This is the "Skyward Sword" of the Mario and Luigi series. The highs are very high, but the lows are very low.

Like Skyward Sword, this game is filled to the brim with padding and lazy filler (every objective in this game has like, 7 different hoops you need to jump through before you can even start working towards that initial objective), but when this game hits it strides, it offers the best experiences in this entire series.

I think Dream Team is still too inherently inconsistent to be ranked better than PiT or BIS, and because there's so much filler, it's way too long to be considered as replayable as the earlier games in this series, but it's definitely an experience worth seeing through to the end at least once, those high points are REALLY damn high.

My mother and father were taking me on a road trip as I hadn’t left the state of Florida throughout my life, and seeing as how my 12th birthday was around the corner, they figured there would be no better time. The trip was long and arduous, the seemingly unending road ahead of us nearly made my father swerve off of the road and slam into a nearby tree, or realistically fall into the river of Alligator Alley. I woke up suddenly to the unfamiliar sensation of my ears popping from the rise of elevation. I looked outside of the backseat car window and the first thing I noticed were the trees, towering and winding above the road, each trunk housing centuries of untold stories. A still darkness lies beneath them with beams of the sunset's light shining through the cracks of the leaves, burning my half-asleep eyelids shut once again. As we drove on a bridge that was above the canopy of trees, I noticed the vast ocean of mountains. The beauty of the insurmountable that laid bare upon my unknowing and immature eyes astonished me, cloaked in a mist of distant fog, shielding me from what lies beyond. What interested me more however, was that I had multiple street-passes on my red 3ds XL that I had in sleep mode during my slumber. That was true happiness.

Nearing dusk, we arrived at the destined mountain in which my grandparents resided. The one way gravel road with many twists and turns and minimal lighting was a horror beyond human comprehension, especially when your father was showing symptoms of being high due to having three mango slushes from Sonic. My Father does not remember this part of the story. After nearly driving off of a cliff multiple times, we arrived at the house. Dimly lit, it was slightly illuminated by the local firefly population. Sadly, we still couldn’t see shit and went to sleep because mosquitoes kept biting my ass. Ouch.

The morning came and I woke up to the smell of fresh air and nice smelling food. Just kidding, it was the exact opposite. I smelt rotting eggs and my balls were shivering because it was so fucking cold and I didn’t have a blanket. This fucking sucked. What’s more is I found out I was sleeping on an air mattress, which at the time sucked until I walked around the rest of the house and realized everything in the house and the house itself were rotting away at the seams. Then and only then was it seen as a blessing. Thank you mother. It was tradition for me as a kid to put my 3ds under my pillow as I slept, and before even opening my eyes I would scrummage around my bed trying to ensure my favorite toy was still there. Thankfully, not unlike all of the preceding days, it was and all was good in the world. Except for the stench of rotting eggs, which I was too lazy to follow. Instead, I opted to play Mario & Luigi Dream Team, a game I had purchased on the eshop months before. I was sitting on the edge of my air mattress in the heat of the final battle against whatever the fuck his name was, when suddenly my “grandmother” barged into my safe heaven, undoing the imaginary locks on the rotting wooden door and allowing the aforementioned stench to flow into my olfactory glands in it’s purest form, and only after reaching my olfactory cortex did the odor truly fuck me up. The ogre stood in the doorway, blocking the light from the morning sun from reaching my once pure, not grimacing face. She asked, no, demanded, “DO YOU WANT EGGS?” in a loud and quaking tone in her raspy voice akin to that of an eldritch demon. Startled, I stood up from the side of the air mattress, the precipice of fate, starring the demon in her ugly and moldy eyes. Pleading for my life, I begged “No, thank you”, then walked past the horrific creation of a jaded God, resting my opened red 3ds XL on the corner of my air mattress and ran as fast as possible toward the door. Not before seeing the watery eggs she had crafted. I dodged a fatal bullet.

As I swung open the front door, I heard a roar from the inner tunnels of the dwelling in which I rested, the demon cursing in her native tongue. It was only when I exited that I saw our location in light. Our cabin was atop a small hill with a barn at the foot of it. I was taken back in awe at the beauty that nature provided, staring distantly at the mountains and treeline. I snapped back into reality when I heard my mother yell my name from the bottom of the hill. I ran down the hill and told my father what I had experienced in the previous 10 minutes. After telling him the tale in which I escaped with my life, I instinctively touched the pocket on my red shorts… It was then I realized the grave error in my judgment. My red 3ds XL was not with me. I recollected the events and came to the conclusion that it must have been left on the air mattress. I looked back at the hill and saw the menacing castle before me, fumes of green oozing out of the many crevices of the once inviting home, a haunting laugh emanating from the inner corridors. I had to make a decision. Face the stench and find my love, or hide in my sorrow and fear. I ran as fast as I could up the hill, dodging the many bugs that came to attack me on my hurried pilgrimage. I rammed open the door and saw the beast sleeping on a throne of human skull. Tip toeing toward my goal, every creak in the floor could be my end. I refused to even breathe on my careful descent into the lair of madness. I eventually met the door and stood quietly in front of it, slowly moving my hand toward the doorknob. I opened the door as slowly as humanly possible, and what laid on my bed changed the course of my life forever.

My favorite, red 3ds XL. Shattered in two pieces. The hinges on my love were completely broken. The game would not even turn on. I wept for an eternity as I realized that I would never be able to play my favorite games again. What’s worse is that there is no conclusion. We don’t know how it happened. My mother believes it was the result of it sliding off of the corner of the air mattress and her stepping on it. My friends think she just snapped it in half out of anger due to the lack of watery eggs in my stomach and vomit in the toilet. But deep down, I know she sat on it because her legs were tired after standing up for 5 minutes after making eggs. Furthermore, the extra padding on her behind due her comically large body weight caught the innocent red 3ds XL off-guard, and couldn’t find a way to lift the pressure of 10,000 suns crashing down upon its red, feeble, extra large body. I never got to complete this game. I can’t ever go back. This is my story.

Oh, it's... slow. It's real slow. Movement's slow. Combat loads slow. Mario jumps slow. In the dream world, he jumps even slower. It's... slow. Even if a battle lasts one turn, if you measure it in seconds, it's far too many.

The need to utilize the 3DS' 3D functionality likely butchered the game performance-wise. And, like... trying to be more accessible to children than the series already was.

Colors are washed out. 3D environments feel small and flat, because they're 3D. Game's not very funny. It's cute but not interesting.