Mario & Luigi: Dream Team

Genre: Turn-Based RPG / Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is an RPG with Action-RPG elements released on Nintendo 3DS in 2013. The fourth game in the Mario & Luigi series of RPGs, this game sees the titular heroes and their entourage accepting an invitation to enjoy a resort vacation on Pi’illo Island, and between the game’s title and the name of the location, you can probably guess the direction that this game’s punny naming scheme takes.

The crew quickly discovers the mysterious lost civilization that once resided on the island is actually trapped within strange, pillow-like artifacts strewn around the island, and as luck would have it, Luigi holds the key to tapping into these artifacts, as pure luck sees him having the unique ability to create a door into a dream world through these artifacts, enabling Mario to venture inside. With this being the case, Mario and Luigi venture out on a quest to rescue the trapped people of the lost civilization, and in doing so, hopefully find a way to rescue princess Peach, who has also gotten herself trapped in the dream world.

The theming around sleep and dreaming is cute, but it actually makes for some fun variety in the gameplay as well. Players will explore and get into battles both inside and out of the dream world, but the form this takes is different for each. While exploring the island, the gameplay is pretty comparable to earlier Mario and Luigi games – this part of the game is played from an isometric viewpoint, and players walk around and explore the world, talk to various characters, solve simple puzzles, and get into turn-based combat where Mario and Luigi both function using a separate face button..

Meanwhile, in the dream world, each time you enter you’re placed in a self-contained location that has you running and jumping on Platforms like a typical side-scrolling Mario game. The combat here is also turn-based, but in these battles Mario fights alone, with his abilities supercharged by the dreamworld version of Luigi, Dreamy Luigi. There are puzzles to solve here too, and these tend to involve Dream Luigi’s “Luiginary” abilities, which have him possessing parts of the dream world much like a poltergeist, which players can manipulate using the touchscreen to tweak Luigi’s nose, tug on his mustache, and so on. It’s a fun and creative way of mixing things up, and it’s much appreciated.

The Mario & Luigi series has always been a delightfully accessible RPG series for younger and less-experienced players of the genre, but there’s also some good depth here for more experienced players who want to look for it – there are tons of customization options to power-up your characters the way you want, giving you the option to give an extra boost to any stat at level up, outfitting your characters with badges that give them unique “limit break” style moves, and even getting to select from a list of permanent passive skill boosts when reaching a specific level.

What’s more, there’s some skill to the real-time element in combat too – not only can your attacks be powered-up by timed button presses, but players can use timed button presses to completely evade enemy attacks too. Every enemy type has multiple attacks with different timing to learn, but a skilled player could potentially go through much of the game without taking damage simply by having good timing. Of course, this isn’t necessary, and players could get by simply by attacking normally and using items when damaged enough, and there’s even an easy mode for players who want an easier time with the game (as well as a difficult mode), but in any case, it’s nice to have the option either way.

The presentation here makes use of colorful, nicely-animated 2D visuals with a lot of charm and personality to them, with occasional 3D elements here and there, as well as decent stereoscopic 3D to add to the feeling of depth. This is joined by some delightful babble-speak from the Mario characters (their only intelligible words seem to be Mario saying “Luigi!” and Luigi saying “Mario!”), and backed by a decent whimsical soundtrack befitting a Mario spinoff – nothing truly exceptional, but it works well enough all the same.

When it comes to this game’s problems, I think the biggest issue I have is that, imaginative as the dream world elements are, I feel like they could be far more ambitious. Not only are these areas often visually samey and lacking the sort of mind-warping creativity of dreams in films like Inception or other games like Persona 5 and AI: The Somnium Files, but the fact that they’re all self-contained limits the potential for fun that could have been had exploring a warped dreamscape.

Still, as RPGs go, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is an absolute delight, full of fun and creativity, with some good depth as well, all packaged with endearing personality. There are areas where this game could have been even more ambitious, and graphically this isn’t quite as impressive as one would hope from the leap to Nintendo 3DS, but even with this being the case this is a must-have RPG on the platform.

tl;dr – Mario and Luigi: Dream Team is the fourth game in Nintendo’s Mario & Luigi RPG series (with real-time Action elements) featuring its two titular mascots, with this game’s theme and gimmick being the ability to explore dream worlds in addition to the game’s island setting. This game has an abundance of fun and creativity, some good depth, and a lot of great personality. There are areas where it could stand to be more ambitious, but even as it is, this is a must-have RPG on the Nintendo 3DS.

Grade: A

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