Title: Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
Developer: Alpha Dream
Publisher: Nintendo
Date Published: November 28, 2005 (North America), December 29, 2005 (Japan), February 10, 2006 (Europe)
Platforms:Nintendo DS
Format: 1 DS Game Card
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone), Mild Cartoon Violence, Crude Humour
Introduction
Mario has always been Nintendo's standby character for exploring new genres; while Link only stars in his usual sword-swinging adventures and Samus's adventures are few enough to have sensible continuity, dozens of games in many genres star Mario or other characters from his universe. The most famous and successful of these spin-off series are the perpetually exciting Mario Kart series, and the series of Mario RPGs beginning with 1996's Super Mario RPG.
Since the Square-developed original, the Mario RPGs have split into two separate series: the Paper Mario series on home consoles, developed by Intelligent Systems, and newcomer Alpha Dream's Mario and Luigi series on portable systems. These two series have taken the basic concepts from the original Mario RPG and developed them along different lines. Importantly, while the Paper Mario games have numerous Nintendo in-jokes and gain humour from the sheer surreality of its graphical conceit, the Mario and Luigi games are pure, uproarious comedies, buoyed by engaging, clever gameplay.
What Superstar Saga began, Partners in Time continues, boosted by the advanced power of the Nintendo DS...
Plot (no spoilers)
Princess Peach has travelled into the past using a time machine built by Professor E. Gadd of Luigi's Mansion fame. While there, she is captured by the alien Shroobs, who proceed to conquer the entire Mushroom Kingdom. The Mario Bros. must team up with their younger selves to save the Kingdom of the past from the Shroobs and rescue the Princess, or the alien menace will enslave the adult Mario Bros.'s time as well!
Gameplay
The gameplay style of Partners in Time will be familiar to any fan of Superstar Saga: you control the Mario Bros. simultaneously, with each button corresponding to a Bro. This time, there are four Bros., and fortunately the DS has four buttons to go with them. Once again we have our heroes wandering around an isometric map, jumping and hammering to solve puzzles, and being thrown into a separate battle screen upon encountering wandering enemies.
Like the other Mario RPGs, the battles in Partners in Time centre on 'timed hits', where both attack and defence are boosted by pressing the right button at the right time. Mastering the various timed hits is the key to success in battle. When all four Bros. are battling together, the baby Bros. piggyback on the adults, but contribute through the use of hammers and through special timed hits combining both the adult's button and the baby's button. Once again, too, the enemies give subtle hints before they attack showing which Bro they are targeting, allowing the right Bro to dodge or counterattack.
The elaborate Bros. Attacks from Superstar Saga are replaced by the simpler Bros. Items in Partners in Time. While the timed hits in Superstar Saga were essentially arbitrary and often just had to be memorized, the Bros. Items in Partners in Time have natural timed hits. For example, the Green Shell bounces back and forth between the Bros. and the enemy so long as the player can press the button to kick it back, and the Cannonballers item launches all four Bros. high in the air to deal huge jumping damage... if each Bro can pull off their jumping timed hit correctly. Many of the items have additional timed hits for when the four Bros. are together, just like regular attacks.
Having two pairs of Bros. may seem redundant, but it really isn't. Not only are the adult Bros.' sizes assets one minute and liabilities the next, but the two sets of Bros. gain different sets of powers over the course of the adventure. As a result, the two pairs often get split up by geography or by artifice. This is where the dual screens of the DS come into play. Ordinarily, the action takes place on the bottom screen while the top screen shows a map of the area. When the Bros. are separated, though, the babies move onto the top screen while the adults stick around on the bottom screen, allowing the Bros. to act in tandem in a variety of well-conceived situations.
Graphics, Sound and Control
Partners in Time, for the most part, just carries on its predecessor's gorgeous 2D graphics. The slightly greater resolution of the DS allows for a bit more detail, and the horsepower of the DS means that the animation is a little smoother and a little snazzier. The pair of screens means that the viewport on this world is larger, which only increases the appeal of Alpha Dream's vision of the Mushroom Kingdom.
The music also continues on Superstar Saga's path, always fitting the setting and mood while quoting a number of classic Mario tunes. (and after twenty years, there are a lot of those...) Sound effects are clear, crisp, and aid the gameplay with their timely feedback. The real star of the audio, though, is the voices. While the vocabulary of the Mario Bros. is limited, and often unintelligible, the combination of voices and gestures they employ is both expressive and humourous. This is doubly true for the babies, whose voices are simply those of the adults, digitally altered to sound higher. The resulting effect is remarkably cute.
The control has exactly the same feel as Superstar Saga, which is a truly good thing for those who have played the first Mario and Luigi adventure. As the game is so timing-dependent, any difference in feel would mess up players who have played Superstar Saga, much to their in-game peril. The DS touch screen is not used in the ordinary course of the game; some have criticized this decision, but tacked-on touch screen elements in the vein of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow do not add to a game's appeal. Partners in Time supports the Nintendo DS Rumble Pak, whose force feedback is used well in the context of the game.
Mood
Although the other elements of the game are excellent, the true high point of Partners in Time is the script, enhanced by its marvellous localization. Along with the inscrutable Shroobs, whose language is rendered in a symbolic script which often resembles comic-book swearing, Mario and Luigi cross paths with Baby Bowser and his guardian Kamek. Like his grown-up self in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Baby Bowser is hilarious at the same time he's a hindrance. Other fantastic bits of comedy include the interactions between the adult Mario Bros. and their infant selves, and the past and present Toadsworths' tandem attempts to amuse the baby Princess, and there are many other magnificent jokes I'd rather not spoil. Overall, the light-hearted character of the game is truly endearing and is a breath of fresh air in a gaming world where taking yourself seriously is standard and irony the usual source of humour.
Conclusions
Those keeping track may have noticed that my review contains many references and comparisons to the first Mario and Luigi game. This is because the two games are very similar; outside of the presence of four Bros., this is very much more of the same. Nevertheless, it remains that the same that this is more of is very, very good. Superstar Saga was one of the shining lights of the first-party Game Boy Advance catalogue, and Partners in Time is a worthy sequel, and the first Nintendo RPG for the roleplaying-starved DS. Any Nintendo fan would be well-served by picking up Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time; it delivers on its stars' legacy quite satisfyingly.
(CC)
This writeup is copyright 2006 by me and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial licence. Details can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/2.5/ .