Time travel is not alien to the world of videogames, let alone RPGs. Partners in Time though treats timeline shenanigans in a clever, weirdly somber and mature approach, considering the depressing and oppressive turn the game's story takes: it is now the Shrooms whom act as cruel and memorable villains in this story, having conquered the Toad Kingdom past.

Mario, Luigi, Mario Jr. & Luigi Jr. work well enough together as a team, but it's not as effective as in Super Star Saga: instead of using points to use combo attacks, they are now essentially items you can buy. Since money was never an issue in M&L games, you can see where the issue lies: the game's difficulty takes a nosedive each time a new combo item is introduced, making enemies' health bars just a matter of time, instead of strategic thinking. Platform sections and puzzles are fun enough, but despite having more bros, there's much less to do in terms of combo and exploration. I'll be blunt, the game takes a lot of steps forward in settings, story, characterization, with the four protagonists weirdly well characterized despite never speaking and Prof. E. Gadd stealing every scene he's featured in. The soundtracks also kind of rocks?

At the same time, it takes away a lot of ingenuity and platforming\puzzles from Super Star Saga, not taking real advantage of the dual screen if not for the occasional battle animation. It tries striking a balance between funny and emotional, which doesn't always land. To me it'll always be charming, but there's a lot of things to consider and wade through before getting to the "good stuff". Strong beginning, weak middle, padded ending but satisfactory experience don't make for a game I'd recommend easily.

In terms the average game journalist can understand, it's a A24-produced, genre-redefining, trope-subverting, 40 KB JPG atmospheric, dark and eerie, emotionally draining [...] game.

I've finally got around to beating the second Mario & Luigi game proper, and while it was a very slow start compared to how fast I binged the Superstar Saga remake, I mostly enjoyed my time with it!

One thing I will have to give PiT over most other Mario RPGs is how unique it is story wise (even within the M&L series). Honestly I think it could be argued that this is the darkest Mario game easily, even moreso than Super Paper Mario. The Shroobs unlike most Mario villains feel like an actually serious threat who won't hesitate to eradicate all life in the Mushroom Kingdom, and manage to almost irreversibly turn anyone that stands against them into non-sentient mushrooms, practically killing them. It's made even more creepy by the fact they try to take over and kill Baby Peach's kingdom, along with all the other adorable tykes. I think it's also worth noting that the much tougher difficulty of the game compared to any other game within the M&L series, as well as the game's DS era artstyle really lend themselves well to supporting this grim tone that hangs over the entire game. As much as I know people want a remake of this game, I honestly feel like it holds up well enough by today's standards (albeit, for an older audience). Not to mention, given the trends we saw in the Superstar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story's remakes, they would've likely used the 3DS Era Artstyle and have made the game much more easy, which wouldn't have fit Partners in Time's narrative nearly as well, even if it's more accessible for RPG newcomers.

Sadly, a darker take on a Mario story like this is something I feel we'll likely never see again in the modern day, SPM was the last real outing Nintendo permitted for even the spinoffs in this regard.

That said, while I think the story is definitely more interesting than the norm given the darker tone, along with really interesting concepts like the babies working with their adult selves, time travel, and just the overall narrative in general, I do feel that because Mario can only go so far into dark territory before Nintendo pulls the leash to reign it in, the story itself is limited in what it can explore as a result. Unfortunate, but it's to be expected, and I feel Mario typically is better suited for all ages/children in general, as Nintendo has other IPs better suited to more mature story telling such as Metroid and Zelda. Still, if we happen to get another RPG like this if say, Square's Mario RPG happens to get a sequel following its recent remake, I wouldn't be opposed. I feel like Square Enix's involvement could help push the envelope for a darker Mario RPG to go further in the same way that Super Paper Mario's story did.

The soundtrack ironically I feel is one of Yoko Shimomura's weaker works. While there are definitely some standout tracks such as Thwomp Volcano and the final boss themes, I found that it was a lot more forgettable to me compared to Superstar Saga's songs which I still remember a lot of fondly.

The gameplay is where things get a little more divisive for me. As I said before, I think the tougher gameplay lends itself well to the overall tone the game is going for. The combat has more depth to it that usual and has a much higher skill ceiling to master due to the fact you have 4 Bros. to work with, and juggling Bros. Attacks between them all can be really tough if you want to do the most damage possible. I welcome the challenge, though it definitely tripped me up a lot and I'm not as good at this game as I am other M&Ls as a result, but I'm sure other people really love that aspect of this game and have managed to master it.

That said, my one gripe with the gameplay (which is also the main reason why I like Superstar Saga's remake a decent bit more than this entry), is that a lot of the fights take forever as a result of the harder difficulty. I get that HP and stuff was upped across the board due to the fact you can do more damage with the Babies helping you, and I don't mind boss fights taking awhile to beat as a result of said challenge, but so many of the normal mob enemy fights take so long and made the pacing grind to a halt for me a lot throughout the game. It'd really halt my progress and make me feel like the pacing turned into a lot of stop and go on a moment's notice, and that really annoys me in RPGs. Mario & Luigi (and most Mario RPGs) are usually well known for the solid brisk pace their games have that keeps things rolling in a nice smooth flow that you can pick up and put down at any time for either a short fun session or longer binge ones, but this game really doesn't have that due to its difficulty.

The one saving grace of this gripe I have though, is that this game is much shorter than the series norm as a result, which made the pacing issue not nearly as bad as it could've been. Honestly, given how surprisingly short the game is, I'm pretty convinced part of the reason the difficulty was upped is specifically to pad out the length, much in the same vein as what NES games would do.

That said, it's pretty clear even the developers felt they went too far, hence why the European and Japanese versions of the game rebalanced things and toned down the HP of a lot of enemies to fix the difficulty. I ended up switching to the Euro version myself around the time I got to the desert area, and it made a big difference, really glad I did that. Thankfully my save file was compatible with it too, so I didn't have to restart.

The final boss was still pretty tough and took a good while even despite the fact they shaved off half its health from the original version of the game, so that was definitely a good move on the developers part. I also like that while the final boss reuses moves from Superstar Saga's final boss such as the spinning arms and you needing to destroy all of its limbs in order to make the head vulnerable so you can defeat the boss, the developers learned from the problems with SS's final boss and made it so the head stays vulnerable for a decently long amount of turns before it becomes invincible again. SS's final boss had the problem of having the head be vulnerable for way too short of time for you to damage it much, so that was greatly appreciated.

I also really liked how the post final boss fight has a really unique concept I haven't seen done in another Mario & Luigi game surprisingly. Making it so the Bros. can only counterattack to stop the boss and needing to land a certain number of hits to do so was really interesting, and I wish this would've been done in more Mario RPGs going forward, it's a really unique idea.

And honestly, that feels like the true claim to fame for this game. Partners in Time in many ways feels like one of the most unique and different Mario RPGs, and in mostly good ways! I really respect what AlphaDream did here trying to push the envelope on what could be done in this genre with Mario, and I wish we'd see more creative titles like this from Nintendo in terms of being more risky with Mario's IP. I think that there's a good chance we could see this should Mario RPG get greenlit to have more sequels hopefully, but only time will tell if that hopefully comes to pass. Overall, another great game from the series, and I look forward to revisiting my childhood favorite, Bowser's Inside Story, in the future!

Total Playtime: 17 hours, 56 minutes.

What the hell did I just play? This is a serious downgrade from the original in virtually every way. Nearly the entire game consists of mazes and tiresome puzzles that wouldn't make the cut in even the weakest Zelda game. After about halfway through the game, every time I stepped into a new area and saw the fresh convoluted map on the upper screen, I just groaned. The delightful charm of the original game has all but evaporated, leaving behind a dull and lifeless experience with few new characters and greatly reduced dialogue.

Combat proves to be both monotonous and ridiculously easy, and the replacement of BP with hoardable bros items just adds to the tedium. The final boss was the cherry on top of this shit cake, taking what felt like a half hour of spamming the same two attacks to finally finish it off. They even took the fun out of finding the hidden beans. In short, Alpha Dream managed to take what should have been a straight upgrade, and turned it into a thoroughly disappointing mess.

The black sheep of the Mario and Luigi series, and arguably the most darkest Mario game in the franchise. AlphaDream really stepped up their game here with the overall ambition for the sequel to superstar saga. It's a shame that this one was skipped when it came to getting an HD remake like Superstar and Inside Story did because I think this is one that deserves it the most. Not to say that there's huge flaws with the game but imagining what a Partners in Time Remake would look like is just nothing short of a dream. Considering AlphaDreams bankruptcy who knows if we'll ever get to see this game and the series for that matter in the future.
I will admit though it is a missed opportunity this game never really delved into the future aspect and instead all we got were the Past and Present versions of each area. I think the game would maybe double in length if that were the case but I think of how Sonic CD handled its time travel feature and how much detail was put in the future and past given the criteria you had to fulfil.
Idk i'm just spit balling here, great game still. Definitely worth your time, and its really short too.

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.

If the measure of how good a game is depends on how much they have Baby Luigi doing the monkey as his idle pose, there's an argument to be made for this being the best game of all time.

For real though I think it's a bit weaker than its predecessor. The Mario fanservice and references have been toned down heavily. I guess there wasn't much new material to work with between the release of that game and this one.

It's the same battle system as before, which I love. Having all enemy attacks able to be either countered or dodged, with specific tells for which bro they're aiming their attack at is such a good mechanic that turns every basic battle into a kind of game in and of itself. And every new location you go to will give new enemies with new moves that you have to try and adapt to as fast as possible to ensure a clean run of the area.

Speaking of the locations, just like Super Star Saga, I really liked the ones in this game. Considering most of the platformer games in this series play it super safe with level themes, this and the last game have had some truly standout scenery for the Mario world.

this game is a lot more linear than the first. While that game was technically linear too, it was an actual full interconnected world and allowed a lot more freedom of the overworld before it blocked you off with a required ability. This game has Peach's castle be the hub while every single quest-area is accessed through portals. Whether intentional or not it is a pretty neat reference to Super Mario 64 if nothing else.

What makes it worse though is how it tricks you with a more open adventure. After the first couple of areas you visit, suddenly a bunch of portals open at once... except you'll quickly find if you enter any of them except the required one, you're immediately blocked off from doing anything before you can even talk to an NPC in that area. They're essentially just setting up exit points back to the castle to those locations for when you reach them via the story. Kind of a tease.

Last time one of my big problems was how the game tried to shove way too many field commands into A and B at once, resulting in way too much micro managing of your skills which constantly led to accidently using the wrong thing, or scrolling past the 1 of 4 sets of skills you can have on screen. This game kind of fixes that while introducing a new problem. See, with the DS having 2 extra buttons it'd make sense to have A and B always be jump, and X and Y be one of the bros special moves, able to switch just those with R like before. But with the introduction of the babies they take ownership of these new buttons (remember how in SSS every single Mario action was A and every Luigi one was B? That was kept, so the babies are now X and Y). They do at least give the babies their own actions, so it's spread out across the four face buttons. In fact they even trim the command list by removing the elemental attributes from Mario and Luigi, leaving all 4 characters with exactly 1 special skill and their basic jump commands. Works out pretty well - except the babies are by default always riding on the older versions back, so every time you want to use any skill you need to throw them off. You wanna use Luigi's spin move? Well first you need to press X or Y to throw the babies, which will automatically transfer control to them, so then you need to press A or B to put it back to adult Mario & Luigi, then press R to switch from jump commands to special commands, and now you can use the spin. It's just annoying they added this extra step when the babies show they are perfectly capable of moving around the world by themselves. I think the game would be a lot smoother if they just had a 4-person train, only needing to give piggyback rides to the babies to get up higher jumps.

This also applies for battles. Why are the babies relegated to sitting on their partners back when they show multiple times they're more than able to fight by themselves? Their stats outside of power and stache (luck) don't even apply in most non-baby-only battle unless the older bro faints, leaving the baby to step in as an extra life. However I do kind of get this one, as only the babies have hammers now, so it might be hard to think up ways for enemies whose moves can be countered with hammers to not be unfair on the older counterparts who don't have them.

My least favourite change of the game is the swap between bros moves to bros items though. In terms of them being a limited resource that's actually completely fine. The game gives you more than enough of every item without you ever even needing to buy them, which itself is always an option. I also even like actually using them, as each one is essentially it's own mini-game, and the extra buttons can often be used in smart ways, such as the shell items which normally have Mario and Luigi kicking them back and forth between it hitting an enemy. A simple concept, but a baby rides the shell and if you press the babies button when the shell hits the enemy it deals extra damage. I like the idea idea.
But they're just so horribly balanced. On one hand you get some items which are better versions than older ones, like red shells that do more damage than green shells, while also not stopping if they defeat one enemy, and start attacking the next one. These are fine. They do make the first item redundant, but as a concept having an "upgrade" version of an item is fine.

To demonstrate this, let's look at 4 (out of only 10 total) items.
Firstly there's the Cannonballer. It shoots all 4 characters into the sky at one enemy and they all fall onto the enemy in a random order - press their corresponding button as they land and deal big damage. Nice and simple.

Then there's the direct upgrade from this - the trampoline. It does more or less the same thing, except it targets all enemies (a random one is chosen each time a character drops) and it goes on forever, progressively getting faster, until you miss a button input.

All well and good! Then there's the Chain Chomp item which actually comes between these 2. It's another "lasts forever and gets faster until you miss an input". In it the adults will run across the screen one at a time being chased by a Chain Chomp, while the baby rides on the back of the chomp by the tail. Press the adult brothers button to jump on the enemy, and press the babies to swing a hammer for a bit of extra damage. It's a fine concept but a bit redundant isn't it? It's just doing more basic jump damage. It can't really do anything that the trampoline can't do, even with the fact the babies use hammers because if you use it on a spiked enemy the first jump will fail and the move will end.

Then there's the copy flower which you get AFTER the trampoline. In it all the bros, adult and baby, create an infinite amount of copies of themselves and it's yet another "jump on an enemy until you miss a prompt". But while the trampoline has one character falling from the top screen at a time, this move has multiple of the characters running from left to right, making it much harder to keep track of AND the damage even seems to be less per hit. So what's the point? Why would I ever use the copy flower which just has me jumping on the enemy in a much harder to track pattern than the trampoline which also just has me jumping on the enemy, in a much easier to follow pattern? And if you miss a prompt for the copy flower it insta-ends the move, while if you do for the trampoline it let's you still attack with the remaining 3 brothers as they fall down. So why is this one of the last items you unlock? It's so stupid and I want answers!

Ok other than that it's a great game.

The most under-appreciated game in the series and it isn't hard to see why.

PiT is sandwiched between two highly beloved games. Superstar Saga was bound to be a tough act to follow with how fresh and unique it was and the legacy of Bowser's Inside Story is iconic, with memes and references still residing in the internet to this day.

But please do not skip Partners in Time. The reason why this game works for me is that the M&L series always gave off the energy of a Dav Pilkey work, specifically Captain Underpants and Ricky Ricotta. If you aren't familiar with those graphic novels, then here's a brief synopsis of what his works contain.

A big, wacky adventure with concepts that lead to hilarious scenarios. There's a cartoonishly evil villain of the week, all with their own gimmicks and the heroes must thwart those villains to save the day.

I find that Mario and Luigi have always fit this vibe, from the graphical style to the dialogue and even scenarios. They're all silly. And Partners in Time fits just in line with SS and BiS. An alien invasion of weird mushroom people? Time travelling? Teaming up with the baby versions of Mario and Luigi to defeat said aliens? With AlphaDream's beautiful and humorous presentation, how can you not find that fun!?

But something I want to further give credit to Partners in Time for is the game's attempt at a story and it's cartoonish villains of the week. The game goes for a much more darker tone. But the real kicker is the motivations for the villains. Where other M&L villain's motivation for world domination are not explained (and its not necessary for them to be explained) I love how the Shroob's motivation for world conquest is actually explained. They're here to take over the Mushroom Kingdom by circumstances of survival. Not because they are just "Evil." This isn't anything complex, but even just that context alone turns a typical cartoony villain into somewhat of a tragic villain who meets their end to a group of people who are just trying to survive as well. That goes a long way for me.

These are just a few aspects of Partners in Time that I love, but I don't hear discussed enough. It's typically about how the gameplay between controlling 4 characters is tedious and how the mazes are confusing. And you know what, fair enough, it is a game and should be critique as such. I also have my gripes in those departments. But none of those issues were enough to get in the way of all the fun I had. And with so many small, charming moments stacking up in this game, I can't help but look back at it with a unique fondness.

REALLY sucks that I didn't jive with this one, growing up with Inside Story and all. The baby mechanic is very hit or miss, and when it hist it doesn't hit very hard. Also the last I'd say 3rd or 4th of the game was pretty torturous, maybe I was underleveled or something but I was just not really having a good time at all, brought the game down a ton. Was NOT a fan of how the bros moves where done, didn't see why it had to be changed. Doesn't help that I didn't find a lot of them very fun to perform, many of them felt rather samey, and I guess so did Superstar Saga, but those where quick and snappy to pull off. Also I don't know if this was a skill issue or not but the hit detection felt a bit off, but I am willing to blame that on me. In short, Bowser Inside Story better go play that one.

While still a great game this one definitely had the most wasted potential overall. Most bosses drag on for far longer than they should (Looking specifically at the boulder boss and final boss). The purchasable special attacks are absolutely broken in power. And overall this game has the worst pacing, with an inconsistent story which they could have done so much more with. Time travelling to thwart a dark alien invasion is so cool I really wish it was realized to the fullest. This game was the most needed for a remake, so sad alpha dream is gone :(

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. :)

Heheheheheheh it's like a pun on the phrase Partners In CRIME hehehehehehehe. Anyways, gonna rip the band-aid off right now and say that my one major flaw with this one is the fact that it feels a little too short. It honestly feels like the developers wanted to make this game a bit longer but were cut short so they had to add some last minute padding towards to end of the game to make up for it, and yeah it sucks. Other than that though I fucking adore this game. The battle system is relatively the same as before, but this time you control 4 characters instead of 2. The soundtrack might me by favorite out of the 5 M&L games. The premise of Alien Invasion AND Time Travel might also potentially be my favorite out of any Mario game. I love the darker tone, I love the comedic bits, I love the wacky time travel stuff, DAMN THIS GAME IS GOOD I JUST WISH IT WAS LONGER THATS LITERALLY MY ONLY MAJOR FLAW