them to the next story point. Hell if I'm being honest, sometimes the game gives you so LITTLE direction on what to do next I had to look up a guide on where to go at a couple of points.

Part of me felt like this game had too many tutorials, but I don't think that's true. It does give a new one every time you learn a new ability, so to some people that's too many, but I think the main problem is how SLOW they were. Whenever characters are talking, this game is definitely very slow.

By RPG standards it is, of course, pretty basic. But it's an RPG for Mario fans first and foremost. However the fact that they went further with the gameplay than the simple turn-based battle system just really helped so that I could enjoy the game even after all the Mario fanservice started to lose its effect.

I don't really like turn based RPGs but this game is so good, i love it. The combat is really fun, and the music in this game goes CRAZY. I'm not a huge fan of the turn based combat format but the way this game does it is so much fun. The combat is simple, you attack on your attack turn and use attack pattern memorization to not get hit during the enemy turn and its so fun. I'm not a fan of how in other turn based games i have to sit and pray my enemy doesn't turbo fuck me and that theres nothing i can do about that, so i like how i can do something during the enemy turn like remembering the attack patterns and dodging or stopping enemy moves with what i learned through attack patterns instead of hoping i get lucky. This game has a lot of personality and charm to the Mario and Luigi sprites and i have so many memories of those sprites in old youtube sprite animation vids especially Mario bros Z.

For this particular holiday season, me and a buncha Discord moots did a little "backlog secret santa" where each person was secretly assigned another to pick a game out of the other's backlog and make them play it. At the moment, I'm still unaware of who gave me Superstar Saga, but I'd like them to know I enjoyed it a pretty nice amount.

Before this little event, my only experience with any sort of Mario RPG was the third of this series, Bowser's Inside Story, and a forever unfinished run of Paper Mario: Sticker Star. I liked Bowser's Inside Story a shit ton, even going so far as to call it my favorite Mario game out of all of them, but for some reason I just never got around to trying any of the others. Glad I finally did with this one, though, since I definitely had fun with Superstar Saga, although it might've taken just a while to really start getting into it.
I think a problem I had with the game that didn't start fixing itself up until about three or four hours in, was the combat. With the amount of overworld encounters you face, you will be fighting lots of the same enemy over and over again, and the way the Mario & Luigi series does battles doesn't really help its case. Combat is extremely simple, time your A/B presses at the right time for extra damage, time your A/B presses at the right time on the enemy's turn to dodge. It's not until the Bros. Attacks when things start getting a little more varied, even if it is just a few more, flashier button timings for bigger numbers. It just makes all of the fights, including bosses unfortunately, rather forgettable.
The most charm Superstar Saga provides would be in the characters, in my opinion (and I've heard this is a pretty common thing among all of the older Mario RPGs.) There are a lot of great interactions, designs, even some quick cameos that were fun to see. It's always great seeing Peach get more speaking roles, the Bean Royalty (or whatever I'm supposed to call them) are all entertaining characters, there were some lines of dialogue that I had to do a quick double take on, I just don't have enough ways to say that this game's writing was shockingly entertaining, but I guess blame that on my lack of experience in these games.
I'll be honest and say I had the music off for a good majority of my playthrough. It's nice, and obviously I let it play for a little bit whenever I reached a new area, but it's not something I'd be willing to sit through for extended periods of time. Especially considering, again, the sheer amount of overworld encounters you'll be sitting through constantly cutting off the music with the same old battle theme every single time.

It was a lotta fun. It took a while to get there, but once I did, I had fun pretty consistently throughout, and I'm glad I had something to finally push me to try it out. Even if it was a little excruciating thinking about all the other games I wanted to play/replay lmao

Very nice 8/10. Looking forward to maybe also trying out some more of its sequels.

small tangent, people overhyped the hell out of that final boss. it's really not that bad, just dodge lol.

This game was absolutely magical to me! When I was a kid, I had no interest in RPGs. I remember not even enjoying Super Mario RPG back then, as I was an action game purist. I had no idea what kind of game this was supposed to be, asking for it as a Christmas gift purely out of it being a Mario game!

When the truth sunk into me and I realized this was an RPG, I was pretty annoyed at first, but ended up getting into the rhythm anyway. Giving you the ability to avoid enemy attacks when it was their turn added a lot to the experience for me. I love how it called for twitchy reaction and learning patterns against bosses, it made the game so much more fun!

The adventure aspect isn't bad either, giving you so much to do and tons of secrets and side-objectives to find, all with their own charming characters with their own personalities. I got this with a Gameboy Advance SP, so having that light-up screen with this game (that required a lot of reading) was a perfect combo!

It's a shame that none of the sequels would really live up to this game, but I'm grateful we were able to get this fantastic experience! It was definitely what opened me up the RPG genre.

This is a really good intro RPG. It has a lot of mechanics that force you to stay attentive during battles, which I can imagine people who think that turn-based combat is pretty boring might enjoy. It also has a lot of memorable characters and witty dialogue; not to the extent of Undertale, but I laughed a lot regardless.

However, for as much as I enjoy these aspects of Superstar Saga, this is one of those games where the little inconveniences are so plentiful that it ultimately sours my enjoyment. The map isn't very detailed, you can wander into areas you're not supposed to be in yet and get demolished by enemies, button presses are often unresponsive, trying to create a 3D space in a 2D game doesn't work (especially when there is a lot of platforming), cycling through all of your overworld abilities is cumbersome, dying sets you back to your last save point instead of letting you restart the battle, and losing just one of the bros cripples you in combat and requires you to waste a turn healing them unless you can finish the battle immediately.

But my least favorite thing is the abundance of mini-games that are mandatory for progression. Some might see these a good change of pace, but I see them as filler since they often require a new control scheme and have nothing to do with the rest of the game.

I also have my problems with the combat system. Even though it keeps you on your toes by requiring precise button-press timing to maximize efficiency, it's never quite as satisfying as I would like. First of all, just like in the overworld, several attack animations try to use a nonexistent 3D space, making it difficult to avoid things on your first time encountering enemies. Second, the game does not teach you how to most effectively use your bros moves (essentially your special abilities that cost mp), and even with the slowed down versions to help you learn the timing, trying to get the hang of them is frustrating, especially the advanced versions which basically expect you to figure out how to perform them on your own. Third, the system itself is inherently flawed. By making a battle system that is reliant on precision, all it does is make you frustrated when you fail. It isn't satisfying to perform precise timing well because you have to do it in every single fight, and the only reward for performing precise actions well is not performing poorly. Compare this to the rhythm battle system in Mother 3; by learning the rhythm of the enemies you fight and timing your attacks in synch with the rhythm, you are rewarded with doing more damage and ending fights more quickly. Essentially this is the same idea but used in the opposite direction.

From what I understand, the 3DS remake improved a lot of these issues, and I kinda wish I played that version instead. Actually, the only reason I played the GBA original is because I really admire how this game looks. In fact, I'll praise the visuals for being my favorite part of the game; the entire world is colorful and vibrant, all the sprite work is really good, and I especially love the animation on Mario and Luigi themselves. The use of squash & stretch and exaggeration on their animation is endlessly entertaining, and at the very least that made the experience on GBA somewhat enjoyable.

I think that I will like this game more on a second playthrough, especially if I play the remake with all the quality of life improvements. I enjoyed what this game did well, but I'm really hoping that future titles don't have the same issues.

É um jogo que eu sinceramente acho questionável o quão bom as pessoas falam, não me levem a mal, é um jogo bom, mas ele sofre de muitos erros que eu muito raramente vejo as pessoas comentando. As dungeons são um tanto quanto chatas, no começo elas até são divertidas e os puzzles são interessantes, mas com o passar do tempo fica cada vez menos divertido e os inimigos cada vez mais fortes, só que a força deles não segue o balanceamento do jogo, do nada eles ficam forte pra cacete. Os mini games sofrem do mesmo, no começo é legal mas com o passar do tempo fica uma merda, as vezes por um erro bobo tu tem que fazer toda merda de novo até passar, e Jesus os mini games da dungeon final são um inferno, não vejo alguém que realmente consegue se divertir com eles. No geral a última dungeon é bem chata, ela é uma junção dos mini games merdas com os inimigos chatos, e ainda por cima uns chefes insuportáveis. E por falar em chefe, MEU DEUS COMO O CACKLETTA É UM LIXO, ele é um boss absurdamente forte, com ataques extremamente punitivos e que tem curtas janelas de esquiva, não basta isso ele tem um HP imbecil de alto e sempre que tu morre nele volta da primeira fase, o desgraçado ainda pode usar alguns debuffs. De resto esse jogo também não tem nada muito exemplar, o combate é legalzinho, o humor é bem sem graça e olha que eu dou risada com quase qualquer merda e o worldmap é uma bosta, é um saco as vezes atravessar metade do mapa pq os fast travel dessa versão são quase inexistentes. No final é um bom jogo mas que não é nada além disso, só bom, a continuação, Partners in time melhora em muito bastante coisa. Tier B, 7/10