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. :)
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. :)