A true sequel to Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is long overdue. With the release of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, I got a very good game, but I was still a bit underwhelmed by the game's lack of a free-roaming overworld and by it terrible repay value. That slight disappointment strangely made me that much more excited for Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. I love the Mario RPGs, so another installment was more than welcome. What I expected was a true revival of the Mario & Luigi subseries. I expected Bowser's Inside Story to reach the very same heights as Superstar Saga. Sadly, what I got was just the opposite; not only was it not as good as Superstar Saga, but it was also a step down from Partners in Time.
Mario isn't the kind of series to disappoint.
Seldom has it done so. Every so often, though, our hero just doesn't perform
as well as he should. Exactly the case with Bowser's Inside Story. Critics
have applauded this game even more than Superstar Saga. It's one of the
best-reviewed handheld games to date, but don't be fooled; this is easily
Mario's weakest RPG adventure yet and likely Nintendo's most disappointing
release this year.
STORY - 5.9 out of 10
An epidemic of a disease called the Blorbs is spreading through the Mushroom Kingdom. This illness causes its victims to grow to huge sizes, making them so fat that they can barely even move. Peach has summoned the various aristocrats of the Mushroom Kingdom to discuss this problem. Among those summoned are, of course, Mario and Luigi. Everyone meets in a conference room in Peach's Castle and begins talking after Peach gives a brief audio-visual presentation showing the effects of the silly yet disastrous virus. Peach has called forth the "Star Sprites" to assist them in finding a cure, however, only a little lady named Starlow comes as a representative. Later on, Bowser barges into the castle in an attempt to kidnap Peach, but he is easily dispatched by Mario. Peach uses her powers in conjunction with Starlow's to toss Bowser's unmoving body out of the castle.
Bowser awakens in a nearby forest only to find a man clad in dark robes who claims that the beast is a "winner". As a reward for winning this "game", the hooded man gives Bowser a Vacuum Shroom. Bowser eats it and finds that it gives him the ability to inhale any object and enemy in his way in a Kirby-esque fashion. The side effect? The Shroom was a trap, and sets Bowser under the hooded man's control. The manipulated Bowser goes back to Peach's Castle, with his new inhaling power to his advantage. With it, he is able to suck everyone in the room into his stomach. While Bowser gloats about his foolproof scheme, he suddenly passes out. Another effect of the Vacuum Shroom, perhaps? Or is this the hooded man's doing?
Why I previously gave this story an
8.1, I am not sure. This is a very dry and cheesy storyline, in all honesty.
Many parts of it sound like they were taken from a bad Mario fan fiction.
I can't say much without spoiling it, but let me tell you that the story
gets worse and worse over time.
GAMEPLAY - 6.1 out of 10
Since Bowser inhaled the Bros, they're gonna be spending the majority of the game inside his body. Many people were worried about it, but I thought it would make for fun, Kirby & The Amazing Mirror-styled gameplay. As it turns out, they were right and I was wrong. The "inside Bowser" gimmick is a lousy and unnecessary feature. It works kind of like Super Paper Mario, a cross between platforming gameplay and RPG gameplay. The difference is that it lacks the fun real-time battles that Super Paper Mario had, and Bowser's innards are far more dull than the world of Flipside. While the sidescrolling concept is okay, the levels suffer from lackluster design. Not only are they repetitive, but all areas have very little variety, mostly just focusing on solving basic puzzles while avoiding the enemies, whose designs are just as bland as the levels themselves. This was truly the most disappointing part of the game for me, although I must admit that sidescrolling is sometimes fun. It doesn't fit in well with turn-based RPGs, though.
When you're not playing the Mario & Luigi segments, you're playing the Bowser segments on the overworld. It's no more satisfying, though. Bowser is actually a pretty boring character to play as. The Koopa King has two main move: punching and breathing fire. And that's it. You can't jump, you can't cooperate with another party member. The two guys who do that are stuck inside a world of boring levels and uninspired foes. Of course, Bowser gains a few more new moves along the way, some of which are kinda fun, but there's nothing too impressive to be seen. What was by far the absolute GREATEST part of the gameplay was the giant Bowser scenes. At certain points in the game when Bowser's life is in extreme danger, he has the ability to grow to enormous sizes to fight the enemies that threatened to murder him. In these battles you hold the DS sideways like a book and use the touch screen to execute battle commands. It's kind of like a cross between an RPG and a fighting game. Nintendo seems to really be in to genre-mixing these days.
One thing I really disliked about this
game is the new way badges functioned. In the past two Mario & Luigi
games, they gave you stat boosts and bonus effects. Simple, but effective.
Now, I don't know what Nintendo was thinking when they designed the badges
for Bowser's Inside Story. There is a pathetically small amount of badges
in the game, eight to be precise. Each of the Brothers gets to equip one
of the badges. Now, when in battle, there's a gauge at the bottom of the
screen that fills up each time Mario or Luigi successfully pulls off an
attack. If Mario attacks, his side of the gauge fills up. Same thing with
Luigi. When the two sides of the gauge meet in the middle, the player can
tap it to give the Brothers a certain buff depending on which badges are
equipped. While Mario's badges determine which buff this will be, Luigi's
badges determine how quickly the gauge will fill up. I didn't like this
at all. Badges are a really cool part of the Mario RPGs, and now they've
been reduced to folderal. At least Mario, Luigi, and Bowser can now wear
three pieces of equipment at a time. It doesn't make up for the Badges,
but it's still nice.
GRAPHICS - 9.5 out of 10
I can't complain here. These are some of the best sprite-based graphics the DS has ever seen. Despite this, it's only a modest improvement over Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, also a very beautiful game. Everything in the game has this really polished look to it. Just look at Mario and Luigi's spinning animation; the extremely smooth frame rate along with the sheer greatness of the game's graphics as a whole give the move a really cool look. Expect the very same thing from all animations in the game.
The only time when the sprites don't
look as nice is when you're inside Bowser. The graphics still look extremely
good, but they kind of clash with the 2D style of the area. A "2.5D" perspective
might have been preferred, but this is only a minor complaint. As far as
sprite-based graphics go, these are nearly perfect.
MUSIC - 8.0 out of 10
Yako Shimomura, who composed for the previous two Mario & Luigi games, returns for the soundtrack of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. She's one of gaming's more famous composers, also having worked on the OSTs of Legend of Mana and Kingdom Hearts, so expect sheer greatness from this soundtrack. The music in this game has a different, more quirky feel than the past two Mario & Luigi games. It reminds me somewhat of Pikmin.
As usual, let me cover some particular music pieces that I liked or dislike. Let's start with the good. The theme in the area "Cavi Cape Cave" is very nice, and sounds medieval to some extent. Also very good is the game's generic dungeon theme, which first plays when Mario & Luigi explore Bowser's unconscious body at the beginning of the game. It's a sinister track that very much fits the depths of Bowser's body. The "Dimble Wood" theme is a playful little track that I grew very fond of throughout the game. And the boss theme, that's just lovely. It's easily one of the best boss themes in the whole Mario RPG series. There's a lot of great music to be found in this game.
And of course, some pieces of music
just sound dull and lazy. I don't recognize tropical levels for having
good music, "Plack Beach" being no exception. It's just your normal beach
theme with absolutely no distinguishable qualities. Just as I feared, the
normal battle themes - for the Bros. and for Bowser - are not good. This
is particularly critical because you'll be hearing said themes many times
throughout your adventure. Overall, though, the good music outweighs the
bad music and ultimately creates a pretty good soundtrack.
LENGTH & DIFFICULTY - 5.9 out of 10
I know most Mario RPGs are easy, but sheesh, I wasn't expecting it to be this easy. Bowser's Inside Story is... a very simplistic game. Really. I promise that you'll never even think about level grinding and you'll rarely have trouble on any of the bosses. Most of them can be defeated easily by spamming your best Bros. Items. To make things even easier, you get items called "Retry Clocks" throughout the adventure. When you lose a battle and you have a Retry Clock in your inventory, the battle will "rewind" and you'll start over from the beginning. This isn't so much a bad thing as it is a good thing, though. It can actually be quite convenient. Although, in my whole playthrough of the game, I only remember needing a Retry Clock once when fighting the final boss, and probably one or two more times before that.
Then comes the overworld. This is where Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story forgets about the line between "fun difficulty" and "annoying difficulty" on occasions. There are some abrupt difficulty spikes, as well. An example of this would be the Underground Tunnel dungeon, which was confusing and ended up utterly confusing me. The worst part is that while I wandered around this dungeon, I had the annoying task of fighting dozens of "Choombas" along the way - very irritating enemies that take an unnecessarily long time to attack. These difficulty spikes are not too common, though, so you don't have much to worry about.
The length was even worse, taking me
only 3 days to complete. This is a pretty small game. The entire Mushroom
Kingdom is microscopic compared to its previous incarnations, and the areas
inside Bowser have very little depth to them. It won't take you long at
all to complete your adventure, and you'll encounter few challenges along
the way.
REPLAY VALUE - 7 out of 10
Here's something new to the Mario & Luigi series - good sidequests! Or, good ENOUGH, I should say. Accessible at any point in the game is the Challenge Node, an area inside Bowser's body that contains much of the game's optional content. We have two arenas in this node, the Gauntlet and the Cholesteroad. First up we have the Gauntlet, the coliseum used to fight optional bosses. Disappointingly, these bosses are nothing but recolors of previous ones you've fought. Things in the Gauntlet don't get particularly hard until the final two bosses, the last of which is much like a Boss Rush mode. To make things more challenging, you're only given a default set of items to work with, so stocking up won't help you. These bosses are a good challenge in this otherwise easy game, but they yield little reward. Just coins, that's it. No super-rare weaponry or invincibility-bestowing armor. It would've been nice if they'd given us something COOL...
So how about that Cholesteroad, eh? This is where you have to use your Bros. Items to defeat Cholesterons. Cholesterons are extremely weak, but they come in endless swarms, forcing the Brothers to keep up their attacks for as long as possible. These challenges are very hard and unforgiving, but thankfully they have a slightly better reward than the Gauntlet. You get new equipment if you can keep up your attacks for a long enough time. This can be underwhelming, though, because if you go to the Cholesteroad after you've beaten the game, it's more than likely that this equipment will be inferior to what you have already. I remember taking the Green Shell challenge. The shell makes a white flash when it hits an enemy, and I had to keep it up for so long to get a good rank. The flashes hurt my eyes, but I had to keep fully concentrated in order to score high. When I finally did get a satisfactory score, my eyes were sore and watery. And all I got was a mediocre piece of equipment.
Otherwise, there aren't that many sidequests.
There's an area where Bowser can endlessly perform his special attacks,
although these trials are even harder than those of the Brothers. You'll
also find some sidequests to do in Toad Town that aren't worth your time
at all. Last of all, you can grind to a certain level. After reaching a
high enough level, you'll be rewarded with your final and ultimate set
of badges.
FUN FACTOR! - 6.1 out of 10
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is a game that will make you smile one moment, and shrug the next. Most of the time, though, it's the latter. Sorry, but this game just lacks the magic touch that made all the previous Mario RPGs special. Bowser is a surprisingly boring character to play as. I believe Kyoni from the Lemmy's Land Forum summarized Bowser's playability best by saying "Bowser might as well be a large walking piece of ham because not only is his stupidity beyond compare, all you do as him is GRRRR I'M SO BIG AND STRONG OH NO THERE'S A ROCK IN THE WAY LET'S PUNCH IT OH NO THERE'S ANOTHER ROCK LET'S PUNCH THAT TOO". When playing as Bowser, I just feel so limited. And the Mario Brothers that we all love are stuck inside Bowser's body, which is just a collection of boring puzzles. Some parts of the game were pretty fun, like the boss you fight in Bowser's brain or the Arm Center minigame, but still, Mario RPGs are usually a lot more fun to play than this.
Another one of my main complaints is
the script. At the beginning of the game, the dialogue starts out excellently-written
and very humorous. Not too long afterward, though, things immediately go
downhill. Bowser loses his sense of humor, letting out only one or two
decent jokes throughout the course of the game, save for the beginning.
While some characters have better lines, others just completely fail to
sustain the typical humor of the Mario & Luigi games. The particular
quote "Let us travel, with our... MIIIIIINDS!" was a forehead-slappingly
pitiable attempt at making the player laugh, and it's really one of the
cheesiest lines I've read in a long time. On a positive note, though, Mario
and Luigi's gibberish never does get old. Gahaha, I love Charles Martinet.
OVERALL - 70 out of 100
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is, at best, a decent RPG... and nothing else. Maybe this wouldn't be as much of a problem if it wasn't a Mario RPG. Mario RPGs have grown to be very popular, and they have a great reputation. However, I feel that Bowser's Inside Story was a step back for the role-playing series. This game had a job to do, to satisfy fans of the series and provide us with another spectacular Mario adventure. It may not be easy to make a truly great game, but if you make something as lazy as this, then... well, that's being lazy.
Bowser's Inside Story, not a very good game. Although it's good at select times, this just doesn't completely make up for the game's other flaws. This game is kind of difficult to recommend to just anyone. Hm, you know, it's a funny story. I had no expectations for New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and I had high expectations for Bowser's Inside Story. New Super Mario was a very pleasant surprise, whereas Inside Story was a saddening letdown. Not quite what I expected! But, well, back to the point, let me just give you the verdict. If you really want to play it... then go ahead, I'm not stopping you. But in my humble, humble opinion, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is really only notable for being such a disappointment. I'll admit I was probably a bit too harsh in this Review; the game can probably hold some entertainment value for you, but if you end up being disappointed like I was, well, don't say I didn't warn you...
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