I guess this is the first Mario RPG I ever actually played, and despite not being my favorite, I still have fond memories of this one.

I love the concept for this one, Mario and Luigi meeting their past selves, and the scary alien invaders that threaten to kill everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom. This game does actually get pretty dark for Mario standards at times and I love that.

The reason I could actually stand this game and other Mario RPGs over other RPGs, is not just because it is Mario and I'd play anything with Mario on the title. No, it's the fact that the battles require you to be much more involved in the action and actually ask YOU to be the one that blocks or dodges the attacks, as well as perform your own attacks.

You have no idea how much I despise playing an RPG, being in a fight for 20 minutes, and then losing after all that struggle just because the game randomly decided to show me a text box that says that my last attack did not connect for whatever fucking reason! But the opponent's did and it was also a crit, so of course I fucking died.

In these games, if you want your attacks to connect you have to get good at timing, you can't just sit and watch, which to me is far more interesting. They also make each special attack a sort of minigame that you have to get right if you want to make the most amount of damage, which is a very Mario way to put a spin on a pre-existing formula and I love it.

Overall, a solid game and one of the better Mario & Luigi games out there. 10/10, princess Shroob is super fucking hard to beat got dayum!

Personally think this is one of the underrated games of the M&L franchise (shocker, no one has said this before!)

I actually loved the combat combining both Mario/baby Mario & Luigi/baby Luigi attacks. And still being able to continue the fight if one of the bros dies.
The puzzles weren't inherently difficult but provided enough of a challenge for me to want to be always looking for secrets whilst using the baby bros.

Music also doesn't get a lot of love, which i think isn't entirely their fault, you have other games with a lot more memorable tracks.
overall i love this game and i pray for alpha dreams return.

Partners in Time is often considered as the black sheep of the Mario and Luigi series, and to be frank, it's not hard to see why. It certainly is a lot rougher around the edges than it's prequel and it takes a lot of time to come to grips with it's mechanics in comparison to those of every other Mario and Luigi. Hell, the closest the franchise ever came to something like it afterwards was Paper Jam and even that was considerably different.

However, inspite of those things being very notorious...yeah I can't bring myself to hate this game. I mean come on, it's the sequel to my favorite GBA game of course it was bound to be good. But Partners in Time isn't only good, it's excellent. It doesn't exceed Superstar, and pressumably won't exceed Bowser's Inside Story (although I've not yet played it), but it is a wonderful time nonetheless.

I suppose we should get the negatives out of the way first however. Firstly, the OST, yeah, hot take, but most of the tracks here aren't nearly as memorable as the ones in the last game. There's still some good songs don't get me wrong, and none of the OST is...that bad per say, but it ultimately still comes off as forgettable in my eyes. Second, while I understand why the hammers were made exclusive to the babies in an overworld point of view, it makes the fights where you're solely Mario and Luigi a lot more tedious, and the same applies the other way around since the babies are most likely to be WAY underleveled by the time it's the late-game, even if you boost their stats as much as you can. Third, limiting your amount of Bros. moves is one of the stupidest changes in the series imo. The system was perfectly fine in Superstar Saga, so why bother limiting it? You can equip a badge to make one of your characters never run out of them, but A) This hinders their attack, and B) It's something that ultimately comes out of a problem artificially created by the game's choice to limit them in the first place. Not like if it's gonna matter anyways cuz as long as you have around 20-30 of each move your never gonna run out thanks to the admittedly generous placing of multiple of the moves in the overworld. Last but not least, the early game feels like it drags for to little to long. You got Bowser's Castle, which is fine, but then you get back to back boring areas with the Shroob Factory and the first half of Yoshi Island, which really hinder the pacing of the whole thing compared to Superstar Saga where even the first areas felt enticing and fun.

But...that's about it when it comes to my major quelms with Partners in Time. Everything else here is either only a slight downgrade, on par, or improved in some way from Superstar Saga. The spritework is an upgrade over that of the first game, boasting a much cleaner and beautiful style that would go on to define the aesthetic of the Mario and Luigi series going forwards. The adding of the babies in combat creates for a much more challenging and creative battle structure, as well as a lot of variety on what the enemies might pull out of their sleeve next. The puzzles making use of all of Mario, Luigi and their younger selves mechanics, while predictable after a while, still manage to remain engaging and get specially good in the Shroob Castle. The overworld of the past Mushroom Kingdom is worse than the Beanbean Kingdom, and yet it still manages to feel so unique and alive in it's own respect (something which I assume doesn't carry over in that of the present seen in Paper Jam), and the characters, both new and old, manage to add a lot of their usual charm. Kylie Koopa specially was a personal favorite.

And that's really what it all comes down to for me, the charm of these games. There's really nothing quite like the Mario and Luigi series for me, that lets be be enthralled by these character, immerse myself in the expansive world they form a part of, and manage to make it such a one-of-a-kind experience...can you tell I've never played a Paper Mario?

But the biggest improvement, and it's not even close, is the story. One of the darkest in the entire series, yet still light-hearted and engaging all the way. It might not have as many twists and turns, and it does feature a few plot holes (seriously how the hell did Peach survive getting eaten by Petey Pirahna), but at it's core, it is easily one of my favorite stories in the series, and it's gonna be a very high bar for Bowser's Inside Story to clear.

Overall, yes, Partners in Time is quite a hard game to get into and to understand the quelms of, but once you learn to play by it's rules and meet at it's level, it becomes as much fun as it's prequel. Very much looking forwards to how the original trilogy of these RPG's concludes.

Oh and also that Princess Shroob fight goddamn shit was PEAK.

This game, along with the DS Lite it was bundled with, was pre-owned by the son of a family friend. Don't remember if I had started my first playthrough from the beginning or an existing save file, but I eventually deleted my progress and started over. Even then, I only managed to make it to the final area before abandoning the game.

In retrospect, as a child I didn't understand the importance of leveling up regularly or equipping the proper gear, which would explain the massive difficulty spike I experienced in the late game. Should I return to this game to finally finish it off, it will not be on the original hardware.

Oh hell yeah, talk about a sick sequel! This is the Mario and Luigi game I actually had as a kid, and I was addicted to this one back in the day. Despite that, going back to it today every now and then, there's more than just nostalgia that brings me back to it.

This is hands down the most mechanically distinct Mario and Luigi game, and while some of its ideas aren't everyone's cup of tea, (consumable special attacks, badge effects, a 4 person party that can be split into 2 groups of 2...), I enjoy how unique this game is when compared to the others in the series. The game's pacing is also insane, it's always hitting you with new and interesting content. It's a far shorter game than the other Mario and Luigi games, but I'll take a bite-sized adventure that packs a lot of punch over a bloated one ripe with filler any day of the week.

Also, not like this has much impact on the quality of the game, but wow is the box art for PiT amazing. It's way better than the boring white background box art template its sequel would usher in.

Partners in Time was one of the first video games I had ever beaten. I played it several times as a child. I went into this playthrough hot off the heels of Superstar Saga, which I played for the first time much later than Partners in Time, and greatly enjoyed in my most recent playthrough. In my mind I remembered both of these being great games, but with a more mature perspective, I'm sad to say that Partners in Time does not hold up.

Almost all of the mechanics of Partners in Time are borrowed from Superstar Saga, which I never thought anything of as a child but as an adult I found it a little disappointing that this game had so few new ideas. But of course, the one major addition in this game is the inclusion of Baby Mario and Baby Luigi as playable characters...unfortunately. I went into this playthrough fully expecting to have a grand old time, but the babies, among other issues, add a lot of friction to the game that bogs down the whole experience.

In concept, I like the idea of the babies being here a lot. Superstar Saga has great combat but its a little bit too simple, ergo the babies can alleviate this problem by adding more complexity by allowing you to control 4 party members at once. That's what I was expecting anyways, but as it turns out, that isn't really how they work. In the majority of combat scenarios, you will only be controlling Adult Mario and Luigi. The only time that the babies really ever have any presence in combat is if you either let one of the older bros faint, in which case their younger self will take their place, or when using some of the battle items. As for the first case, this will almost never happen; Partners in Time is a very easy game. Even though I purposefully went through areas underleveled and with low-defense gear, there were few opportunities where either of my bros would faint and allow one of the babies to replace them in combat. And even in the instances where the babies are on the field, I can't imagine any scenarios where you would have them do anything other than either use a 1-up mushroom to revive their older self or flee from combat. The babies are comparatively impotent to their adult counterparts, leaving no reason to battle with them when other options are present (which there always are). And the fact that only Mario OR Baby Mario gets an action each round essentially makes it so that the babies don't even function as 3rd and 4th party members, they are functionally much more like extra lives for each bro within the individual battles.

The problems with the babies don't end with their role in combat. In the overworld they are nothing but an annoyance. NONE of the platforming or overworld traversal with the babies was a positive addition to the game. Many of the overworld puzzles and obstacles require sending the babies and adults in different directions and then backtracking to regroup before advancing. This type of obstacle format gets extremely overused and annoying after you've seen each iteration of it more than once. Even when you don't need to backtrack, such as when collecting a bean from the overworld, simply getting the babies dismounted from the bros to access their overworld skills is just inconvenient enough to get very annoying by the end of the game.

As for non-baby related grievances I have with this game, the battle items have 2 major flaws that made the combat much less enjoyable than that of Superstar Saga. Firstly, the battle items should cost mana to use, like in all the other games of this series. In this game you collect copies of each item and then can use as many as you want in battle. This allows you to spam battle items, which you will have a practically endless supply of due both to their overabundance and presence in shops. This breaks the pacing of battles by removing the need to refill your mana after using so many special attacks. Multiple times in this playthough, this allowed me to have such aggressive offense that I would kill enemies before I ever got to see any of their attacks. My second major issue with the battle items is that the powerful ones take SO LONG to execute. Several battle items continue endlessly until either you mess up an input or the enemy dies. This sounds cool on paper, but the execution in the game makes the player's turns take forever. I feel like the majority of the time I spent in battles was spent using Copy Flower or Pocket Chomp, which got old REALLY fast. This seems like a massive oversight, because the most fun part of many combats is dodging the enemy attacks, since they are much more varied than the moves you will be repeating ad nauseum from your own arsenal. Although, maybe not fun enough, as I felt like a decent number of the bosses in this game had way too much HP and not enough unique attacks to keep their combats engaging. Combine these problems of long turns, low variance, and excessive boss HP, and it made the combat system of this game massively overstay its welcome.

A couple other, much more minor, complaints I have with the game are that the game was too easy, the first ~90 minutes of the game were a total slog of tutorials, beans are basically less than worthless since they are annoying to collect and don't even unlock useful badges, and the time travel in this game makes absolutely no sense for no reason. Like seriously, it is confirmed that the player's actions are changing Adult Mario and Luigi's timeline in the past, but if the adult bros' original timeline didn't have Future Mario and Luigi come from the future, bootstrap-style, to defeat the Shroobs in their past, then how did they fight off the Shroobs originally when the adult bros were babies? The time travel not making sense really is a non-issue, but it kinda shocks me how little thought seems to have been put into the semantics of it.

DESPITE ALL MY COMPLAINTS, I do still think that this game is kind of good, I GUESS! Nothing in the game is outright bad, its just that almost everything in the game goes stale kinda quickly and overstays its welcome, even with the game taking me a pretty short 11 hours. The one thing that I think this game did really well was the art, which was so good it got me pregnant. :)