Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

It's Christmas! A wonderful time of year, and a perfect lazy day for backlogging! This morning I received several games I'll be playing soon, but before I get to them I had one more purchase from November that needed finishing- the third installment in the Mario & Luigi RPG series, Bowser's Inside Story. Back-blog veterans may remember one of my first posts in which I reviewed the first game, Superstar Saga, which was quite fun but often had a level of difficulty reaching the just-plain-unfair: a 20 minute boss fight could be wasted if a single button press was mis-timed! Man was that frustrating. Bowser's Inside Story luckily does not run into this problem. Every time I died, I could look back at the fight and learn something to make it much easier on myself the next time, and rarely died on the same boss more than once or twice. Less frustration, more fun. There was a lot to like about the game: very clever platforming puzzles, An open-world feel without ever getting too big or confusing, and of course the undeniable charm of making a reluctant hero out of Bowser. The top screen of the DS shows Bowser, who is running around the Mushroom Kingdom with his own style of solo fighting, while the bottom touch screen displays Mario and Luigi, solving puzzles inside his body, with a more traditional style of fighting. Solving certain puzzles inside Bowser will affect his physical traits, the most memorable of which is easily the one that causes him to grow several stories tall and enter into sideways-style DS fights. These were a real treat to play, and it would have been nice to see these fights used a bit more. Overall though, the game was well worth a spin and I'll be sure to pick up the game I skipped, Partner's In Time, next time I see it.