Don't miss out on Bowser's Inside Story! It's my favorite game on the DS so far.
M&L 3 starts out with the toads getting infected with a quite freakish (yet really funny) disease called the blorbs, where they inflate into a giant ball. Peach, Mario, Luigi, and other not infected toads try to find a cure for the disease, until Bowser breaks into the castle trying to kidnap Peach (again). Mario beats him in a fight, and they kick him out, and Bowser soon finds a power to vacuum up all the people in that meeting. He does that, but it was a ploy that Fawful (see Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga) used to take over Mushroom kingdom. If you read my review on Partners in Time, then you should know that the story for me was somewhat the same here: It was interesting, but I liked Super Paper Mario's story better, but it's so much funnier than both of the other games. The dialogue is fantastic and hilarious (I can imagine that the localization team had a huge amount of fun writing it), the animations of characters are humorous, and there are a lot of funny characters in here. Fawful constantly speaks with sentences that makes it obvious that he failed in language class in school (his minion Midbus suffers from the same problem), Luigi is always the class clown, Bowser's the self-centered, hot-tempered idiot, and all of the other characters in the game have something funny to say or do.
Alright, that's enough of story elements. Now onto the gameplay parts. BIS has the same RPG gameplay that made the other Mario RPG's lots of fun. The turn-based battles are just as fun as ever (I like it that special moves, unlike the last game, are all different, and great fun to use). The platforming and puzzles are great fun. Since Mario and Luigi are inside Bowser for most of the game, you will have to keep switching between them to solve puzzles, and they are original and engaging. The character building is deep and lots of fun, and there are lots of great minigames to play. (a quick note: some minigames use the touch screen to play, but sometimes they don't work too well). I'd like to say that the battles can get repetitive (thank goodness they aren't random), but you will pretty much ignore that issue when you get to the bosses. (Thank you GameSpot for at least nominating this game for best boss battles in your Best of 2009 awards!) These big baddies always give new challenges, and are lots of fun to take down. And though this game isn't really hard, I don't mind it too much, because I don't like having to spend lots of time grinding for levels or trying over and over again to beat a challenge. I would like it if it was a little bit harder though.
Lots of the enjoyment from this game also comes from the presentation. The graphics, while not spectacular, are good looking and have environments are hand drawn quite well. Again, the animation of the characters in cutscenes are very funny. The music has been improved a lot. It's catchy, and very good. Even the battle music doesn't get old after hearing a lot of times. And the sounds, from the sound of the text to the voice quips of the characters, it is all pleasing to the ears.
The only big flaw is that there might not be too much reasons to collect everything (if you want to do that, good luck. It will take a long time). Also, the tutorials at the beginning of the game get tedious. But other than those, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is a great RPG. Great battles, story, humor, presentation, and virtually great everything. If you like a lot of the DS's RPG's, then you need this game. It's really good.