Our favorite Mario RPG, and you can tell because we're plural! ...Okay, that doesn't explain anything.

Some people are kinda mean to this game, either because of it having long tutorials (which... we have a 10 year old Cookie Clicker save, so maybe we just have the patience of a saint, but it never bothered us even on a repeat playthrough) or because it's a 3DS-era Mario & Luigi game when those are rather notoriously a mixed bag of contentious titles. We happen to fall on the "love" side of this one.

The music is transcendent as always. The Dream World is a fun gimmick, and we adore the Dreamy Luigi shenanigans. Prince Dreambert got slept on literally, we're so sad he basically never got the chance to appear again when he's a very fun character being this prim-and-proper dude that's also just kind of A Guy, who has a frat bro best friend, and also his frat bro best friend is One Of The Closest Things To A God In A Mario Game. The Pi'illos are so cute! And, of course, we, for two, accept our Plural Luigi overlords.

As far as we're concerned, this is a must-play for any 3DS owners--if only to experience what it's like. While Superstar Saga is probably "objectively" better, we can't help but show our bias in favor of the funny Luigi one.

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.

While not as good as BIS, it does do some things better. I really like this world, and the story is okay too, the combat is amazing (as usual), and the gian battles are improved hugely from BIS, the gimmick of going into luigi's dreams is also really good, although they stay pretty surface-level throughout. The music in this game is amazing, the higher quality speakers of the 3DS really help elevate them compared to the DS.

But despite all that, it just doesn't live up to BIS. Going into bowsers body is GENIUS, and the story was way more interesting than Dream team. Also dream team LOVES giving tutorials, even for the most surface-level easy to understand bullshit, it's exhausting.

I'm most definitely cheating here since I only played most of the game sans the final area, lost all of my progress in a way that wasn't my fault, and then had no choice but to watch the rest of the game on YouTube, but oh well. Regardless, even tho I do still have some minor flaws with Dream Team (the game is a bit too tutorial heavy, the gyro controls are obnoxious, and the adventure is a bit too long for my liking) this is still probably my favorite Mario & Luigi game. I absolutely adore the aesthetic of this one. Going inside the dreams of others is one of my favorite concepts in all of media, and they knocked it out of the park with making everything feel as trippy and dreamlike as possible. This game has my favorite soundtrack, my favorite boss roster, my favorite new gimmick, and even gives some CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN A MARIO GAME????? WOW. Mario & Luigi Dream Team really is a dream come true. Haha! Kill me!!