'Bowser's Inside Story' an outright success

• By JOSHUA WASCOM
• Special to 2theadvocate.com
• Published: Oct 26, 2009

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When a mysterious plague begins to spread amongst the peaceful Toads, Mario and Luigi are called upon to stop it. When the person spreading the plague tricks Bowser into swallowing the Mario brothers whole, things get a bit more complicated. The brothers find themselves manipulating – and sometimes aiding – Bowser from the inside.

“Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story” is the third in the “Mario & Luigi” series. Like the first two, it sees the iconic Italian brothers saving the land in standard Japanese RPG fashion: taking part in countless turn-based battles, collecting experience and items, and generally fighting to maintain the status quo against increasingly powerful enemies until they finally reach the big showdown with ultimate evil.

The turn-based battles that normally drag on and on in RPGs are a much more active and engaging affair here. You have to press attack buttons at just the right moment to do maximum damage, and you must study enemy attack patterns to time your defenses and counterattacks perfectly. Bowser, in particular, is a lot of fun to control in a fight, as he has a few more options for both defense and offense than the brothers.

The gameplay outside of combat is also fairly well-designed. Whenever Bowser attempts some physical feat beyond his actual strength, Mario and Luigi invariably have to find a nerve cluster in the arms or a muscle group in the legs to stimulate through some fast-paced mini-game. The mini-games are fun and spread evenly throughout the main game, and they do a good job of breaking up the pace. A few are repeated frequently enough that they begin to wear thin, but none ever quite get to the point of tedium.

The story is a further high point, combining the familiar characters of the Mushroom Kingdom with a slightly outlandish plot – which is saying a lot, given the nature of the series. The dialogue works well, never quite causing any laughs, but frequently getting close. Again, Bowser is the real star here, and his brash and unalterable personality works perfectly in many scenes.

The game’s only real problem is a small degree of repetitiveness. Learning to deal with the different attack patterns of new monsters is a blast, but the RPG element of leveling through repeated battles almost forces you to keep fighting these foes long after you’ve mastered them.

If you played the first two “Mario & Luigi” games, then you know exactly what you’re in for here. It’s the same, only better. If you missed those… well, you shouldn’t have, they were a lot of fun, and the story in this is a continuation of certain old threads. Even for newcomers, though, this will still be a great game and one of the most engaging RPG-ish games around.