As part of readying myself for Dream Team, I had to finish the first three games, and this was the last one I needed. It may just be the latest-played-game effect that I’ve experienced before, but I felt like this was the best of the three. This contradicts opinions I’ve read that place it below the other two. Just taste, I guess. Since the gameplay is very similar to the other two, I’ll mostly just try to compare them.
The first thing that grabbed me coming straight off Superstar Saga is the increased graphical and sound fidelity on the DS system. The effects look better, the resolution is higher, it sounds better. The second screen is also used very helpfully, with maps of the area you’re in most of the time. It’s got that functionality from having the screen, whereas Bowser’s Inside Story only sometimes had a map, and sometimes Bowser or the Bros, depending on what was happening. It was inconsistent.
That principle follows through into other game aspects. BIS uses both screens, and the microphone, and touch controls. It’s cool to use the hardware but got gimmicky at times. PIT is more pure, like SS, but more advanced technically. I appreciate that. The “minigame” segments were also more organic, and less forced (and less often, I think).
The item systems are cool in this game. We still have eqipment badges rather than the activated badges of BIS that I didn’t use much. Special attacks are also activated by items rather than a character’s points stat, which is cool because you can stock up then feel better about using them more often, and you also get more different rewards on the map more often, which feels good.
The big feature of this game is the 2x2 gameplay, with the Bros. teaming up with their baby counterparts. I thought this was a very fun dynamic, and totally cute too! Instead of cycling through many abilities, they’re activated by different interaction between babies and adults, together or separate. Unlike the alternative of Bowser in the third, these characters are together and working together most of the time. The teaming-up mechanic weaves through both overworld and battles, and even to item management, not to mention the cutscenes. It’s a strong system, and getting more level-ups is always cool.
The presence of babies is due to the time-travelling plot. I liked being in the Mushroom Kingdom this time, and interacting with its residents under attack by a conquering alien race. Rather than the open world of the first or third games, this one is based around a hub in the present with portals leading to isolated locations in the past. It allows for a bit more variety to locales than in SS, and the stage-based structure has its pros and cons, but they do feel cut off. I did approve of having a Yoshi’s Island location, though.
The time travel was used a few times in cool ways, most often in interactions between younger and older versions of characters. Unfortunately there was no sense of consequences to locations, since you were stuck in the castle in the present, and the implications of an attack in the past to the present was not really explored.
The plot had a few little twists to it, which kept it interesting, as well as good use of recurring characters (I especially loved Stuffwell, Baby Bowser and Kamek, and the Toadsworths). However, the Shroobs made for less interesting antagonists. Despite their eeriness and apparent power, they didn’t really communicate with you so you didn’t have an equivalent to Fawful with his amusing writing. There was a stronger through-line than SS and even BIS, though, the plot being more focused.
So this game was a good sequel to SS, expanding on it and polishing its mechanics. The complexity of the 2x2 team was a good kind of complexity, and the babies were just great characters with a lot of potential and fun interactions with their older selves. It also is more focused than the other two I feel, especially the gameplay systems which got a bit out of hand in BIS. I was surprised that I seem to hold this one in the highest esteem of the three, judging from other reactions I’d read. But now it just leaves me to find out how Dream Team will stack up. Now that I’ve written this, I think I may be ready to play it now. Back to adventure!
