Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is the fourth sequel to 2003's Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, the blend of action and RPG is different but abused heavily in this game. The art style is charming, the script is funny even if the story line has gotten a little silly over the years and poor Luigi is still the butt of all the jokes. In light of the 'Year of Luigi' trend, Nintendo have really highlighted his purpose in this game, to sleep - and he does so aptly.
The game opens at the Mushroom Kingdom when Princess Peach, Mario, Luigi, Toad and Toadsworth are flown to Pi'illo Island. There, they meet Broque Monsieur and Starlow. You also meet Antasma and the bat king, who has teamed up with Bowser. They seek to acquire the Dream Stone, a powerful artefact that grants its user endless wishes. Traveling through Luigi's dreams along the way, you enter the Dream World. Here Mario meets 'Dreamy Luigi', Luigi's Dream World counterpart, who helps Mario navigate and battle the Dream World. They also encounter Prince Dreambert, the leader of the Pi'llos, who helps the heroes in their quest.
As usual with lots of backstabbing and bickering between Bowser and bat king the Dream Stone is soon destroyed by Peach and Starlow, only for its fragments to be inhaled by Bowser, who transforms into a empowered living nightmare of himself called 'Dreamy Bowser'. So yet gain Mario and Luigi must save Princess Peach and resume there holiday with the Pi'illo people.
If you had never played Superstar Saga games, you could play this and be blown away by how unique it is. But having played everything else in the series over the past decade, it's the same as Bower's inside world but with no awareness of the past games, hence probably the lack of any point. It has the same characters, with a different background and the same story - simply with nicer graphics. We would have hoped by now you could use more complex attacks apart from jumping. Sadly this makes the fighting even more tedious, as it's long and drawn out.
The worst possible thing is to do the tutorial as it is drawn out and makes you lose all interest in the game and that is the problem. There is too much focus on 'what is an RPG?'. Players will most likely have played one so all the long explanations and sometimes pointless conversation is not needed.
This game holds something new for precisely NEW gamers, if your a fan of the Mario RPG series then this is just a rehash but may have been more popular if released on the Wii U. Lots of soul destroying explanations a few fun mini games and all at the expense of Luigi. Oh and Peach gets kidnapped again.
My Advice
- Equip Wellington boots to make enemies drop beans instead of coins for easy grinding
- Change your birthday on the DS to match the DOB items and you have some powerful equipment
- Don't buy anything, enemies drop better items
