A by-the-books sophomore effort.
• Overall higher difficulty level
• Beautiful sprites and winsome animation
• Great sense of bizarre humor
Shroobs (Cons):
• No more overworld
• Smaller enemy variety
• Late game becomes a linear grind with little depth
I'm going to start out by saying that Alphadream and Nintendo's brilliant Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is one of my favorite Game Boy Advance titles, so I had high hopes for its sequel Partners in Time. After spending around 17 hours and 52 minutes defeating every enemy and completing all the sidequests I could find, my verdict is that while this title is good, it never crosses the line to amazing. What hurts most is that Partners sacrifices much of what made Superstar feel unique, meaning that competition from deeper RPGs like Final Fantasy IV DS or The World Ends With You can outplay it. Superstar could stand alone because it merged a deceptively deep battle system with a script that blatantly mocked or parodied standard RPG clichés.
Partners in Time, on the other hand, feels as though it was made by an entirely different developer. It's like Alphadream hired some people who played the snot out of Superstar Saga and then proceeded to make a sequel by observation. Which means this is a fluid, beautiful, fast-paced, and perfectly functional game, yet it seems to miss the point. The dialogue not only takes itself ridiculously seriously at times, but also manages to have dropped the memo that said the plot can be wacky and still make sense at the same time. Partners in Time has a plot which fails to be funny, and lines that try far harder than necessary to be amusing. A few bright spots like mind-controlled enemies speaking 1337 and a wonderful parody of the standard RPG prophetic oracles spring to mind, but the rest is generic and dull and too profuse.
Actually, all dialogue is too profuse. Even in the final areas of the game I found myself reading tutorials on signs, and don't expect to see any of the brain-breaking puzzles like the ones found in Superstar Saga's late-game. There's a painfully definite pattern in Partners in Time, one which quickly causes affairs to become brutally formulaic.
The game's biggest addition that's never capitalized on? I won't spoil what little there is of the plot (it's a far cry from the hilarious melodrama of Cackletta and Fawful), but it involves time travel. Except that Mario and Luigi are not Crono and Lucca. The plot is really a pathetic excuse to tie events together. Anyway, the M&L duo meet up with their infant selves, who are blessed with hilariously expressive sprites and much less grievously offensive soundbites of sobbing in comparison to their Super Mario World 2 incarnations. Watching the cartoon-style slapstick antics of the brothers and their tiny young selves is priceless, as is getting to meet Baby Peach, who's obviously learning to be useless at an early age.
I always smiled during the cutscenes, but not so much when they were over. A few areas have flat-out awesome designs (Thwomp Volcano!), but their boring layout leaves little exploration to be had, and with the removal of Superstar's overworld, they're a rather Final Fantasy XIII-esque plow to the end, except with shops that sell all the equipment you ever need, completely invalidating the need to search for any loot. Even the secret area that sold badges had only a single one that was actually of any real use in battle.
Battles are more difficult now, which is good. Like all Mario RPGs before it, Partners in Time relies on a system that uses rhythm and timing to press a button and up the damage of attacks. It makes fights much less boring, and the addition of the babies mean that commands are more complex. Bros. Attacks, however, have been removed in favor of Bros. Items, which pretty much allow any brother, big or little, to trigger a super attack by using an item. Kicking around green shells, bouncing off trampolines, and firing the plumbers out of cannons is a blast, except that most of these attacks eventually become obsolete. The most powerful item, the Mix Flower, becomes practically necessary to beat bosses, whose elementary attack patterns cause them to rely on scads upon scads of HP. Spamming Mix Flowers over and over is boring, not to mention hard on the right thumb.
Thankfully, a few bosses really stand out. One I remember well involved a bomb carried by three enemy soldiers; depending on which soldiers were eliminated the bomb would either roll towards Mario & company on the left, or off to the right to the boss, exposing his weak point. It took a few tries to figure out, and it was delightful. Sadly, most bosses don't approach this level of inventiveness.
I was level 30 at the end of the game. I had fought every single baddie in hopes of having a high level, and never felt grossly over-leveled like I did in Superstar Saga when I did that. The battle system in the early and mid game is leaps and bounds ahead of the one in the previous game; I really enjoyed the fights with ordinary enemies, as Thwomps changed color, Tanookis transformed into field objects, and alien soldiers called for backup in UFOs. A pity the late levels rely so much on recolors and palette swaps with more HP. I recall a fight where the enemies literally would not stop calling in reinforcements, so I spent fifteen minutes killing them all only to realize the experience gained caps with the initial number of baddies in a fight. Oh well.
More seems to be Partners in Time's creed. More attacks, more levels, more characters, more shiny graphical effects, more weird minigames (which are all quite fun). Some of this more, like with the graphics and attacks and minigames, is good. But there is also less. Less strategy, less personality, less humor, and less exploration to do.
I received Partners as a birthday present, and thus am satisfied with it, as it was certainly a good dozen-and-a-half hours as games go. It has no glaring technical problems (a few counter-moves can feel finicky with the timing, but are easy to adjust to), has lots of save points to make play on the go feasible, and is often charming. But if I had purchased it myself, I probably would be disappointed. If you find it for less than twenty dollars, it's a good buy, but don't expect a masterpiece. This is a sophomore effort; 100% functional and even great in places, but missing that invisible something that made the first one so exquisite.