Mario and Luigi, Bowser’s Inside Story Review
To this day, the Mario and Luigi RPG series by AlphaDream holds a special place among my list of favorite games. Because of this, I decided to review the best game in this series, Mario and Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story. The game acts as the third installment in AlphaDream’s long list of Mario and Luigi RPGs. While they all have a very unique style of RPG gameplay, it’s my opinion that this installment has the best application of said style.
The game opens up in probably one of the most unique ways for a Mario game. Instead of there being a problem with Bowser or anything like that, there’s a mysterious disease going around that causes toads around the Mushroom Kingdom to blow up to extreme sizes. It’s called the Blorbs, and the game opens with a meeting taking place on how the Mushroom Kingdom will take care of this issue. This does lead to Bowser crashing the meeting, which throws you into the first introduction fight. After the fight, more cinematic plays until it’s revealed that Bowser has a new Vacuum ability which he accidentally uses to inhale every toad, Mario Bro, and princess in the meeting, which puts our protagonists in the main setting and sets up the rest of the gameplay.
The game’s got a turn-based combat system, very typical of an RPG styled game. Only this turn-based combat system has its own very unique way of running things. In most RPGs’ turn-based combat systems, you can’t do anything during the enemy phase. It’s simply the enemy’s turn to attack you. In this game though, you are able to interact with Mario and Luigi even during these enemies phases. This means if you jump or hammer at the right time, you can dodge enemies attacks entirely. This even gives you opportunities to counter-attack, damaging the enemy without it even being your turn. Normally you’d worry about balancing issues with a system like this, but this game managed to implement this system successfully without taking away any of the challenge from the fight. This is because in order to pull off these dodges and counter-attacks, you need to pay attention to how the enemy fights. Each enemy and each attack they have has its own tell which adds a whole new level of interactivity to the battling system.
The combat system also has a “Bros. Attack” mechanic, which is pretty essential to being able to win battles efficiently. The way these games have always worked is that A controls Mario’s actions and B controls Luigi’s actions. While you could use normal attacks to conserve your SP points, or perhaps you don’t have access to one of the brothers during a battle, the main way to attack is through use of these Bros. Attacks. Each attack is it’s own fun mini game too, and the better you do it, the stronger the attack will become. This adds a level of satisfaction to pulling off complicated moves.
The world is also very unique as well. Your special actions aren’t limited to only battles in this game. You can also use them outside of battle, hammering certain parts of the environment, and even using your hammer and jump ability for platforming.
The world of Mario and Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story can be split into two different types of areas. Either it’s in the main world, or it’s an area inside of Bowser’s Body. Bowser’s Interior is a 2D platforming area while the main world is more top-down like Pokemon. One of the most unique aspects of this changing system is that when you’re inside Bowser’s body, you can press X or Y to switch over to play as Bowser wherever he is in the outside world, leading to whole different combat systems and special actions unique for Bowser.
Overall, this is a must-have if you’re a fan of both RPG titles and Mario Bros. titles. This game brings both the most RPG aspects to a Mario game and the most Mario aspects to an RPG game. Because of this, I give it a 9/10.
