I'm trying something new. In the spirit of Keith and Sween's legitimate game reviews over at gametimebro.com, I'm going to try to carve out my own little standardized format instead of just spewing forth whatever's on my mind for anywhere from two sentences to ten paragraphs. I figure that the easiest way to do this is to try to make five solid points - or at least to have five separate takes - on any game. Here it goes...
1. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is the fourth game in the Mario & Luigi series, an RPG franchise for Nintendo's handheld systems that began with 2003's Superstar Saga. Sween has played the previous three games in the series, and I had previously played the second one: Partners in Time. It seemed to be Sween's least favorite of the bunch, and I didn't love it myself. And now I'm oh for two on the series, as I didn't love this game, either.
2. For the longest time, I couldn't put my finger on what I didn't enjoy here. After all, on a pure technical level, it was a lot of fun to play. The game is ostensibly an RPG with turn-based battles, but every move you use relies on precise button-pressing patterns and every enemy attack can be dodged or countered with similar perfectly-timed inputs. Outside of the battles, there are several platforming elements at play in the field. Tack on a variety of puzzles to solve and obstacles to overcome, and there's something here for everyone.
3. The problem is, there might be too much. Large chunks of the game take place inside Luigi's dreams, where movement is restricted to a two-dimensional plane instead of the isometric three-dimensional realm you inhabit for the rest of the time. Abilities used in each field differ as well. Even the combat changes when you enter the "Dream World," from the timing on the attacks to the special moves available. The game also features five distinct boss fights that change up the gameplay entirely, telling you to rotate the 3DS ninety degrees clockwise and use the stylus on the touch screen to both dish out and dodge attacks. These were probably the most memorable moments of the game, but they were also among the most frustrating; since each boss's attack patterns could only be discovered through trial and error, all five of these super battles were nearly impossible to win on the first try. This would have been less of an issue if the battles weren't ten-to-twenty-minute ordeals and if the touch screen's sensitivity was up for the challenge of handling inputs with any type of immediacy or precision.
4. In fact, the game's overall length may have been its worst feature. I understand that most people love a good long game, particularly from a value standpoint. But this isn't just a long game; it's a slow game. I'm a huge RPG fan, and I'm used to games in the genre growing monotonous from elements like difficulty spikes, fetch quests, and repetitious combat. Dream Team, though, just grows kind of tedious after a while. Because of the quicktime event-style battles, each enemy encounter takes far longer than it needs to take. There's a lot more nuance to this type of gameplay than there is to just mashing the same button over and over again, but I prefer the mindless grinding of an old school RPG to the minutes-long battles here that yielded minimal experience gains. Outside of battle, things are hardly any quicker. This is a game rich with NPC dialogue, but there's far too much extra fat. In an RPG, scripted dialogue should serve one of three purposes - advance the story, add tonal depth, or direct the player toward a goal. In Dream Team, there are way too many instances of characters just rambling on and on for the sake of stale puns and other minimal payoffs without fleshing anything out. In the middle of the game, you're tasked with scaling a mountain while two musclehead guides keep making references to beef and other meats every two minutes. I almost hope there were a lot of jokes lost in translation from the original Japanese, because so much NPC banter fell completely flat in English. At one point, you're sent on a three-part fetch quest and you're warned that the three characters you need to find have a tendency to ramble. And sure enough, each of them end up talking your ear off for two or three unskippable minutes. Somewhere inside this forty-hour game was a leaner and far more enjoyable twenty-five hour adventure with all the same stages and puzzles and boss fights; that game would have been an absolute blast, but this game? This game was a chore.
5. In the end, Dream Team tries to have it all, and its biggest problem is that it succeeds in doing so at the expense of a meaningful story. This has always been a subtle problem with Mario-centric RPGs; an RPG ultimately needs to leave an impression on the player for the player to feel like his time was invested wisely. Characters, settings - even just a handful of emotional moments. Mario RPGs can't handle that burden, because Mario games in general can't do so. They're as simple and low-stakes as anything. Bowser, Peach, rinse, repeat. Vanquishing Kamek and Lakitu and entire platoons full of koopas, goombas, and shy guys is no more interesting in an RPG than it is in a platform game; it just takes a hell of a lot longer. I wish that after investing so much time and effort into this one that I'd be left with some sort of takeaway. Entering Luigi's dreams, for instance, provides such a golden opportunity to really explore that character, to see what makes him tick. But there's absolutely none of that here, and the game could have just as easily been about Luigi entering Mario's dreams, or Toad entering Wario's dreams for that matter. Dream Team is technically sound but entirely soulless; it's well-designed, but desperate for something to say. Actually, desperate isn't the right word, because the game simply doesn't care if it's offering a meaningful experience to the player. It's content just to churn out groanworthy dialogue while resting its laurels on tightly-crafted battles and platformer puzzles. This isn't a bad game, really. It just isn't one I'm glad to have spent forty hours playing.
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