While this game did Butcher a lot of the sprites of the original, it made some vast improvements over it. For example, The game has a fast forward button from Paper jam, letting you speed up cutscenes, The 3Ds touchscreen makes it a lot easier to pick which moves you need as well as display the map, so you won't get lost as easily as like the original. But if you prefer the original way, you can use the 3DS's shoulder buttons to switch between moves like the original. As far as the combat goes, it pretty much the same as Paper jam, but without Paper Mario. Bros attacks also have a slight change, now instead of a spark that appear when you're suppose to press a button, its a circle that's suppose to represent the time window of when you're suppose to press the button. Although, some moves have had a slight change like how you can't spam Advanced knockout bros. anymore and that it can target multiple enemies instead of just one, or Fire bros. now having you spam rapidly to create one huge fireball to throw at Luigi instead of multiple. These changes can be jarring for some, but their adaptable.

Then there's the side mode Minion quest. While it did help explain what happen to Bowser and his crew during the events of Superstar saga, the gameplay is just awful. Basically you create a squad to fight a bunch of different squads which sounds cool on paper but the overall execution is done horribly, as the entirety of the mode. You just sit there and watch what happens with the occasional button press. It doesn't matter if you have a squadron with you're opponents weaknesses, the fight is completely luck based.
I say if you want to play this game, you should only play it for the main mode(unless you want to see the side story).