Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is the third game in the Mario & Luigi series of handheld RPGs starring Mario and Luigi. The game is a continuation of basic themes and approaches of the previous two games, but has the interesting twist of featuring Bowser as a playable character for the second time in a Mario RPG (the first being the incredible Super Mario RPG).
The series owes an obviously huge debt to its SNES godfather referenced in the previous sentence. The series has an essentially lighthearted tone, is developed by an outside company (Squaresoft for the original, and AlphaDream for the Mario and Luigi series), and features timing based combat in which you can time button presses to either increase outgoing damage, or reduce or avoid incoming damage. The Mario and Luigi series distinguishes itself in a few ways from its progenitor, however. First, the series is handheld, a big plus! Second, the graphical style of the game is far more similar to classic Mario platformers than the 3D attempts made on the SNES and in the Paper Mario series. Third, the Mario and Luigi series has a bigger focus on Metroidvania-esque exploration mechanics, in which the Bros. are constantly discovering new powers to help further explore their world, as well as opening up former areas to new discovery.
I'd played the original Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga and Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, and had greatly enjoyed both. I'm frankly out of interesting handheld platformers in the backlog, so I decided to dive into yet another handheld RPG for the next handheld entrant here.
The basic premise of the game is that the lovable Fawful, supervillain and bean shop proprietor, tricks Bowser into swallowing an item that makes him inhale Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and the entire Mushroom Kingdom court, and then takes over the Mushroom Kingdom for himself! Bowser is left without many of his powers, which the Bros. must restore to him from inside of their reptilian nemesis, allowing him to assault Fawful and retake his position as rightful dark overlord of the Mushroom Kingdom.
The game is excellent graphically, featuring lovingly animated sprite work and plenty of beautiful surroundings. It really made me wish that the Fire Emblem game on the DS had the same approach, as the sprites really appear lifelike and delightful, and have aged tremendously. There's honestly not a single thing I'd change about the game's graphics.
The game's core combat mechanics are again fun, but seem a bit imbalanced this time around due to a new element, particularly when battling as our beloved Bros. First, the badge system enables you to build meter by timing your attacks well, but the healing benefits from the badges are so extreme as to make every battle extremely simple. You can easily heal over half of your health by activating your badge after the meter is full, and don't even need to forgo an attack to do so. Building the meter is extremely easy as well, making each and every battle very low risk, particularly with how simple it is to avoid most of the attacks in the game with proper jumps. It also feels like the battles are simpler than usual in the series, which is intentionally a more casual RPG. I only died one time during the game, and this was during the quirky new Giga-Bowser battles (a bit more on this later). The regular Bowser battles were the big highlight of the game to me, as they seemed significantly more challenging, and appropriately so. Bowser is much slower and it's harder for him to avoid damage, which makes each fight feel more impactful. He also needs to burn a turn to use items to heal if he takes too much damage, which makes your choices more difficult. Do you take the turn to try to finish off your enemy, or heal and risk exposing you to another attack?
The Giga-Bowser battles were fun in the beginning, but I frankly dreaded them by the end. At certain points in the game, Bowser turns into his massive form for battles against other huge enemies. For this, you need to turn your DS vertical, and combat is conducted by the stylus and by (sigh) blowing into the microphone. This makes you look like an absolute lunatic, and for a style of gaming that's intended to be conducted at least partially in public, this is really frustrating.
The game's highest point comes in its maintenance of the series' trademark humor, and it really helps that Fawful makes a return in a big way in the series. Fawful is the absolute best part of the first game, and the second one drags a bit due to his absence from the game (he has a bit part, but he's not in the game as consistently, which hurts my soul). His broken English and declarations of possession ("I have fury!" and "I have chortles!" are prominent examples) play extremely well alongside the heroic Bros., as does Luigi's frequent acts of cowardice in the face of danger. Speaking of the Bros. and comedy, God bless Charles Martinet. His vocal performance as both Mario and Luigi, speaking in their fake Italian accents, is the heart and soul of the series, and is absolutely hilarious.
The music is again excellent, composed by the delightful Yoko Shimomura (best known for her iconic score for Street Fighter II, but has also done all of the Mario & Luigi games, as well as all of the Kingdom Hearts games, among other excellent soundtracks). It feels like a soundtrack that belongs in the Mushroom Kingdom, and is simple, catchy, and appropriate to the varied locales and situations in which Mario and Luigi find themselves.
The length of the game was a breath of fresh air, clocking in at just over 20 hours (for me). I can't stand it when developers expect you to log 60 hours into an RPG just to finish the main scenario, particularly as I've gotten older and have less free time to play games. This one feels like it's just long enough, although I think the basic pacing and structure of the game could use some improvement.
The game is at its best when you are switching between Mario and Luigi and Bowser, having the big guy manipulate things in his body to solve puzzles and unlock new powers for him. Unfortunately, this occupies a very small part of the game, and is operated in a pretty clumsy fashion. I feel like they could have done more to increase this interplay, but the usual path it takes is that Bowser presses a button to toggle something, and then Mario and Luigi can proceed further. For example, Bowser can swallow a bunch of water to allow Mario and Luigi to reach new places inside of his stomach. There are only a few parts of the game that work like this, and they work pretty well. Having more of them would have made the back and forth mechanic more impactful in the game, but there are really only three extended sections like this (I believe). The vast majority of the game features long stretches of Bowser exploring until he hits his limits, and then you switch to Mario and Luigi for longer stretches. This can get a bit dull, especially with the risk-free nature of the Bros.' combat. Even the puzzles that do exist in the game are extremely simple and easily solved, and should have ramped up more in difficulty as the game progressed.
Ultimately, Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story makes few risks with the already delightful Mario and Luigi formula, and few of the risks that they take hit very well. But the formula is so very good that it only slighty reduces the fun you'll have with the title, despite the first game in the series still reigning supreme as the best (although I haven't yet played the fourth and fifth games in the series, and nor do I own them). This is a solid title, and if you're a fan of the series, there's plenty here for your to enjoy. I'll give it a 8.6/10.
I have no idea what's up next on What I'm Playing, so just stay tuned! I definitely need to find something that's a bit shorter so that I can get close to finishing my needed 4 games for July to stay on target for 50 completions this year. Right now I'm at two, with one ready to bite the dust in the next few days if I get a chance, so I may opt for something quick and simple.
-TRO
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