Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

People should play this just for the final boss probably.

Mario & Luigi games are often praised for their unique combat and fun exploration compared to well... pretty much every other turn-based JRPG. Bowser's Inside Story specifically is seen as the peak of the series, and there is a lot to love here, but there is also a lot of room for improvement.

The battle system is good overall and I did have fun with it. Being able to play as Bowser and Mario & Luigi all feel good for the most part and the way their move-sets are separated is genius. The battling definitely had a lot of room to grow however and I do have gripes. Normal battles become quite a drag since enemies don't have that many attacks and you don't have much SP. This leads to you doing a lot of jumping or punching and dodging the same few attacks, which is unfortunate when this could mostly be mitigated by just... putting less enemies and/or shrinking some areas. Your move-set generally just doesn't have much depth, with you basically just spamming your strongest special move in bosses. If I wasn't doing that for whatever reason, well some attacks also take a bit too long to perform and or are weirdly awkward to perform which actively made me avoid them, decreasing my options even further. So while it's fun to complete the minigames you are also wishing for a lot more. At least bossfights are generally not too long, but at the same time they are the most fun parts of the battle system due to their unique attack patterns or gimmicks so like... aaaaaaa The final boss as mentioned earlier is incredible for many reasons, and one of them is the uniqueness of the attack patterns you need to traverse. Unfortunately this also shows just how the battle system could go that much further in many other parts of the game, leaving me wanting more! The lack of depth due to the game's 2D style can make things unclear when you need to dodge, and I had many occasions where I would counter an enemy, while on the same frame getting hurt. This added quite a bit of unnecessary annoyance to the battles, because no one likes feeling cheated out of something.

Despite that tiny complaint about visuals however, this game's artwork is super pretty. Practically every area looked amazing, and characters have so much expression. The game also makes super good use of all the features of the DS consistently and it never felt awkward... well okay mic usage will always be annoying but ignoring that, yeah. Some parts of the game do go on a bit too long but it should be commended how they are always trying to throw a mini-game, or a switch of character, or a new move throughout to keep everything from getting monotonous and it mostly succeeds. (This game also isn't that long compared to most RPGs so maybe I shouldn't be complaining but whatever.) However the amount of tutorials here is egregious due to said switching up. Go away tutorials. The music is good overall but for my ears it's mostly carried by standout tracks rather than a consistently banger OST. I'm passing this off partially due to DS sound limitations, as I find the next game in the franchise, Dream Team, to have an amazing soundtrack, and maybe the BiS Remake sounds better but I didn't play that one so oh well... And finally, the story in this Mario game isn't crazy (shocker) but the characterisation of everyone is really sweet. Fawful is awesome, Bowser is awesome, Mario & Luigi are awesome. They're so cool...

BiS is really weird if you think about it. How does Mario & Luigi living and traversing Bowser's body make any sense as an idea. Who even came up with this, and more importantly, why. But they made it work even though it kinda feels like it shouldn't. Overall, the game is easy (I did a stache-only run after the first few level ups), but well it's a Mario game and it's a fun time with a lot of heart.

Review taken from my Backloggd page.