Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey

Genre: Turn-Based RPG / Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story is an RPG with Action-RPG elements released on Nintendo DS in 2009, the third game in this series. 10 years later in 2019, this game was remade for Nintendo 3DS with completely redone visuals, as well as new content and features. This new release was titled Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey.

This game follows much the same formula of 2017’s Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions, taking a classic entry in the Mario & Luigi series and updating it for the Nintendo 3DS, and in some ways it makes a lot of sense, updating a game that many see as the pinnacle of the series. Unfortunately, many saw this as unnecessary, remaking a game that was already playable on Nintendo 3DS via backwards-compatibility, and releasing it at a time when the overwhelming majority of Nintendo fans had already moved on to Nintendo’s next platform, the Nintendo Switch.

As a result, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey marks the last game by developer AlphaDream before the developer closed its doors, and as of this writing the final entry in the Mario & Luigi series. As sad as this is, at the very least this series went out on a high note – Bowser’s Inside Story is loved by fans for good reason, and this release offers what is unquestionably the definitive version of the game.

The plot this time around has Superstar Saga’s popular villain Fawful returning to create havoc in the Mushroom Kingdom, tricking its denizens into eating tainted mushrooms that transform them into bloated balls, and then tricking Bowser into eating a mushroom that causes him to vacuum up Mario, Luigi, Peach, and a sizeable chunk of Peach’s castle into his belly and then pass out, giving Fawful ample opportunity to move in and take over, unopposed.

Bowser awakens with no memory of inhaling his nemeses, and finds himself struggling to take back his own castle. Meanwhile, Mario and Luigi are stuck navigating the bizarre world of Bowser’s insides, trying to find their devoured friends and escape. However, Bowser and the Bros. ultimately find they need to work together (without Bowser even realizing just who he’s teaming up with), with Mario and Luigi messing around inside Bowser’s body to help him take on enemies and obstacles in the normal world.

The story here is wildly creative, and while some of the stuff in this game borders on body horror, the cartoony presentation and great sense of humor keep it from tipping over into areas that are too unsettling for a Mario game. However, what’s really fantastic here is how this game’s unique story affects the gameplay.

When Mario and Luigi are in Bowser’s insides, the game plays much like a 2D Platformer, but with encounters with enemies leading to the series’ typical turn-based combat with real-time elements. This portion of the game is segmented somewhat – Mario and Luigi will need to be traveling all over Bowser’s body to interact with different parts at different times, and no doubt the game’s creators didn’t want players to get bored with having to backtrack all over as the story requires.

Meanwhile, players can swap back and forth between this internal gameplay on the bottom screen to the outside world on the top screen where they control Bowser himself, who plays similarly to the Bros. but has a completely different power set, bashing his way through enemies and obstacles rather than jumping on them, with this part of the gameplay taking place from the series’ usual top-down perspective. It makes for some fun variety that keeps things interesting. However, what’s really fantastic are boss battles where players need to go back and forth between the two worlds, fighting enemies as Bowser, inhaling them, and then continuing the fight as Mario and Luigi inside his body. It’s so delightfully creative that it’s one of this game’s great joys to see how the game will use this unusual setup that truly makes this one of the most unique RPGs ever made.

When it comes to changes made in this version, things are a bit more subtle than the changes we saw in Superstar Saga just a few years earlier. There are a few quality of life improvements, and of course the remade visuals, but mostly this game will play much the same as the original.

The main bit of new content here is the new Bowser Jr.’s Journey mode, which plays out much like the Minion Quest mode from Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions, although thankfully this time the game can be accessed from the main menu right from the start. However, this game mode still has the same problems that Minion Quest did in the prior game – players nominally control a horde of minions facing against an opposing group of enemies, but control over your minions in this mode is extremely minimal, to the point where the most gameplay you’ll see here is in the menus in between missions where you’ll select which minions to include in your army. The story in this mode is wonderful, with writing on par with the rest of the game that goes farther to explore the personal dynamics of Bowser’s offspring than any other Mario game ever made, but the gameplay here is so bad you may not want to bother with it. Thankfully, this game mode is completely optional.

As for the rest of the presentation, much like what we saw in Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions, everything here has been completely redone using visuals that are closer to what we saw in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (albeit without stereoscopic 3D). This means we have colorful 2D visuals for backgrounds and characters, with some really good animation for those characters, as well as more modestly improved sound. Overall, this all looks good, though I wish the game took things a bit farther and gave us 3D environments like what we saw in Paper Jam.

Overall, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey is not as big an improvement over its source material as Superstar Saga received a few years prior, but it also didn’t really need to be – Bowser’s Inside Story is an absolutely stellar RPG with a delightfully funny story and wildly creative mechanics that’s one of the best games the genre has ever received, and even if this game is a more marginal improvement over the original, that still makes this one of the best RPGs ever made. If you’re a fan of the genre, and especially if you’re a fan of Mario RPGs, consider this an absolute must-have.

tl;dr – Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey is a remake of the third game in Nintendo’s Mario & Luigi RPG series (with real-time Action elements), featuring a story that has Bowser unwittingly teaming up with the Mario Bros., who have been swallowed up inside Bowser’s body. This is a less-extensive remake than what Superstar Saga received, but the original game was already one of the funniest and most creative RPGs ever made, and the improvements made here make this the definitive version. If you enjoy RPGs, consider this an absolute must-have game.

Grade: A+

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